The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. It's a nice morning so I go and have a cup of tea in a cafe for a change.

A typical cafe in Girona has chairs and tables on the pavement so you can drink outside, but this cafe is unusual because the chairs and tables are out in the road. I'm serious. I'm sitting in a busy road, drinking a cup of tea, while cars, buses and other vehicles pass me by. The cafe's seating area is delineated from the rest of the road by pots of tiny fir trees, so I guess there's the illusion that you're sitting in a park instead of the road.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's an image from Google Maps to show you what I mean:

I sip the tea and finish reading Vacationland by John Hodgman. There's an old couple next me with two small dogs on leads. One of the dogs, a Yorkshire Terrier wearing a pink bow on the top of its head, comes up to me to smell my hand, and I take the opportunity to pick it up, wring its neck, and toss its body into the road, where it's run over by a bus.

I don't do that, of course. I stroke the dog and after a while, it goes back to its owners. But I had to make up something interesting there, because nothing interesting happens in my life anymore, and this is one of the most boring diary entries I have ever had to write. All the fun stuff happened on my holiday in Birmingham two weeks ago and now I'm just back to everyday life.

Okay, here's something interesting, if your definition of interesting is the opposite of the conventional dictionary meaning: while I'm reading the book, my left leg goes numb from the way I'm sitting. This happens to me often. Maybe it's some kind of leg condition I have. It usually happens when I'm sitting on the edge of the bathtub while reading books to 5-year-old while he does a poo on the toilet.

And speaking of going to the toilet, I might need to go to the toilet myself soon, as I feel a poo coming on. But with my left leg numb, I don't think I can actually get up, not without falling over. This must be what it's like to be old: you need to do a poo but you can't get up. I guess this is why they sell nappies for old people.

I move my leg around and the numbness eventually goes away. And it turns out I don't need to do a poo after all, just a smelly fart. Luckily I'm sitting outside so my fart disperses harmlessly in the open air before anyone can smell it.

I finish my tea and go inside the cafe to pay, but the woman behind the counter is busy dealing with an old person whose bank card isn't accepted by the card reader, so I stand and wait. As I wait, I look around. All the workers are young women, and they're all wearing the same casual uniform consisting of a pink baggy t-shirt with denim jeans. One of the women, probably the chef, wears a rustic cloth apron, the kind worn by bakers in 18th-century French villages. Behind the counter, bottles of soy milk vie for space with jars of organic pancake mix, and next to me, a man tucks into a slice of toast on which is placed slices of avocado and smoked salmon. The word HIPSTER HIPSTER HIPSTER goes off in my head due to my inbuilt hipster alarm, which is a real thing, and not something made up. It's like a gaydar, but instead of going off when I see a gay person, it's tripped by anything hipsterish nearby. For example, it activates when I see a man with full-sleeve tattoos or a barber shop where all the barbers have beards and are wearing bow ties. It's not a particularly helpful alarm.

Anyway, I pay for my tea and leave the cafe feeling mildly happy. It's not a bad cafe actually, and I'd pay £2.20 again for a tea, even if the tea has no milk.

And that's it, really. As I said, nothing much happens in my life anymore.