Dear Diary. Today we were going to BARCELONA. We got to the train station early. The train arrived ten minutes late. There was a huge rush of people trying to get on the train. Girlfriend, Oldest Son, and Youngest Son got on one carriage. There were too many people, so I ran to another carriage and managed to squeeze in. The doors closed. Then for the next thirty minutes, nothing happened. The train didn't move. I was stuck in a corner of the train next to a young Spanish couple and a fat man breathing heavily.

The train finally started moving. But at every stop, more and more people squeezed on. I got pushed against one of the doors. A few thoughts came to me:

• the Hillsborough disaster, where 94 people were crushed to death by overcrowding at a football match
• the train derailment in Catalonia in January this year, which killed 1 person and injured 37
• what would happen if I accidentally pressed the button that opens the door while the train is moving, and I got sucked outside a train moving at 100 kilometres an hour

The train finally reached Barcelona. We got off the train and climbed out of the station, emerging into Las Ramblas and blinking in the daylight like Morlocks emerging from underground.

Barcelona is a grid, and every street looks the same. We rode a bus to Park Güell. Park Güell is at the top of a hill, and we could see the sights of Barcelona. There was the Sagrada Familia and a gherkin-shaped building. I could see the sea, which was just a faded blue strip on the horizon. There was a huge mass of buildings, and specks shining light where the midday sun was reflecting off metal. We walked to the entrance of Park Güell. There were tourists everywhere. Everybody was speaking different languages. Italian, French, German, and British English. Loud American guys and women. Pale Asian women carrying umbrellas. It was a beautiful spring day. The sun was shining down from overhead. I wished I had a hat, and then I remembered I actually did have a hat, a baseball cap in my bag, so I put it on.

Girlfriend and the kids went inside the park. I couldn't enter as I hadn't bothered to buy a ticket, and now all the tickets were sold out. I didn't mind, because now I was free for two hours to run amok in Barcelona! I could shake up the town! There were taxis next to me, and I considered jumping into one and saying, "Take me to where the life is!" It would be like an adventure in a movie. How much could one person do in two hours? While my wife and kids were looking at statues, I could be chugging champagne in a 24-hour club while crowdsurfing on a dance floor.

But in the end, I decided to simply find a bench where I could sit and just read a book and wait for Girlfriend and the kids. Girlfriend had said to meet her at the other entrance to the park, and on Google Maps it looked really close, but I had to walk up and down a the hill, and down all these weird side streets, and up another hill, and the whole time there were these three French teenage girls in front of me chattering away in French the whole time, and at one point they spontaneously broke into the song Mamma Mia by ABBA. Finally, I arrived there panting slightly and a little dehydrated. I expected there to be a nice green place to sit in a park or something, but it was just another street with buildings. There don't seem to be any parks in Barcelona. It's all roads and buildings. One of the buildings was one of Gaudí's. It looked like a gingerbread house with icing on top.

I walked down to the nearest public water fountain to fill up my water. I don't know if it's safe to drink water in Barcelona or not, but oh well. There were tourist shops on the way with delicious-looking ice creams. I filled up my water bottle, then I walked back and sat down and read The Dark Tower, Part 5. I was nearly at the end. My head was full of stuff like "commola", "If God wills it" and "do yeh ken?" My nose started running. I wiped my nose on a tissue. I seem to have a cold. My health has not been great this week.

• Yesterday morning I did a shit that just came out in an explosion.
• A couple of days ago, my eye was infected. Luckily, we had some antibiotic eye drops left over from the last eye infection.
• Three days ago, I woke up with a stiff neck. I couldn't turn my neck to the left. It's still a bit stiff now.

My phone rang. It was Girlfriend. "Turn around," she said, so I turned around. There she was, inside the park, waving at me, along with the kids. I waved back. Then I went back to reading my book. Eventually, they came out. We bought ice lollies for the kids, then took the bus to Barcelona centre. There was no room on the bus to sit, so I sat on the floor with the kids. We went to McDonald's for lunch. We walked to the Lego shop, but there was a big queue outside, so we left.

We went to Desigual because they have a slide, and the kids like slides. While there I saw my reflection in the mirror and to my surprise, I wasn't horrified like I usually am when I see my reflection. I saw a serious-looking man with a lot of hair and a big unshaven beard, wearing all black clothes, and with a pretty good body if I say so myself, so everything was okay.

We went to Barcelona Sants and got on the train home. This time, the train was actually on time, and we even had a table. I realised I love being ill, because I no longer have the energy to worry about the future or think about the past, I can only focus on the present, and the present was okay. There was a nice view of the sun setting behind the forests outside the window.

There was a woman with her two adults son sitting at table next to ours. They had a huge amount of electronics between them. They each had a laptop and one of the sons had a tablet as well. One son stood up to put a carrier bag in the overhead shelf but the bag fell out his hand and the contents scattered across the floor: cables, computer mice, a wireless keyboard. "ME CAGO EN LA LECHE!" shouted the mom. I felt ill and pleasantly detached from it all. Life was okay. I realised I hadn't bit my lip all day, which is something I do when I feel stressed and anxious, which is almost all the time,

We got home. As usual when I when home from a few hours of being away, I was thankful to find no one had broken into my apartment and stolen my belongings. When the kids had gone to bed, I finished reading my book; I started it in July last year, so it took me 9 months.