The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. I'm taking a bag of books to the local used book shop. The shop is called ReRead and they buy books for 25 cents, which is a pretty good offer if you ask me, considering the alternative is to just chuck the fucking books in the fucking bin.

One of the books in my bag is called Tantric Sex. Just in case it wasn't obvious this book is called Tantric Sex, it has the words TANTRIC SEX in giant red letters on the cover. It's not my book, I swear; it belonged to my father-in-law, who sadly died from Covid a couple of years ago. He was surprisingly still into sex even in his 60s. He was watching porn on a daily basis, something I discovered one day when I opened his internet browsing history by mistake and found lots of links to Pornhub with search terms like "Indian porn".

I'm carrying 1-year-old in the sling in front of me, by the way. He says, "Ba wa ra ra ra wa." Now he's blowing raspberries with his lips. I've never understood the phrase blowing a raspberry. What's a raspberry got anything to do with making a farting sound?

While I'm walking to the bookshop, I take the chance to have a look inside Tantric Sex, just to see if there's anything interesting, like drawings of naked women. The blurb on the back promises the book will teach me how to "transmute sexual energy through the chakras" and "discover the god or goddess within you". I'm not sure I want to discover the god or goddess within me. Because what if the god within me turns out to be Hades, torturer of souls? And I have to go live in the Underworld? They might not have a Tesco's down there and I don't think I could stand the constant wailing of tortured souls either.

Though I wouldn't mind having a woman to explore chakras with. I have one woman, Girlfriend, but we haven't had sex in three years. She's just not interested anymore. "I don't miss it," she says. She's happy enough with her Netflix and Instagram now; she doesn't want my willy inside her anymore.

I flick through the book. Men are "gods" and women are "goddesses". The vagina is the "sacred space". I don't find out what the penis is called; presumably, it's the "sacred stick".

There's a subchapter called "When The Goddess Love Liquid Flows" which is a euphemism for female ejaculation. There are also some surprisingly graphic drawings in the book of naked men and women.

I arrive at the bookshop. There's an elderly woman working there. I don't know what she's going to make of my Tantric Sex book.

She takes my books out my bag. The first one she takes out is, of course, Tantric Sex. The book with TANTRIC SEX in big red letters on the front.

"It's not mine, it was my father-in-law's," I say, trying to explain.

But she doesn't care; she's already moved on to the next book.

What's more, she wants to buy it too, along with nine other books, netting me the princely sum of 2.50 euros.

"What about this one?" I ask, holding up The Hunger Games.

She shakes her head sadly. "It has stains," she says. She takes the book from me and shows me stains on the fore-edge.

What. I literally bought this book from this very shop just a year ago.

So I put The Hunger Games back in my bags along with some children's books she won't buy. And 1-year-old and I head home.

On the way home, I let 1-year-old out of the sling so he can walk around. He takes my hand and leads me across a bridge. There's a beggar sitting on the bridge holding an empty paper cup in his hands. The thing is though, he doesn't look like much a beggar. He's middle-aged and wearing glasses. He looks more like a geology professor than a panhandler.

He also looks thoroughly miserable. I wonder what circumstances have led him here, begging on this bridge. If the statistics on homelessness are anything to go by, he probably has some mental illness like schizophrenia or depression.

Then I see something that will cheer him up: in the water, there's an animal eating leaves.

"Look, there's an animal in the water!" I say to the beggar, as I point to the water.

"Yeah, it's a fish," he says, not even bothering to look.

"No, it's not a fish. It has a long tail. It's like a rat."

He shrugs and continues with his begging, by which I mean he continues to sit there doing nothing. He doesn't seem interested.

Other people come and look at the big rat swimming in the water and eating leaves. It's actually amazing. All I ever see in the river are fish and ducks. One of the people identifies the animal as an otter. So there you go: not a giant rat after all.

1-year-old's found an empty paper cup - not the beggar's paper cup but a second, unrelated paper cup - and he chucks it over the railing and into the water below. The otter swims over and inspects the cup for a few moments before swimming off.

Before I leave, I put a fifty-cent coin into the beggar's empty cup.

"Thanks," he says gruffly.

I begin to walk away when an idea strikes me. I turn back to the beggar and say, "Do you want a book?" I pull The Hunger Games out from my bag.

The beggar's face lights up. "Yeah, I'll take it," he says. I give him the book. He flips the book over in his hands, studying the front and back.

"I've got some other books in my bag too," I say.

"This one will suit me just fine, thanks," he says.

As I walk off, I wonder if it was a bad idea to give a beggar a book called The Hunger Games when he himself is hungry. Maybe by reading the book, he'll be reminded of his own hunger, and he'll get so depressed that he'll throw himself from the bridge, at which point the otter will eat him.