Tamworth
10 am
Dear Diary. I'm in Sainsbury's with my dad.
"It's bloody cold here," he says.
"What?" I say. "But you're wearing a fleece."
"Yeah, but I'm not wearing anything under my fleece," he says. Then he adds: "And I'm not wearing any pants either."
And as he walks off, I can't help but imagine his penis and testicles swinging around freely underneath the crotch of his trousers, just a few feet away from old ladies doing their grocery shopping.
We buy our stuff and go back to the car. When my dad turns on the car, a song called You Make My Dream by Daryl & John Oates starts playing through the car's speakers.
"You see, music's good Paul," says my dad. "You know why?"
"Why?" I ask.
"Stops you hearing the voices in your head that tell you to kill," he says, rather ominously.
When we get home, I give 1-year-old a packet of Pom-Bears to eat. A few minutes later there's Pom-Bears all over the floor. Girlfriend has to go around cleaning up the crumbs with a vacuum cleaner.
11 AM
My older sister Corryn sends me a message: Would you like to come to Tamworth today?
Tamworth sounds good because it's free, so we all pile in the car and drive to Tamworth.
I've been to Tamworth a couple of times. There's a castle and it's where my older sister lives as well.
My dad parks the car. As we're walking in the direction of the castle, we come across a big new playground. It's called the Castle Grounds Play Area.
While Girlfriend pushes 1-year-old around in the pushchair to make him sleep and my dad takes 5-year-old to the playground, I stop and look at a fair on the other side of the park. It's a temporary fair with dodgems, a funhouse, and waltzers. The fair is closed at the moment but I'm drawn over there by the four attractive women wearing bikinis. Sadly they're not real women but just pictures spray painted onto the control booth of the Sizzler ride. One of the women is Megan Fox in Transformers, in the scene where she's bending over to fix a car on a hot sweaty day, a scene which was vital to the plot of the movie.
As I walk back to the playground, I come across a can of Dr Pepper that's been left in the middle of the field. I pick the can up and shake it. There's still a bit left inside. I put the can to my mouth and drink a bit of Dr Pepper. It's sugary and tastes of caramel. I drop the can in the nearest bin. I don't know why I've bothered to tell you this. I suppose it might give you some insight into my character: now you know I'm the type of person who will pick up a random can of pop from the ground and drink from it, without knowing if it's Dr Pepper or a tramp's piss.
When I get back to the playground, I find my dad and 5-year-old next to the ice cream stand. My dad's bought something called a Crunchie Blast for himself and something called a Rowntree's Orange Push-Up for 5-year-old. I'm behind the times when it comes to ice creams and so I have no idea what these ice creams are.
It takes me a while to work out that Crunchie refers to the Crunchie chocolate bar. Which means Cadbury have made an ice cream out of the Crunchie bar. An ice cream Crunchie. Will wonders never cease?
"Can I try a bit?" I ask my dad.
"Yeah," he says.
I take a bite. It tastes just like a Crunchie but as an ice cream. It makes your tongue fizz like space candy does.
1 PM
We meet up with my older sister Corryn, her boyfriend Chris and her preteen daughter Aurora. We have lunch at Wetherspoons. This is the third day in a row I've eaten at Wetherspoons. I don't mind. If it was up to me I'd eat at Wetherspoons every day.
"Have you noticed something?" my dad says with a mischievous smile and a hint of malice in his eyes.
"What?" I ask, raising a forkful of chicken to my mouth.
"Everyone in Tamworth's inbred," says my dad.
I look around at the people in Wetherspoons. I'm not sure what he means. Sure, the people all look strange and misshapen, but no more so than the people of Birmingham.
"It's like The Hills Have Eyes," says my dad.
On the way out I steal a Wetherspoons mug by hiding it in the hood of 1-year-old's pushchair. It's just a generic white mug. I don't particularly want a mug, but Wetherspoons do free coffee refills from their self-service coffee machine, so if I give the mug to my sister Corryn, she can just come into Wetherspoons whenever she likes to get a free coffee.
Corryn's obsessed with saving money. She's always finding ways to get a good deal or get things for free. Her boyfriend calls her "Mrs Martin Lewis". For example, instead of buying cups of tea in cafes, she'll bring her own tea bag and ask the barista for a cup of hot water so she can make her own cup of tea for free. Plus she has a Blue Light Card, which is a special card for NHS workers which gets her discounts in shops. With all the different ways she has to save money, it's a wonder she's still poor.
3 PM: Ice skating
My sister's boyfriend, Chris, needs something fun to take his mind off his misery. This year he's been through a divorce and moved house. And on top of that, last year one his best friends killed himself. And, during COVID, another one of his friends jumped from a building in a suicide attempt and lost the use of his arms and legs.
So I suggest ice skating. There's nothing like ice skating to take your mind off divorce and suicide. The gentle swish swish of your skates in sycnchronisation with pop music played over the speaker system. Plus there's an ice rink here in Tamworth. That's actually the real reason I suggest ice skating. Not because it'll make Chris feel better, but because it's locately conveniently nearby.
The ice skating is at a place called the Snowdome. The Snowdome is a big winter sports place where you can do skiing, snowboarding, and the aforementioned ice skating. The Snowdome also used to have tobogganing but two years ago, a toboggan hit a ten-year-old boy and he died. Since then, tobogganing has been banned at the SnowDome. Suspiciously, Chris lives near the Snowdome, and he's already linked to two suicides, so it doesn't take a detective to put two and two together and imagine that Chris could have cut the brakes on that toboggan that day.
5-year-old's never been ice skating before so I decide to rent a skating aid for him. The skating aid costs £9 to rent.
Just as I'm about to pay, my sister Corryn intervenes. "Don't get it, there'll be loads of those skating aids that people have left," she says. "You can just find one."
But it's too late, I've paid.
And sure enough, when we enter the ice rink, there are five skating aids standing at the side of the rink. By the way, they're all in the shape of penguins.
I tentatively walk out on the ice. Bloody hell, this is slippy. I'm not nine anymore, I'm 36, and if I fall over, I could break my arm. What am I doing ice skating for? It's been years since I did any ice skating.
But after a few goes around the rink, I start to remember how to ice skate. I can skate pretty fast too. I feel like shouting, "LOOK MA, I'M SKATING, I'M SKATING! NO HANDS!!" But then I'd probably lose control, go crashing through the building's emergency exit doors like in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, and end up having to skate through a series of increasingly consulted obstacles like a pane of glass being carried by two delivery men and a spill of mousetraps from an overturned lorry.
I turn to see how Chris is doing. Chris is waving his arms around wildly and struggling not to fall over.
Aurora gives up after an hour because her hands are cold. Half an hour later, 5-year-old gives up too. In the end, it's just me and Chris, skating round and round the rink (plus a few dozen strangers) which is ironic because we came here because ice skating's a children's activity.
Chris and I take a break at the side of the rink.
"My cousin taught me to skate," says Chris.
"Oh," I say. Then I don't know what else to say, so I add, "That was nice of her."
"Yeah, it was back in the eighties," says Chris. "She was on the skating team for the Olympics and she gave me lessons in Silver Blades at the Leisure Box."
Hang on. Skating team for the Olympics?
"Did you just say the Olympics?" I ask, thinking I might have misheard him and he actually said "Alum picks" and maybe his cousin was a miner.
"Yeah, that's right," said Chris. "She skated for Great Britain at the Olympics. It was in the eighties."
"Your cousin?"
"Yeah."
Then he skates off. I would like to say Chris then did a three-foot leap into the air followed by a pirouette, but instead he almost lost balance and knocked over a small child. I don't know who his cousin was but her lessons can't have been that good.
For reasons I don't fully understand, other than it might be fun, I grab a spare penguin-shaped skating aid and start skating around the rink with it. Just to be clear, I don't need a skating aid. I know how to skate perfectly well. But I want to know what it's like to skate with a penguin-shaped skating aid.
Well, I can tell you now: it's fun. You can go pretty fast with a penguin-shaped skating aid. Maybe you can go pretty fast with skating aids of other shapes too, but I don't know because all I have is a penguin-shaped skating aid. But a penguin-shaped skating aid is enough because it lets you go fast. I'm leaning into the penguin and gripping the bars attached to its ears while my skates push against the ice. Swish swish swish go my skates on the ice. I'm bombing along past small children thanks to my penguin-shaped skating aid, designed for children aged four to ten.
It's fun until I find myself heading straight for a wall and can't stop. "OH FUCKING BUGGER," I cry out as I crash into the wall. Luckily the wall's padded and I don't hurt myself.
Chris laughs as he glides me past on his skates.
We finally get off the ice and go find everyone else. They're all in the cafe ordering tea and snacks. Girlfriend tells she when opened the hood of the pushchair, the mug jumped out at her, and it almost broke.
5 PM: Bowling
After ice skating, we all go bowling. 5-year-old's only five so he uses the bowling ball ramp for children. But while he's holding the bowling ball in one hand and moving the ramp with the other hand, 5-year-old drops the bowling ball. Thankfully it misses his foot and lands on the floor instead, which is good because I don't want to go to A&E. After that near-incident, I tell him to adjust the ramp first and then get the ball.
5-year-old wins the game even though he's only five years old, probably because he's been using the bowling ball ramp.
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