Cod Almighty | Diary

There's people and they're young and alive

1 July 2022

A couple of announcement to start off with. Firstly, I'm sorry I'm not wise old Retro Diary, and secondly, people with flagpoles in their garden - what DO you think you are doing?

Chronicler of the banal and everyday, John Shuttleworth has a song with the chorus "here comes midweek! I'm so excited I can hardly speak!" It seems astonishing that there are moments in the season when the constant frayed nerves of the football fanatic get to me and I crave the emotionally empty Saturday afternoons of the summer break. Now, in the last week of June, I want nothing more than the return of the rocking Blundell Park rollercoaster.

Sorry John, this metaphorical midweek is overrated. Town matches have been a constant in my adult life, and sometimes they feel like the scaffolding that holds the rest together. Got a good job? Go to the match. Unemployed? Go to the match. Single, married, happy, miserable, rich, poor? Go to the match. Summer? You can't go to the match. There isn't one. Feel cast adrift do you now, Mariner-boy?

Next year I will be abandoning the Main Stand, which Deviant Diary claims is full of dentists. I would amend that to retired dentists. Retired dentists who are sick of the uproar of the dental clinic and now want to go somewhere quieter and more restful where they can have a nap without interruption. If you shout something during a match in the Main Stand the retired dentists turn around to glare at you as though you've shouted out something about the devil's bottom at a nun's funeral.

The Pontoon end of the Main Stand is, for some reason, the home of the retired dentist who sits down for five minutes, then disappears for five minutes, then sits down for five minutes, then comes back for five minutes, then disappears for five minutes, each time with a cheery "excuse me boys!" as he forces everyone else to stand and kick their flasks over and miss a decent penalty shout. I am always amazed in any stand how few people seem able to sit in the same place for 45 minutes. Football has kindly even put a 20-minute break in the middle of the match so you can do all your shit then. It's 45 freakin' minutes. Sit down and keep still. No, you can't have a colouring book. Just watch the football.

Trying to get out at the end is also a nightmare. Last season we sat about ten rows back and it still sometimes took us until half past nine to reach pitch side. Often the dentists are kindly allowing a nonagenarion with mobility issues to exit first, causing a morally justifiable back-up. Other times it just seems as though nobody actually wants to leave, and they hang about as though hoping for an encore. There isn't going to be an encore, Mr. Dentist, sir. You can go home now. You've already been in and out of the stand 20 times during the actual game, now the game is over you are standing on the aisle like a confused statue. It's like sitting at a green traffic light and none of the cars in front of you are moving and you have no idea why.

The Pontoon has its own problems, of course, usually in the form of that one drunk tosser who is 45 and bitter about his own problems in life and has decided to take it out on every Town player within a five mile radius. But at least in this stand of noise and fury you can get involved in the game without incurring the wrath of the retired dentists. Bring on the shouts!