The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

One day, through no fault of my own, I was given life. There I was, suddenly, a small blob in my mom's belly. A blob that hadn't been there before. It was warm and safe in there and I never wanted to come out. In fact, I didn't even have any concept of an 'outside'. For me, this was all there was about existence: the dark, the warmth, and the rhythmical thuh-dum, thuh-dum, thuh-dum of my mom's heartbeat. I was happy.

But then, one day — and I still think of this now as my greatest mistake in life — I was born. Out I came into a brightly-lit hospital room in Birmingham's Good Hope Hospital. Suddenly I was cold and naked. Had I always been naked? Why was I naked? I wanted to go back to the dark, warm place. I cried and cried but they wouldn't put me back. Why wouldn't they put me back in? Then someone wrapped me up in a blanket and handed me over to my mom. She held me in her arms. I confess I still had my eyes closed at this point, because I'd been too scared and upset to open them. My eyes were scrunched up tight. But slowly I opened my eyes. And there was my mom. My eyesight was still blurry but I could see her, a comforting figure holding me. And I could feel her heartbeat again, through her chest and her hospital gown: thuh-dum, thuh-dum, thuh-dum. I stopped crying and for a few moments, the world was at peace.

Then I soiled myself and started crying again.

And so began my life.

(Insert baby photo of me here)

It was time for me to get to know some of the six billion people I’d be sharing the planet with (describe family here)

My name

The first proper parenting task my parents were given was to choose my name. What name would they give me?

How about Richard? Richard means "powerful and strong". Or what about Robert? Robert means "bright fame" (yeah I'm not too sure what that means either.). Or why not Liam: strong-willed warrior and protector?

"Let's call him Paul," said my dad.

And so my name was Paul. Paul means 'small', in case you're wondering. Small! Not tall or strong, but small! No man wants to be called small, whether you're talking about his height or his penis size. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

My earliest memory

Some people have early memories of being at nursery. Other people have early, happy memories of their grandparents hugging them.

My earliest memory is of falling into a lake. There was an almighty SPLASH as I landed in the water.

"Oh, fucking hell!" my dad shouted as he ran over to rescue me. My dad was supposed to be looking after me for the day, a job he was doing poorly.

Luckily for me, I landed in the water feet first. Also luckily, the water only came up to my waist. In fact, it must have only been a few inches deep.

I stood in the water, soggy, wet, and confused. I was too stunned to cry. Tears would come later. For now, I was in shock. But I was in no real danger.

Then I looked up. I wished I hadn't. Because what I saw was every bird in the lake was swimming towards me.

Ducks, geese, swans, drakes, mallards: they were all pedalling their little feet in the water as furiously as they could. Each bird wanted to get to me first. And I have no doubt what was on their mind: lunch. You see, all their lives, these birds had subsisted solely on a diet of crumbs of bread thrown to them by children and old people, and now they saw a chance, finally, for a change in their diet: human flesh.

I felt terror as all these waterbirds converged towards me on the lake. Their beaks snapped wildly. Their feathers quivered in excitement and bloodlust. Their wings flapped and their little beady eyes were all trained on me, a scared little three-year-old boy, standing in the water.

Just then, a pair of strong arms lifted me out of the water and put me down on the pavement. It was my dad. People were watching in amusement and trying to stifle their laughter.

"Are you okay Paul?" said my dad.

I stood there, scared and humiliated, my clothes dripping wet. Then I started crying. I was bawling salty tears. Did no one understand I'd just had a near-death experience?

"Shall we get some ice cream?" said my dad.

I immediately stopped crying. "I SWIM," I said, which was my way of saying 'ice cream' but it sounded more like I wanted to go back into the lake for another swim.

But my dad understood and we went and got ice cream. As I licked the creamy white 99 and nibbled on the chocolate flake, my dad said,

"Let's not tell your mom you fell in the water, okay?"

And, three hours later, when we met up with Mom, the first thing I told her was that I fell into the lake and the scary ducks trying to eat me. My dad deserved it for not looking after me properly.

The house

First, we lived in a flat in Birmingham.

(Describe flat)

Then, when I was one, we moved into nearby a council house on a council housing estate. It was my mom, my dad, my older sister Corryn and me.

My mom wrote about the house in a letter to a cousin:

It's a smallish house but with a big enough garden in a very quiet grove. The house needs an awful lot doing to it. The bathroom is bare brick and is in a terrible state. But it's so nice not to have to haul the pushchair up two flights of grubby stairs.

Corryn goes to a new school, which is quite nice. Carl is nearer to where he works, but he's still late for work in the mornings. I can't get him out of bed.

My mom was pregnant at the time with her third baby, and soon she'd be pregnant again with a fourth. My siblings and I would live in that house for our entire childhoods. My dad's still living there today.

The garden at the time was just grass, dirt and old builders' bricks.

My sister and would make "mud pies" which are as delicious as they sound.

In 1989, my dad laid down new grass on the garden. This always fascinates me. Where did he get the grass from? Knowing my dad he probably nicked it from some neighbour's garden.

My dad claims that one day he was digging in the garden and came across two army helmets, buried in the soil. The helmets were from World War II. Two army helmets? What kind of soldiers go around burying their army helmets? Maybe a bit deeper down there's two skeletons, still with their combat uniforms on.

Given the size and wildness of his garden, I wouldn't be surprised if he found a complete tyrannosaurus skeleton buried in his garden.

Who knows what else is buried in his garden? What if he keeps digging and finds two alien Nazi skeletons, thus proving that aliens helped the Nazis? Anything's possible.

My brother preferred digging in the sandpit. He loved archaeology and he used to dig in the sandpit all day long, dreaming of finding a pyramidion or a cache of carbonized scrolls preserved by the pyroclastic flows of a volcanic eruption. I guess all the digging paid off because he actually became an archaelogist when he grew up.