The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. I wake up at 6:30 am. I'm on the sofa at my sister's house. Everyone else is still asleep.

Today's the big day. Today's my sister's wedding day.

If this were a film I'd have some big surprise planned, like a marching band waiting outside the house, with trombones and trumpets, to wake everybody up. Or maybe I'd have some musicians planted at the wedding itself, to play "All You Need is Love" like in Love Actually. But it's not a film, and I've forgotten to do anything for the wedding, Also, tomorrow is my sister's birthday and yesterday was my sister-in-law's birthday, and I've forgotten to do anything for either of those things too. Oh well.

Toys and children's books are scattered around the living room. Phil's empty beer can is on the table from the night before. I have a look through the book shelf. It's mostly autobiographies of famous footballers. I pull out a photo album. It's photos of the first six weeks of Sophie's life. I flick through it. There are photos of Phil's family holding Sophie. One woman looks ancient. Maybe it's his great-grandmother? No, Phil's 33, so a great-grandmother would have to be 120, making her the oldest woman on Earth.

As I flip through the book I see at least three of Phil's four grandparents are still alive. I don't even have a mom anymore.

Eventually, everyone wakes up: my girlfriend Girlfriend, my sons 5-year-old and 1-year-old, my sister Lisa, Lisa's soon-to-be-husband Phil, and their infant daughter Sophie.

And so begins the morning of the wedding. I thought it would be chaos. I thought the house would be full of people running around and doing last-minute preparations. But it's nothing like that.

Lisa's making tea for everyone. Phil is making Sophie breakfast. It's like any other day.

Films and TV have led me to believe that Lisa should be sitting in a chair wearing a huge white dress, while a team of make-up artists, manicurists, and hairstylists fuss over her. One woman should be painting Lisa's nails and another woman blow-drying Lisa's hair. I imagined Lisa's hair would be full of curlers. At the same time, Phil would be in a different location, surrounded by his friends and brothers, all giving him a last-minute pep talk to calm his nerves.

But no. Everything's totally normal. It's exactly like any other day.

TV and films have lied to me.

Phil's asking if Sophie wants fruit:

"Do you want some watermelon, Sophie?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want some strawberries, Sophie?"

"Yeah."

"Do you want some banana, Sophie?"

"Yeah."

She says "Yeah" for everything.

I've made Sophie porridge. I offer her a spoon of my porridge and say, "Here you go Sophie, do you want some porridge?"

She looks at the spoon of porridge for a few moments. Finally, she says, "No."

So I eat the porridge myself.

After about half an hour I regret eating all that porridge. It's making me thirsty. It's all the carbohydrates in the oats: they're breaking down into sugar in my body and giving me diabetes.

I go for a walk with 1-year-old. By "walk with 1-year-old", it's actually just me walking and I'm carrying 1-year-old in my arms.

Just next to Lisa's house is a woodland area, like the forest from The Gruffalo. It's really nice. It's grass, trees, and sticks. I can understand why there are all these books for children set in forests, like Winnie the Pooh and We're Going on a Bear Hunt; it's because the writers of these books live near forests and they're just writing about their daily life. If I had to write a children's book, it would be about concrete, cars, litter, feral cats, and drug-addled youths: all the things you find in Erdington. If I had grown up here instead of Erdington, then I would have had a childhood full of adventures like Christopher Robin. I would have built forts and teepees. Instead, I sat at the computer playing Age of Empires and Counter Strike, so I guess I had my own adventures, only my adventures involved razing ancient cities to the ground and shooting counter-terrorists with an AK47.

I carry 1-year-old to the local farm. It really is local because it's only a five-minute walk. Zero-kilometre food. On the way, we pass a big manor house called The Keep. It has two entrances, a gravel drive and carefully pruned trees. It's the kind of house in which you'd find a magic wardrobe to the land of Narnia. My sister lives in a rich neighbourhood. She's marrying up.

1-year-old and I get to the farm but where are the animals? It's not a farm if there are no animals.

Oh wait, there are some cows. They're all in the corner of a field.

These are red cows, not stereotypical white cows with black spots. Who has ever heard of a red cow? Ask a child to draw a cow and they'll colour it black and white. No one ever colours a cow red. Then again, I suppose there's the laughing cow. She's red.

1-year-old's never seen a cow before. He stares at them in confusion. One of the cows stares back. 1-year-old stares at the cow. The cow stares back. It's an interspecies staring contest. Who will win? Not me, that's for sure. I've already blinked eighty times.

Cows really are nature's most boring animals. They don't do anything. All they do is chew grass. They don't roller skate around a disco with little party hats on. They don't bungee jump into a river. They just chew glass. In fact, as I stand here I can actually feel time slowing down around me due to how little is happening, like how time slows near a black hole. When I get home, everyone will be old like in Manifest, and they'll say, "Paul, what happened to you? You left the house fifty years ago!" and I'll say, "We stopped to look at some cows."

On the way out of the farm, I see a display of cows on the wall outside. The display has photos of cows that have won competitions. In 2004 a cow won a first-prize rosette for being the best cow or something. I look at these photos and laugh at the cows' expressions. One of the cows is looking straight at the camera with a confused expression as if it has no idea what's going on. Another cow looks strangely proud as if it's aware it's won a competition. They look like human expressions. And then I realise something: cows are just people in cow bodies. You can see this by the cows' expressions. They look just as confused and bewildered as people can sometimes look when startled or caught off-guard. Cows are just like us, except their bodies are different and their brains are more stupid. Then I realise it's our responsibility, as the planet's most intelligent species, to look after less intelligent species like cows, just as we look after people with Downes syndrome. And this realisation almost makes me become vegetarian on the spot. I'm glad it doesn't though as I like eating meat.

I can't believe this is what I'm doing on my sister's wedding day: looking at a farm display about a cow competition. So I head back to the house.

On the way back 1-year-old falls asleep in my arms. My arms start to ache from carrying him. I wish I'd brought the sling.

I get home. It's now 10 am, or four hours before Lisa's wedding. And Lisa isstill wearing her pyjamas.

There's an incense candle burning on the shelf next to the kitchen window. It's called "Wedding Day" which is appropriate. Music is playing softly from the Amazon Echo.

Lisa in the kitchen preparing bouquets of flowers at the kitchen table.

"I thought you're supposed to be getting ready for your wedding?" I say.

"I'm doing bouquets for Sophie and Aurora," she says.

"Can't you get someone else to make those bouquets for you?" I ask.

I don't offer to do it myself though, mind you.

"Nah. I went to a florist and asked how much three bouquets would be and they said a quarter of a grand. So I'm making them myself."

"What, 500 pounds???" I say.

"No, 250 pounds," she says.

On yeah. I suppose a quarter of a thousand is 250.

"Sophie and Aurora are going to be bridesmaids," she adds.

Bridesmaids? All I know about bridesmaids is what I've learned from chick flicks. They're a group of giggling blonde women who are so desperate to get married that when the bride throws the bouquet over her shoulder, all the bridesmaids scream and jump in the air and smack their elbows into each other just to be the first to grab the bouquet. And at the end of the wedding party, there's always a fat bridesmaid crying because the man she fancies is leaving with another woman.

I don't think that will be happening today though because Sophie's age one and Aurora's age ten.

"We're saving money by doing everything ourselves," says Lisa. "Like I'm doing my own hair and makeup. One of my friends paid £600 for a nail and make-up artist to come and do her hair and makeup for her wedding. So I'm saving loads of money."

If you had to say what type of bride my sister is, I'd say it's a DIY bride: the bride who does everything herself.

10:30 am

My dad strides into the house, singing "We Are The Champions" by Queen in a high falsetto voice. He must be in one of his manic moods.

12 pm

The groom drives me, Girlfriend, 5-year-old and 1-year-old to the wedding. It's an honour. The groom himself is driving us to his own wedding.

On the way, we hit traffic. A line of non-moving cars snakes down the road as far as the eye can see.

"It's the roadworks," says Phil, the groom. "I didn't think the traffic would be so bad though."

He's strangely calm about it, considering he might be about to miss his own wedding. If it were me, I'd be out in the road, shouting at the other drivers to move out of the way.

"I think there's another way," he says. He turns the car around and drives to the motorway instead, which is faster.

"I was up until 5:30 am two nights ago doing work," he says. "When dawn came I just sat there for an hour watching the sky out the window."

Jesus Christ, the groom was up until 5:30 am? Two days before his wedding day? What kind of wedding is this?

Phil drops us off outside my older sister's house. My older sister is called Corryn and she lives - and this blows my mind - just a two-minute walk from the church where Lisa's getting married. It's just there, when you step out the door of her house.

I ask Corryn what it's like living next to a church.

"The bells used to drive me mad," she says. "The bells go off every fifteen minutes, even during the night. But I've gotten used to them now. I don't even hear them anymore."

Sure enough, the bells start ringing. It's a cacophony of bells, tolling away glad news in their towers. They must be for Lisa's wedding.

"Those bells are for another wedding," says Corryn. "There's a wedding before Lisa's in the same church."

Two weddings on the same day at the same church. Pack 'em in as many as you can, that's the vicar's motto.

Corryn's put out a buffet. Soon more people turn up. My aunt Dawn, my cousin Charlotte, Charlotte's two children, and my nan.

I sit down next to my nan. She's 85 years old and seems to be suffering from memory loss.

"Who are you then?" she asks me.

"I'm Paul," I say.

"You're Paul?" she says with surprise. "Carl's son?"

"That's right."

"What happened to your hair? It used to be blonde."

"I don't know," I say. It's true, I used to have beautiful blonde hair as a kid.

Two minutes later, she leans into me and says, "Who are you again?"

"I'm Paul."

"You're Paul?"

"That's right." I then point out everyone in the room. "And that's Adam, and that's Carl, and that's Lisa."

"Oh," she says. "So who are you again?"

1:45 pm

Fifteen minutes before the wedding.

We walk to the church, down the path, and past the old graveyard. The bells are a-ringing. The sun is a-shining. Everyone's smiling and dressed in their best clothes. My niece Aurora is holding the gate open. She's wearing a white dress and a flower hair garland. She's smiling. It suddenly occurs to me that this is a perfect moment, one of those moments you'll remember forever. Behind me is my own family - my girlfriend and two sons. Ahead of us is a big beautiful church.

My nan's wheelchair is stuck on the grass.

2:10 pm

Everyone's in the church. The groom is standing at the aisle. Now we're just waiting for my sister to arrive.

While we're waiting for the bride to arrive, my brother and older sister get up and go light a candle for our mom. Our mom took her own life ten years ago.

When my sister comes back, she says, "Go on Paul, go and light a candle!"

"Yeah, why not," I say.

So I go and light a candle. But I don't understood what the point is. The person's dead so how is a candle going to help them?

But at least this candle is free. Some churches have a tin you have to put money in before you can use a candle.

I go and sit back down. The bride's still not here.

"If Lisa, doesn't turn up, we'll have to find someone else to marry Phil!" says my sister Corryn, grinning.

"I'll marry him," I say.

After all, Phil's from a rich family. They would just need to turn Phil gay first. And me gay. They could use conversion therapy like they used on Alan Turing in the 1950s, except they'd have to run it backwards, so instead of turning gay people straight, it would make Phil and me gay.

Never mind, my sister's here.

2:30 pm

The wedding is unreal. It's all of the things you've seen on TV and in films about what weddings are like, except it's really happening there in front of me. And the craziest thing is that my sister is the bride. It's like something from my imagination, not something actually happening right now.

3:10 pm

After the wedding, Corryn's boyfriend, Chris, tells me that one of his best friends killed himself last year.

And another one of his friends, an air steward, was in Thailand during the COVID lockdown and got depressed and tried to kill himself by jumping from a five-storey building. He survived, but both his legs had to be amputated and neither of his arms work anymore. Jesus Christ. Are all of his friends suicidal?

"I film weddings for a living," he continues. "And there was this one wedding last year, where I've never seen a happier bride and groom. Everyone kept saying how happy they were. But then three months later—"

Let me guess, they killed themselves?

"—the groom killed himself. It came completely out of nowhere."

Is anyone keeping track of the suspiciously high number of people killing themselves? That's three so far. The only person connecting them all is Chris. In a police station, Chris's photo would be the one in the middle of a corkboard, connecting all the red strings together.

4pm

My dad drives me, Girlfriend, 5-year-old and 1-year-old to the wedding reception. It's at a Grade II listed manor house called Middleton Hall. It's a beautiful building. Half tudor and half something else. I don't know, I'm not an architect.

There's a pork bap stand. The pig is lying right there. It's been butchered, literally. Its head is still sitting there, its eyes closed peacefully.

"It took sixteen hours to roast," said the guy working at the stand. He seems proud.

"And the pig was squealing the whole time," I add.

No one finds my joke funny.

***

Lots of people I know are at the wedding. There's my old next-door neighbour, Andrew. He says he's trying to be a background actor. He was hired to be a background actor in the Stephen Spielberg film Ready Player One but they cut his part out during editing. He says the camera pans around to where he's standing, but just before the camera reaches him, the film cuts to another scene.

He's also in a film called Hello Darlin' but this film isn't available to watch anywhere, which is convenient.

He says he's also in a music video called "League of Legends - Welcome to the Playground".

"I'm in the elevator scene," he says.

(I looked up the video later and I can't see him. There are plenty of dark figures standing in the shadows; maybe he's one of them. Then again, maybe he's just making the whole thing up in an attempt to impress people.)

Andrew and his mom and dad were in a car crash last year. They were driving in the middle lane of a three-lane motorway when they got boxed in by an Audi on the left and a truck on the right. Both the Audi and the truck merged into Andrew's lane at the same time, crushing the car and turning Andrew and his parents into pancakes, and okay, it wasn't exactly like that. What happened was his dad slammed his foot on the car's brake pedal. His mom and dad had airbags but all Andrew had was his seatbelt. Andrew's seatbelt slammed into his chest, giving him a chest injury. Andrew got out of the car and wandered around, spitting up blood. Andrew's mom and dad couldn't get out of the car because the doors were crushed. The man in the Audi got out of his car and ran away.

***

I go up to Lisa's friend Hayley. I have something to tell her.

"So I wanted to tell you this in person," I say. "It's going to sound a bit strange..."

Then her mom walks up to join us. Great. Guess I'm telling her mom as well.

"Well, I heard you were trying for a baby through IVF," I continue, "and, well I've got a friend who might be able to help. Basically, he's offering you £100,000 to have his baby."

"You what?"

"He's this rich friend, Joe his name is, and he wants a baby but he doesn't have a girlfriend, so he's offering women £100,000 to have his baby."

"Oh my god, you should definitely do it," says her mom, which I didn't expect.

"It sounds crazy," says Hayley.

"I admit it is crazy," I say. "But you'd get to keep the baby afterwards. He doesn't want to raise it or anything. You can have it."

"So why does he even want a baby then if he doesn't want it?"

"Well, he thinks the only purpose in life is to have as many children as possible to further his genetic legacy."

"Oh right. Well, I know a lot of men like that."

I bet she doesn't know any who are millionaires though.

"Also," I add, "you could do the impregnation stuff with IVF. He'd donate his sperm and the doctors would inject it into your eggs."

"I'd do it if I were still young," says her mom. "Is he handsome?"

I try to pull up a picture of Joe on my phone. The trouble is I have no internet. The best I can do is his Whatsapp profile picture, which is so blurry it could be anyone.

"Hayley, I think you should do it," says her mom.

"Me too," I add.

What I don't tell them is that Joe's promised me 10 grand if I can find a woman to have his child.

But Hayley doesn't seem enthusiastic about the idea. There's something putting her off. Maybe it's the idea of a man paying to put his sperm inside her.

"It's all so weird," she says. "It's like something out of Black Mirror."

I guess I'll never see that 10 grand after all.

"I'll look him up on Facebook when I get home," says Hayley.

I guess I might still see that £10,000 after all.

If she does have a baby with Joe, I hope they make me the godfather.

***

"I can do a backflip on the bouncy castle," says a kid.

My niece Aurora tells him, "You look like a dad doing that."

"Hey! I'm a dad!" I say. "If I tried to do a backflip—"

"—then you'd cripple yourself for life," finishes Girlfriend.

***

One of my mom's cousins is at the wedding. Her name is Sue. She's wearing glasses and a flowery dress.

But another woman is also there, also called Sue, and she's also wearing glasses and a flowery dress.

I point to the wrong Sue and say to Adam, "That's mom's cousin Sue". Adam then goes over and talks to her for a couple of minutes thinking it's our mom's cousin, when in reality it's a relative of Phil's we've never met.

Later I go over and talk to the wrong Sue too. I say things like, "It's been a long time we last saw each other. Ten years, right?" and "Thanks for sending me those letters."

This other Sue, a person I've never met before, says, "I think you've got the wrong Sue."

"Is your husband not called Nigel?" I ask.

"No, my husband's called Nick."

Wrong Sue.

What are the chances of that happening? They're both called Sue and they look alike as well. They were similar ages — in their 60s — and even had similar hairstyles - long frizzy hair. Crazy.

6 pm

"I can't wait to get a pork bap," says Chris. "It's what I've been waiting for all day."

I don't have to heart to tell him that the pork bap stand left an hour ago.

8 pm

A band starts playing inside. It's loud. There's only me, 5-year-old, my brother Adam, and my brother's girlfriend Emma on the dancefloor, as well as an eight-year girl staring at the singer as if she really wants to be her.

Adam starts making some stupid dance moves to make everyone laugh. At least I think he's doing it to make everyone laugh. Maybe this is just how he dances. He reminds me of how Mr Bean would dance at a wedding, doing all these stereotypical moves from Pulp Fiction and Saturday Night Fever. Anyway it works, and soon we're all in hysterics.

The band leave to take a break. I find the band's set list on the floor — a piece of paper with songs written on — and discover one of the last songs will be "Mr Brightside" by The Killers. My brother and I love The Killers, and we spend five minutes singing The Killers songs outside a capella to the amusement of Adam's girlfriend.

"I've got soul but I'm not a soldier"

"Coming out of my cage, and I've been doing just fine."

9:30 pm

Everyone at the wedding is dancing and having a great time.

10 pm

We leave the wedding party, in a taxi. It's me, Girlfriend, 5-year-old, 1-year-old, Lisa (the bride), and Sophie, all in a taxi together. The groom is staying to "help tidy up" but I think really he's staying to get drunk.

My ears are still ringing from the noise of the disco.

"What did you think of the wedding?" asks Lisa.

"Lisa," I say. "I think it was perfect."

Well, truthfully, it wasn't actually perfect: the sandwiches were a bit dry.

5-year-old falls asleep as soon as he gets into bed. 1-year-old's already asleep - he fell asleep in the pushchair at the wedding reception.

I'm not allowed to sleep on the sofa tonight. Phil will be sleeping on the sofa. He said he doesn't want to sleep in the same bed as Sophie because he'll be drunk and he might roll over during the night and suffocate her.

So I take a load of cushions off the living room sofa, carry them upstairs and toss them onto the bedroom floor. Like this, I'll sleep on the floor and get a good night's sleep.

1 am

I can't sleep. My plan to sleep on a bunch of cushions isn't working. The floor is too uncomfortable, even with cushions.

So I get up. Girlfriend, 5-year-old and 1-year-old are all asleep in the bed. Then I notice something: they're all small. 1-year-old? He's just a baby. He's small. 5-year-old? He's just five years old. He's short. And Girlfriend? She's one of the shortest women I know. She's only 4 foot nine. What all this means is there is a big space at the end of the bed where their feet are. Their feet don't reach the end of the bed. So I lie down there. It's much more comfortable. And I fall asleep.