Cod Almighty | Diary
Manchestoh
14 August 2025
Owing to Town’s mostly wretched luck in cup draws, and what should've been Port Vale away (or something), I took the liberty — just as Late Diary did yesterday — to get ahead on my diary writing. And wouldn’t you know it? It backfired. Bam. Here’s Man Utd, on a Blundell Park plate. Thank you very much, universe. At least now you know who to thank for jinxing us into a mouthwatering League Cup second round tie against the team we’ve waited longer than any other to face.
If the tie goes ahead on Wednesday 27th September, as those pesky devils have an inconsequential match on the Sunday, then that’ll be 28,287 days since the last time these two teams went toe-to-toe. That’s 678,888 hours. Is there anyone reading this who remembers the 1-1 draw that occurred over 40 million minutes ago, on Wednesday 17th March 1948?
As the news spread last night, we got a quote from our most deviant of diarists: “I just knew we’d end up with a bottom feeding Premier club. We could have got one of the big boys, like Bournemouth. With a cute marketing strategy, I am convinced the crowd may even be larger than last night’s.”
But beware the B Team because, to be frank, they probably won’t play Bruno. It’ll be young skinny lads with mops and mullets, all beauty and no beast. All style no substance. If we played them in the B Team Competition™ and there was no one around to watch it, would it make a sound? The absence of the asterisk makes a big difference, though. Even if Manu send a team full of kids, it’s still the first team. That isn’t a banana skin, Manchester. It’s dog mess, because this is Harrington Street, and This Is Grimsby. Well, Cleethorpes. It doesn’t matter. Have you got the pluck to deal with that?
And so, with a segue so dry it hurts, we move into my pre-written prose from yesterday. Ouch.
These are the dog days of summer, and yesterday’s Late Diary (or ‘Evening Before’ Diary, if we want to be totally accurate) mentioned actual dogs! Surely you can’t be Sirius? Well, yes I am, and please don’t call me Sirius.
Your West Yorkshire Diary doesn’t have a dog. A dog would upset our two house cats who, yesterday, completed what we’ve come to call the perfect hat-trick: the boy cat coughed up a fur ball in his usual brown soup, and the girl cat coughed up some grass blades in her usual white froth. Then one of them (we still don’t know which one) coughed up some bile, thus completing the hat-trick — all within ten minutes of my diligent mopping of the kitchen floor. Outstanding.
You know, Paul, owning two house cats is very much like supporting the Mighty Mariners. You love them unconditionally but, my god, do they wind you up sometimes. Right now, after nine goals in three exhilarating games, our black and white friends are curled up with us on the bed, purring. You know they’re never far away from vomiting in your slippers, but cat ownership and football are all about enjoying the moments of satisfaction while they last.
The boy cat is called Reuben (as in, Amorim? This was a sign! – Ed). Fifteen years ago I considered that to be a real person’s name, but Mrs West Yorkshire Diary disagreed, and so it was bestowed upon a cat. His middle name is Guybrush, as in Guybrush Threepwood, which, of course, makes him a pirate cat. The girl cat is called Daisy — a kind of ironic name, really, as she’s imbued with hardly any of the qualities associated with the flower. Not that we knew that when we named her.
My parents took on my grandparents’ dog, Max, when they died. They’d always had a dog in the family. Before Max it was Beauty, before Beauty it was Sheeba, and before Sheeba it was one of the most offensive slurs you can imagine. My grandad told me, back in the 60s and 70s, he used to bellow out this name from the back step of his house in Manchester Street (Manchester, really? This is getting silly now! – Ed) at the end of each day to call him in.
To make it clear which nanna and grandad we were referring to, my family attached the name of the dog as a prefix to my paternal grandparents, and their dog at the time was Beauty. Thus, I had a Beauty Nanna and a Beauty Grandad. It sounds insane, but this was normalised in my family to such a degree that I didn’t understand the ridicule I got when referring to them as such at primary school when we were doing some work on family trees.
We’re talking about cats and dogs because the Town are purring. Top scorers in the division, through to the second round of the League Cup. What is there to poke fun at? What is there to parody when everything is sensible and professional? What is left to talk about? The club and the fans, for now, are singing in perfect harmony.
The machine is well oiled, so no, Florence, I can’t hear the horses. All I can hear is sweet, sweet music. UTM!