The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Today for the first time in my life I went on a hike. I drove there and gave a lift to three of the other hikers, all young women. Their average age was about 28 whereas I'm 37, so I felt like a dad driving a bunch of teenage girls in a car. We were listening to Daft Punk's One More Time playing on the stereo and so I decided that every time Daft Punk said "one more time" I would go around a roundabout again. We went around this roundabout about ten times. The women in the car loved it, they were screaming and laughing.

Anyway, we got to the hike five minutes late because I was driving the car around a roundabout. Everyone else had already arrived.

The hiking guide was a blonde German woman called Daniela. "Has everyone done hiking before?" she asked.

There were about twenty people in the group and they all murmured things like "yes" and "yep".

I put up my hand. "I haven't."

"You've never been on a hike?" said the guide.

"No," I said. "In fact, I told my girlfriend this yesterday and she said I'm strange because hiking is something everyone's done."

There was laughter from the group.

"Well don't worry," said the hiking guide. "You stay next to me at the front and you will be fine"

The hike started. Immediately I was at the back.

Next to me was an elderly woman with two walking poles. "You don't look like you've never hiked before," she said, eyeing my hiking shoes suspiciously. "You look prepared. You have hiking shoes."

"Those are just my everyday shoes," I said. "Last year I had a strained muscle in my leg and the pain was so bad that I had to use crutches for two weeks. So now I wear hiking shoes and they seem to help. I've even done a gym class in them once when I forgot my trainers."

I found out her name was Regina and she was from Brazil even though she looked Chinese. It turned out we go to the same gym, but I've never seen her because she does Zumba classes and I don't do Zumba classes because I have no natural ability for dancing.

"Did you go to the party yesterday?" I asked her.

"What party?"

"At the gym. There was a party because the gym is twenty years old."

"I didn't get invited to a party," she said. "Maybe it's because I do zumba classes. Zumba people don't get invited to parties," she said, laughing.

As the hike went on, I spoke to pretty much everyone there: a mom and her teenage son from California; a high school English teacher from Poland; a Croatian girl who had 2 dogs, 3 cats, and 4 chickens at home ("one of the chickens is a rooster, the others are his bitches" she said); a Russian woman; a biologist from Germany. It felt like speed dating, except instead of looking for a life partner, I was meeting potential friends.

We stopped at the top of a hill for meditation. It was quite a view: the wide blue sea lay before us, the waves sparkling like diamonds in the sunlight.

"Now, if everyone wants to sit down and close their eyes," said Daniela.

Okay, so much for the view then.

We sat down on the ground and closed our eyes.

"Now put your hands on the knees."

Did she say to put our hands on our knees or on Daniela?

Daniela read through a meditation script that she later admitted she'd made using ChatGPT. I didn't feel particularly relaxed; I was more worried about trying to remember everyone's names.

After meditation, we carried on walking. I was walking in front of an Italian woman called Cristina.

"I like your socks," she said.

My socks had little pictures of pizza slices on them.

"All my socks have pictures on them," I said. "At home I have ones with burgers on them."

We walked and talked and I learned she's doing a PhD in tourism. But she's going back to Italy soon.

"My boyfriend," she said, "His English is not so good. Sometimes he say me, 'I am hungry' and another day he say 'I am angry' and I cannot tell the difference"

"Just feed him some food," I said. "If he's hungry he'll eat it. If he's angry it'll calm him down because Italians love food."

She laughed. "That is good idea."

After that I spoke to a Polish school teacher called Irena. I told her I have some degree of autism. She told me about an autistic boy at her school. She said he gets bullied by the other kids. I had to blink back tears because he reminded me of myself when I was at school.

It was about four hours in when the hiking guide said, "Guys, I'm really sorry, but I just realised we're going the wrong way. We all have to turn around.'

Everyone turned around. I was now at the front of the group instead of the back.

"Okay," said the guide. "It looks like Paul's leading the way."

No pressure then. There was a path leading into a forest so I took one step forward, then another step. Step onto this rock, step down, step over that tree root. Jump up onto the boulder, jump off. Soon I was enthusiastically clambering onto fallen trees like Christopher Robin in the 100 Acre Wood. Hiking is easy. It's just walking. Everyone was following me. This was great.

We reached a cove. Stony beach, blue water. We stripped down to our bathing costumes and swam into the sea. I'm scared of jellyfish.

"Don't step on the black stuff, there could be sea urchins," someone shouted.

Oh great, another thing to worry about.

We floated in the water for a bit and a German guy called Kai asked me, "So Paul, how's your first hike going?"

"It's easier than I thought it would be," I said. "Hiking's just walking, isn't it? Which means I hike every day. I hike my sons to school. I hike to shops to buy food. I hike to the toilet. I hike four steps from the sofa to get the TV remote and then I hike four steps back. So I'm hiking all the time. In fact, I've been hiking all my life."

Everyone laughed.

"What did you think hiking was going to be?" someone else asked, their head bobbing up and down in the water.

"I don't know," I said. "Walking up a mountain. Wearing boots with studs in them. Using ropes. A goat called Gwendoline who carries our stuff. A mountain sherpa named Pancho who says things like 'too much snow, too dangerous, we must go back'. That kind of thing."

There were two children swimming next to a buoy in the distance. One of the people on the hike, a 30-year-old Peruvian man, said to me, "Let's go touch that buoy," said Cesar.

I hoped he said 'buoy' and not 'boy'.

We swam over to the children. Then I realised they weren't children at all. They were two women from the social group: Maria and Maya.

We swam over to some rocks. Maria climbed out of the sea and onto the rocks. She climbed up onto the highest rock and dived into the water. She emerged moments later, smiling. I decided to do it too. I climbed up on the rock and jumped off. Everyone clapped when I emerged from the water.

This is good, I thought. The water was cold, the jellyfish were probably surrounding me, but this was good, I felt alive. I decided this was even the high point of my year so far. I didn't feel like a middle-aged dad anymore. I felt like I was just me again.

We all walked back to our cars. By this point, it was early evening.

"Does anyone want to get a drink?" asked the hiking guide.

"I told my girlfriend I'd be home by now," I said.

I phoned Girlfriend. "The people from the hike are going to a bar together so I wondered if it's okay if I stay a couple more hours?" I said.

I heard her tut down the phone. "You said you would be home by now," she said. "Your children are asking if you'll be home for dinner."

"I should be home for seven," I said. "It's just to get a drink at the bar."

"Just do whatever you want," she said and hung up.

But you only live once so I went with the rest of the group to a bar. The nearest bar was at a caravan park so we drove there. Signs read things like "Open vanaf 8u30 Elke ochtend verse". At first, I thought dyslexic people had written the signs, but it turned out the signs were just in Dutch. Groups of Dutch people were watching a Euro 2024 football match. The men were bald and the women were overweight. They looked exactly like English people: fat, wrinkled, and pink from sunburn. In the UK, they'd be dinner ladies and Greggs bakers. It was only when they spoke that you could tell they were Dutch.

I sat down and had a beer. I felt exhausted. Not from hiking but from being social all day.

The other hikers were talking about something when I overheard, "In Germany, I had fuck all the time but here I cannot find any fuck".

Okay. What.

"Oh my god, I love fuck too," said an Italian woman. "I used to have fuck every day after lunch."

What is going on.

"Fuck's so good, it's a shame they don't have it here."

"I love taking photos of fuck and putting the photos on Instagram!"

"I put fuck in my cakes."

Did she just say she puts fuck in her cakes?

"Excuse me," I said. "Did you just say you put fuck in your cakes?"

There was a moment of silence. Then everyone burst into laughter.

"Quark," said a German girl. "We're talking about quark."

It turned out quark is a type of cheese with the taste and texture of yoghurt. In my defence, they were pronouncing 'quark' just like 'fuck'.

Maybe the guy who invented it went "FUCK, that's good. I'm calling it 'Fuck'." But when he tried to copyright the name, the man at the copyright office said, "You can't call it that, mate. We'll have complaints from people. You can call it 'quark' instead."

When I walked back to the car, one of the tyres looked deflated. And then a Russian girl called Kristina pointed out a scratch on the car.

Fucking Dutch people, I thought. First they let the air out my tyre and now they've scratched my car. What's wrong with these people? Now I won't get home in time to say goodnight to my son. I hope they're happy.

But it turned out the scratch was already there, and the tyre wasn't deflated after all.

I love Dutch people, they're the best in the world.

We left late because a car attached to a caravan had to reverse backward out of the park gate. I had no social energy left to talk on the way home so I drove in silence while the three girls in the back of the car talked between themselves. I was too socially exhausted to take anymore. It was too much for my autistic brain to have to handle. The girls talked about:

- a hot guy from the group today (not me)

- a creepy guy called Piero who tells all the girls they're beautiful and sends them private messages that say things like "I hope you had a good day today"

They probably talk about me when I'm not there. I imagine it's like this:

"That guy Paul, always so funny."

"Yeah, but like he's so old, right? He has children already. Isn't he like 50 or something? Did you see the white hairs in his beard? I mean, why is he hanging out with us if he's so old? And another thing, did you see his socks? His socks had pictures of pizza slices on them. What kind of guy wears pizza socks?"

I finally arrived home at 9 pm. The first thing I did was pull off my shoes. My feet stank of sweat. Then I checked the kids; they were already in bed. Girlfriend was angry at me for staying out so late. But after an hour she wasn't too mad anymore so I guess I'm okay.

Before I went to bed I thought about the autistic boy at Irena's school being bullied and I found myself crying. I cried for about five minutes. It was heavy crying, with tears and mucus. The last time I cried this heavily was over a decade ago.

I sent Irena a message asking her to look out for the autistic boy:

Sad to think about the autistic kid at your school getting bullied. Made me genuinely cry just now. Do me a favour and look out for him if you can.

I went to bed.