The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. This morning I went to a Bodycombat gym class at Erdington Leisure Centre. I was the only man in the class. The instructor was a fat, middle-aged, heavily tattooed woman called Lesley who couldn't do half the moves because her knees were bad.

At the front by the window was a redhead woman called Kim who spent much of the class dancing by herself as if she was in a club. She shouted "Banga!" and "Another banga!" at the start of each song. It was kind of endearing. I even fell in love with her a little bit.

The new swimming pool is quite nice too, I could feel the heat coming off it when I was getting dressed in the changing rooms. It's a shame we won't use it because we'll be going back to Girona soon.

***

After the gym class, I went to Acorns charity shop. It's the biggest Acorn charity shop in the world. There are around 40 Acorn charity shops and they're all in the West Midlands.

This one opened in March and it's about the size of a small basketball court. I saw a good book in there last week. It was a book of life advice for teenagers. I'm not a teenager anymore but the advice was helpful to anyone of any age. It was about setting goals and achieving them. Today was my last chance to find the book because we're flying back to Girona on Tuesday, and Monday is a bank holiday so the shop will be closed. But they had changed the books around since I last came in, so I didn't find it.

***

In the afternoon, my dad drove us to Manor Farm Fruits. When we reached the car park, all the cars were parked front first but my dad bucked the trend by reversing into the parking spot instead. The next three cars all parked like my dad, by reversing.

"People are sheep," said my dad with disgust.

One of the cars was my sister's, Lisa. She was with her 2-year-old daughter Sophie.

"My hair's grey," said Lisa. "I went to the hairdressers yesterday and paid 80 pounds to get my hair dyed. But the hairdresser dyed my hair grey."

It didn't look grey to me. It looked blonde.

"Adam says I look like I'm 60 and I'm eligible for a free bus pass," said Lisa.

Manor Farm Fruits is a farm where you pick your own strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries. You're supposed to pay for the fruit you collect but we didn't bother. I simply went around eating the strawberries. My dad ate two strawberries for every strawberry he put in his punnet. "I've already eaten two punnets worth," said my dad. "I'm getting a bit sick. But whenever I see a strawberry, a nice one, I've gotta stop and eat it. Somebody help me." (Later, paramedics found my dad face-down in the field, jerking around violently and making unintelligible choking noises, with strawberry juice spilling from his mouth. "It's another sad case of strawberry poisoning," said one paramedic, shaking his head).

Then the two two-year-olds in our group dropped their punnets, spilling good strawberries onto the dirty floor. After that, they went full Lord of the Flies by throwing rocks in the air, taking off their shoes and jumping in mud, wielding a big stick, and finally, chasing my sister with their muddy hands.

Girlfriend said there were blackberries in an adjacent field so I went to look. And lo and behold, there were blackberries. I ate about a hundred blackberries (that sounds like an exaggeration, but it's true). I paid for none of them.

When we left, we only paid for the strawberries and blackberries 6-year-old had collected. They charged us £4 for 6-year-old's strawberries and £5 for his blackberries. Though we also paid an entrance fee of £4 each so it wasn't the heist of the century after all.

***

I wanted to get the pushchair out of the boot of Dad's car but the car was parked too close to a fence. "Here, Dad," I said, "If you give me your car keys I can drive the car a little bit forward."

He thought about this for a second. Then he said, "I'll do it."

Later he admitted he was imagining me reversing the car backwards into the fence.

***

My 13-year-old niece, Aurora, has a belly button piercing. She's had it for a week. It goes in through her belly button and then back out through her skin about 2 cm further up. Better her than me.

Her mom can't complain. She got her belly button pierced a year younger, when she was 12. The piercing became infected and she had to go to hospital to get it removed. The story was in the papers: The Evening Mail, the Sutton Coldfield News, and the Sunday Mercury.

"Which side of your family's your favourite, Aurora?" I asked her. "Your mom's side or your dad's side?"

"Neither, they're both dysfunctional," she said.

"Your dad gets drunk and gives you alcohol," I said. "Your mom gets drunk and doesn't give you alcohol. So you dad should be your favourite."

***

Dad was driving us back and I was reading an ebook on my phone when I heard a driver’s angry honk from behind us.

"What was that?" I asked.

Dad was silent.

I turned to Girlfriend, who was in the backseat, and said, "My dad’s driving more dangerously than he used to."

"It wasn’t me," said Dad.

"My dad told me once the most important thing about driving is driving carefully. That was 20 years ago. Now he drives aggressively instead."

"Drive down Stony Lane you’ve got to drive aggressively", said my Dad. "It’s on the way to my detachment. It’s like Taliban Land. It’s like Citizen Khan, have you ever seen Citizen Khan?"

He also slips into racism.

***

When we got home, Dad said, “I don’t think I wanna see another strawberry for a few days”.

He didn't know we've already got three punnets of strawberries in the fridge.