The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. Today's Saturday. I took my girlfriend and children to Cannon Hill Park, a major park in Birmingham. My dad used to do balloon modelling at the Midland Arts Centre at Cannon Hill Park in the 90s. He had a bumbag full of modelling balloons and a balloon pump. He'd charge one pound for simple models like dogs, two pounds for complicated models like flowers, and three pounds for a Carmen Miranda-style fruit hat, complete with bananas, grapes, and pineapple. By the end of the day, his bumbag would be brimming with pound coins. He was like King Midas turning modeling balloons into gold coins.

Back in those days the park was nothing more than grass, swan boats, and a playground, but now the park's changed. Today there was a fair, with screaming kids on a rollercoaster, and a land train charging £3.50 for a trip around the park. We ended up doing the land train. After that, we had ice cream. I've tried award-winning ice creams around the world but nothing beats a simple Mr Whippy. The only problem is that a Mr Whippy ice cream costs £3 whereas it was only £1 when I was kid, which means either inflation is soaring or I slipped into a coma when I was a teenager and everything since has been a dream.

We then underwent a 40-minute bus journey to my sister's house in Sutton Coldfield. Because there was nothing else to do, I wrote down some things that happened on the bus. Like a pock-faced, spotty, bespectacled teenage boy who got on the bus with his beautiful Indian girlfriend. She only had small boobs, but her pretty face made up for it, and her hair was black, voluminous, and shiny. When they sat down, the girl lay her head in her boyfriend's lap like a cocker spaniel and kept it there for the rest of their journey. All I ever wanted from life was a girlfriend like that: a beautiful girl who showed me affection. That was all. Was that too much to ask, God? Instead, I've got Girlfriend.

A mom dressed in a headscarf and long robe boarded the bus with her two small children and a toddler in a pushchair.

"Mom, Maria took my squidgy," complained one of her children.

"Maria, give Ibrahima back his squidgy," said the mom.

The squidgy was a cheap shapeless squishy blob, the cheapest possible toy China can mass produce. It was the kind of shit you'd find in a plastic ball from a toy capsule vending machine.

2-year-old was having a nap in the pushchair but slowly he woke up. He had fallen asleep an hour ago and now probably wondered where he was. It must be crazy being a baby, always falling asleep and waking up in a different place. The only similar experience as an adult you can get is blacking out with alcohol.

I gave him a tray of melon from Aldi. He ate it while eyeing the passengers on the bus warily.

"Does she eat melon?" I asked the mom of the small children, offering her toddler the tray of melon.

The mom smiled and pointed out the melon to her toddler. The toddler took a piece warily and ate it. Then she stared at the tray of melon while 2-year-old ate it.

"Does she want more?" I asked the mom, offering the tray again.

The mom shook her head and frowned as if I'd breached some social rule that said you can only offer food to strangers once.

The bus was full. The only free seat was next to me. Then a biker with a leather jacket got on with his adult daughter. His daughter was fat and cross-eyed, like the result of a lab experiment gone wrong.

The dad was carrying a 50x80 cm picture frame from the furniture shop Dunelm. The frame was new; the cellophane wrapper was still on it.

"You sit here," said the dad, instructing his daughter to sit next to me. He handed the frame to her. "Be careful with it."

They were treating the photo frame as if it was the Mona Lisa. Then they got off just two stops later so they could have just walked.

I carried 2-year-old up to the top deck of the bus and handed him over to Girlfriend. "Don't leave the pushchair by itself," she said. So I walked back down the stairs to the bottom deck. More people got on. Some had pushchairs of their own. I folded my pushchair to make space, but the rest of the melon fell out of the plastic tray and onto the bus floor. "That wasn't meant to happen," I said, as I picked up the melon. Once it was back in the tray, I ate it, even though it had been on the floor, because I didn't want to waste it.

The bus's CCTV cameras played their live footage back at us on a TV screen. I could see myself: a crazy man sitting with a pushchair by himself, eating melon that had been on the floor.

The bus rumbled through Erdington, a poor neighbourhood of Birmingham where I grew up. Cracked pavements, litter, graffiti tags. We drove past Erdington Jobcentre, where I'll probably end up when AI takes my job. As the bus rolled on, the landscape changed. We entered the rich neighbourhood of Sutton Coldfield (or "The Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield" to give it its full pompous name). Trees became leafy and lush, the hedges tall and more well-maintained, the houses large and stately.

The bus drove past my old secondary school, Bishop Vesey's Grammar School. As always, I looked out for anyone I knew at school, but I saw no one. I never do. Perhaps they've all moved away from Sutton Coldfield and are living successful lives in New York and Los Angeles instead.

The bus carried on its journey, never stopping, never-ending. Then the bus stopped. It was the end of the line. The transition from poverty to wealth was complete. Everyone got off.

We walked through the affluent suburbs of Sutton Coldfield to my sister's half-a-million pound house. My brother was there.

"Do you know about the next Avengers film?" he asked me.

"No," I said.

"Don't you know, Paul? The new villain's going to be Doctor Doom. Robert Downey Junior will play him. It's going to be an alternate evil Tony Stark from another universe."

So much for avoiding spoilers then.

We all agreed to go to the zoo tomorrow. My sister said, "It's going to be sunny tomorrow, so everyone remember to bring suncream and also to wear a hat."

My dad drove us home. The moon was a banana: big, yellow, and crescent-shaped. We got back to my dad's house in Erdington. Instead of the sounds of laughter and music, there was the sound of a couple having a heated argument, shouting at each other.