The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. Here it was, the moment I'd been waiting for: the buffet breakfast. I carried 1-year-old down the stairs where a woman in a waistcoat greeted us with a smile and swept us into the dining room. There were white-sheeted tables covered in plates of delicious food: doughnuts, croissants, bacon, eggs, hash browns, grapefruit, melon, and pancakes. Unfortunately, I was too tired to enjoy any of it; I just mindlessly shovelled food into my mouth, like a robot eating coal to resupply its energy reserves.

Since this was Spain, there were also some strange foods on offer. You know what everyone likes for breakfast? That's right: jalapeno peppers. And you know what else? That's correct: pickled garlic. Forget breakfast cereals, muesli, and toast: what people wanted for breakfast were chilli peppers and garlic. At least, I was eating them, simply because the buffet was free and I had to try everything on offer.

I ate a big ball of soft cheese, putting the whole lot in my mouth. It was dripping with olive oil. Balls of pure cheese are either really good for you or really bad for you; I didn't know which.

My family finished eating and went back up to the hotel room while I stayed behind so I could eat more food. Eventually, Girlfriend had to call me to ask when I was coming.

We went to the Seat Christmas Village. It was a Christmas Village owned by the car company Seat or something? There were Seat cars in the windows, next to Santa's workshop. There was a conveyor belt of toys going past: a chocolate pig, a giant cupcake made of plastic, a nutcracker, and that timeless perennial Christmas favourite, a pig wearing clothes and standing on a pair of skis.

I waited for Lego to come around but it never did. Maybe the Lego was in Santa's sacks. If I could find a way to get into the shop window display without anyone seeing me, I could have stolen those sacks and had enough Lego to last until 5-year-old's eighteen.

The queue was moving slowly but we eventually got inside. There were displays supposed to be Santa's workshop. In the corner of one of the displays was a little garbage truck made entirely of chocolate and decorated with candy canes, icing, and smarties. I wished I'd made something like that as a kid but all my mom knew how to make were fairy cakes. You can't even call them fairy cakes anymore because it's politically incorrect; you have to call them homosexual cakes instead.

There were fake pine trees covered with hundreds of tiny lights. I wished there was an entire forest like that. I would crawl inside and make it my home.

We had lunch in a barbecue restaurant. They sat us next to a cigarette machine and the chips were cold.

After that, we passed by a food shop called Taste of America. Taste of America? How can you taste America? Do you eat bags of soil with a spoon? I went inside on a whim. They sold US foods, like Quaker Oats and Kellogg's Rice Krispies. This surprised me because I thought Rice Krispies was British. They'll be telling me Corn Flakes and Coco Pops aren't British either.

The woman working in the shop suggested I try a Reese's Buttercup because "they're so good, they're like a drug." It only cost €1.70, so I bought one. I bit into it. It was peanut butter covered in chocolate. Salty and sweet. It tasted amazing at first, but by the last bite, I thought I was going to be sick. I won't be getting another one.

We walked around Barcelona some more. My brain felt numb from cold, dehydration, and boredom.

While Girlfriend and 5-year-old went to see a play version of The Little Prince, I walked around Barcelona while carrying 1-year-old in the sling. 1-year-old fell asleep. I passed a florist where a young woman was making a bouquet. She looked like a successful adult. I imagined she owned the business herself. After work, she'd go back to her nice apartment with her loving boyfriend. I don't know how people have lives, and friends, and jobs. I don't have a life, friends, or a proper job. My life just involves drifting from one day to another. People make me anxious. Jobs scare me. I wonder when I'll change and become a proper adult. Maybe at 36, I'm already too late.

Above the street, apartment windows were lit up with warm yellow lights, while down on street level, I was walking around in the cold with nowhere to go. I felt homeless. One of my greatest fears is being homeless: walking around the streets aimlessly, getting more and more tired, with no home to go to. My fear comes from a situation when I was aged twenty and got drunk one night. I left a club without my coat and ended up walking around Birmingham city centre for hours, lost. It was snowing. The streets were deserted. Nowhere looked familiar. I sat on the steps of an apartment building and decided to just stay there and try to sleep. For the first time, I could see how homeless people must live. It scared me. I've had a fear of homelessness ever since.

Anyway, back to today. I found myself walking down Passeig de Gracia, one of the biggest streets in Barcelona. The street was covered in glowing gold lights for Christmas. The street was long and straight, like all streets in Barcelona, so I kept walking along in a trance while staring up at the lights. I eventually came to one of the famous Gaudi buildings, which was swarmed by throngs of tourists. 1-year-old woke up. He didn't cry. He just sat in the sling, like a baby spider monkey clinging to its mother, and stared out at the lights.

I carried my coat in my arm. 1-year-old wasn't wearing his coat either. Our mutual body heat was enough to keep us warm.

I met Girlfriend and 5-year-old outside the Seat building because it was a convenient meeting spot. Girlfriend said, "The play was amazing. It made us cry. We both cried."

We ate dinner in a pizza restaurant. I spoke to my brother on the phone. We talked about how our jobs are going to be replaced by AI in the near future. However, my brother can always go back to his old job, digging around in the dirt as an archaeologist, while I have no old job to fall back on. My last remaining hope is that I can seduce a billionaire heiress.