Cod Almighty | Diary

Upon the My-oh-My

22 January 2026

Here is your Guest Diarist hot-penning it from my bedroom in that beautiful old art-deco hotel on Cleethorpes front. It's high tide and the street sweeper, who may or may not be known to Tom Traubert, has already done his work. There is no better place to decamp to for a January mini-break holiday. In the world. The prices are reasonable, the people are ultra chatty and there is a really nice homeless man on the beach who only wants 60p - help him if you see him. Steels outdid themselves last night and a strong recommendation also to Parkinsons cafe on the front whose tea and bacon buns make the breakfast of champions.

Which is all at odds with an article in the Mail yesterday. I am not linking it for you gentle reader because I feel that it is my job to don hazmat and visit the places where self-respecting genteel folk like you should not have to go. But I will paraphrase. A study has been commissioned by some 'boffins' (as the Star would have it) into how ChatGPT rates the peoples of various provincial towns and cities. Here is a verbatim quote:

"In contrast Grismby was said to have the least sexy people along with Accrington, Barnsley and Motherwell". And another: "At the other end of the scale, Wigan was named the least stylish location in the UK, ahead of Grimsby and Accrington." Grimsby also featured in the bottom five in other categories like stinginess. Of course the citizens of places like Brighton and that London are unwaveringly sexy, stylish and generous to a fault. Saying a cheerful good morning to you on the streets, well not so much (my opinion there).

The article grudgingly admits that maybe, just maybe, AI suffers from some institutional bias. Well, hello! If we could be arsed we should retaliate with a Grimsby-centric AI tool trained to love all that is great about the eastern coastal areas half-way up the country.

While I've been here I've been entertained by my oldest school friend who is also my cousin by marriage - one of those things that only tends to happen in small close-knit communities. Al told me he regularly watches matches from the seventies being re-run by ITV in the morning - the Big Match revisited. Recently they aired us going to Palace in 1975 which featured a youthful Bob Cumming at left-back. Prior, his memories (like mine) were positive about Malcolm Partridge. But the rewatch in more sophisticated times he reported was that Partridge 'just ran about aimlessly' and was useless. Palace won three nil by the way. Another case to join the head on the stick and the head without the chicken.

Another gruesome task I undertook was to read the Fishy thread where Mr Fenty showed up to plead his case. I only got to it a couple of days later but the whole series of exchanges made me frustrated, angry and quite nauseous. No link again to protect your mental health. The summary is Fenty biblically denied, denied and denied again. The pension fiddle, the Trust shares seizure, the lack of ground and equipment investment. You name it. The only thing new, to me anyway, was his admission that they knew all about the fraudster's past and were taking him on anyway. Fenty claimed that if we, the people of Grimsby, had given him more time to explain that the fraudster's promise that "he had been a bad boy but who nowadays only wants to do good" everything would have been peachy and we would be living in a lovely stadium down Freemo. Just to add, those in the thread as it happened creditably made the Fishy swear replacement service work overtime.

I will leave you, gentle reader, to react to this in your own way. Me? I resorted to playing some Captain Beefheart who aptly screeched "Tell me Captain - how does it feel to be dragged away from your steering wheel?"

Finally I leave you with the wise words of Mark Twain which seem particularly apt in these treachorous times: "Politicians and diapers must be changed often and for the same reason."

Here's to the glorious towns and peoples of Grimsby and Cleethorpes. See yer.