Cod Almighty | Diary

There's a hole in my bucket dear Liza, dear Liza

1 June 2023

Your Guest Diarist likes to rise early and grow things but on alternate Thursdays I have to come home by 11am to write a diary. It is the only entry in my calendar, my only deadline. And it must be met even in the dog days of footballs off-season. Today I discovered my 300-gallon rainwater tank has mysteriously sprung a leak, so before I started writing this it was off to the Amazon shop to buy some fibreglass sealant to paint on. They are the only ironmongers in town these days. Ironmongery is very much a dying art. Next day delivery from hundreds of miles away is pretty damn impressive but is no damn good for the planet. I used to like sidling in to a dusty, dark shop and being made to feel faintly foolish by a knowledgeable old person in a brown overall. So these days I mainly just talk to plants and dogs, happy in my own universe and far away from any form of what is known as idle banter.

I was never any good at tribalism even as a drunken excitable youth. I liked beating Yorkie teams, or at least making a game of it but I never hated them really. The same goes for our neighbours - Scunny, Lincoln, Boston, Hull; beat them on the day but hope they don't go down or bust. If we had been born thirty miles West or North or South they would have been our club. My only true hatred is franchise football teams. One is too many but the disease has never spread, so far.

And now our beloved Grimsby Town has announced the pre-season games - all against local opponents except for a trip to Fleetwood. Oh, and maybe a game in Spain for those of you with a passport, sunglasses and holiday money. So when you go, try to be nice to the neighbours even if they are as nasty as hell. So, first the fixtures to come out, then two matches in the first week of July to try and read the runes for the coming season. You might as well prod some animal entrails for there is nothing to be learned from pre-season results ever. And I reckon that no-one on social media has a flipping clue about which players the Mariners are targetting to sign. If it makes you happy then rumour and bitch all you like but I present my apologies, I will not be reading.

The one thing I learned from watching all the recent play-off finals is that all the victors look like they are going to seriously struggle in the division above unless they get their act together. I think Town would have beaten Sheffield Wednesday on that performance as the Owls seemed to abandon the style which got them 96 points in favour of increasingly desperate hit and hope. As for Luton, oh dear - no wonder we scored five goals against them, the squad is paper thin and their chances of survival look negligible.

I am off now, because the test match has started. Don't waste time reading this, I have wasted 15 minutes writing it and that's enough so plan your pre-season games, fantasise about signings if that's your thing and cross one more day off the calendar. See yer.