Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 14 April 2006

14 April 2006

Hello. Bottom-of-the-Barrel Diary here yet again, coming at you from the ancient village of Tetney-in-the-Marsh. It's my turn to use the village typewriter! I must try not to let the excitement unsettle me though, because this will be a thoughtful, contemplative, even sombre Diary.

Readers over the age of 30 may remember the Mike Yarwood Show, which was, along with Morecambe and Wise and Tufty the Squirrel, one of the major audience-pullers on 1970s television. Typically an hour long, the first 55 minutes would be devoted to much side-splitting hilarity as Mike's impersonations of Eddie Waring, Edward Heath and Harold Wilson left us all choking on our Spangles. Five minutes from the end, however, we would hear the dread words "and this is me", at which the talented mimic would abandon the comedy and sing us a song, usually involving the words "my kind of town" and "Chicago". At this point we realised that the "me" he had described was actually a dull, gap-toothed man with a voice like a drowning dog, and we would go out and make a cup of tea before Starsky and Hutch came on.

So, you ask, why are you twittering on about this seemingly irrelevant childhood icon? Well, because this stage of the season has a distinctly "and this is me" feel to it, in my view. We have watched with laughter as our team of hoofers, stoppers and sprinters have performed their impersonation of a promotion-winning football team, never believing for a moment that, come the spring, we wouldn't have drifted down into a more realistic league position. Yet here we are in second place with the day of the crossed bun upon us. We have two games in three days, after which we will surely know whether we are a drowning dog or a big, joyous, fat-bellied pasta-popping Pavarotti who will bring tears of joy to our long-dry eyes.

I don't know about you, but I've tensed up.

If only I was as confident as workhouse boss Russell Slade, who according to a recent interview seems already to have disregarded any league position lower than second as a possible outcome. Grimsby Town watchers unlucky enough to sit near me in the Pontoon will know that pessimism is my default setting, and it will remain so, and yet... and yet... it is Easter after all, so maybe a Jesus-style resurrection of our beloved football club is a possibility.

Oh no. The village elders have seen the word Jesus on the paper and there are rumblings of discontent behind me. They are invoking the names of their pagan gods. I must go.