Cod Almighty | Diary

Sometimes it's really hard to do your own ideas

29 February 2024

Today is the 60th day of 2024. Or is it, in fact, the 366th? You know, the extra one they throw in every four years, for a laugh. It's the establishment, prising out an extra day's work for no extra pay!!!! Well, not if you're salaried. They get you every single way, don't they?

As a fortnightly diarist, it's only possible for your West Yorkshire Diary to write three Thursday diaries in February once every 28 years. It'll be 2052 when you'll next have the pleasure — unless I'm doing the alternate Thursdays, in which case it'll be 2080. There's a high probability that I'll just cut and paste this diary to use then, since Town are destined to remain near the foot of the fourth division forever.

Happy birthday Darren Ambrose! The ex-Palace, Ipswich and Newcastle midfielder turns 40 today. Or maybe he's 10 on a technicality. It's one small step for man, and a leap too far for my brain. Something to do with the earth's orbit around the sun. And Pope Gregory. Sorry, I forget — it's been four years since I last learnt about it.

The numbers are in! The Mariners made a pre-tax profit of £245,000 for the financial year ending 31st May 2023 from a turnover of £6.81m. I don't have a head for figures, so I'll leave this either for another diarist to decode, or for your good selves to delve into and digest the diced-up, sliced-up figures.

It's the Age of Content and no one is content. We've never had more than this, yet we pine for more. It's difficult to say when the roof could no longer contain the collective expectations of football fandom. What do we want? More! When do we want… Nah, we lost them already. They've gone elsewhere for their six-second digest.

I don't watch Match of the Day all the way through any more; I know the scores and it bores me before midnight. I stick a film on instead. There's no space left in my head to consume football like I'm a 20-something. They want to know why the top flight's goals-per-game average is at a 60-year high. Passing out from the back, innit.

West Yorkshire Diary Senior often harks back to the days when I wore the colours of Manchester United before switching allegiances to Sheffield Wednesday, like a seven-year-old should've known better. The recent untimely death of Peter Handyside provoked a discussion about the lack of Grimsby Town exposure I had as a child growing up in Grimsby (okay, Cleethorpes) with no internet and very little (if any) TV airtime. We didn't get the Grimsby Telegraph delivered and my parents couldn't afford to take me to games. What else did I have? Where else could I go?

And so it was a privilege to see a snippet of the black and whites on the telly. I must have watched our 4-0 defeat at Ipswich Town in the 1992-3 FA Cup fifth round more times than was healthy, as I had it recorded on tape. It was Grimsby on the telly! I can see the stripes. Ah, the mystery solved, the enigma cracked, if only for a couple of minutes in a yearly cycle of nothing but mentions and imagination. Ah, so that's what they looked like!

It's a mystery how I ended up a Mariner so passionately. No coverage, no content, nothing to consume but a little bit of Saturday afternoon commentary. No problem with any of that now, of course, and yet West Yorkshire Diary Junior (six) just isn't engaged.

You know this rollercoaster we're on? We just sit in the car. We can't control the ups and downs and downs...and downs, and an up, and a down. It's the players and manager that design the track, so we just have to let go and enjoy the ride. We paid to jump in, knowing it wasn't going to be a straight line.

By the time we come to a stop at the end of April, perhaps we'll consider that the fear was actually fun!

UTM!