Cod Almighty | Diary

We only sing when we're signing

22 July 2026

You can tell there is a bit of a newsvoid going down when the top thread on the Fishy is entitled 'Any New Singings?', and it inevitably descends into squabbles about spelling and grammar. 

So, any new singings? No, and no new signings either. I mean, this isn't a panic situation, but it's turning into a bit of a Corporal-Jones-Don't-Panic situation. The difference between these two is subtle but real. Given the tragic circumstances, it's entirely reasonable that our summer recruitment went off the rails, but ultimately we do have to get a team together because I doubt the EFL will allow us to start later than everyone else to compensate. 

As I've said many times before, Cod Almighty tends to represent the middle class battallion of the Black and White Army, and middle class people generally think emotions are a bit vulgar. They can also be a bit contrarian. If, for example, England were denied a stonewall penalty in a fictional World Cup Final, you could bet the only newspaper telling us that "ackshually it wasn't a penalty at all" would be The Guardian. The middle classes tend to think of themselves as calm and rational as opposed to the man in the street who wears his heart on his sleeve and gets upset by things. In football I'll always take the back page of The Sun over the back page of The Guardian, because football is, by its nature, an emotional game and most things that happen on the pitch are pretty obvious to all and don't need three pages of overly-nuanced navel gazing.

It's like the World Cup – it's pretty obvious to most people that Argentina were favoured at the World Cup because, well, because pattern recognition. It is pretty obvious to most supporters who is a good player and who isn't. But in both cases you'll always find a contrarian claiming that "the Argentina thing is a baseless conspiracy theory" or "this player who everyone thinks is terrible is actually great because they do a lot of good work off the ball". It's nice to seperate yourself from the herd by claiming that you can see something that they can't because you, yes, you are quite splendid. And they aren't. 

So there you go. A page of overly-nuanced navel gazing from a middle class contrarian, showing no self awareness whatsoever. But do you blame me? It's a news abyss out there. Perhaps today we'll have lots of lovely new singings. In the meantime, my advice for you at the moment is to go outside and enjoy the screaming swifts currently performing over most towns and villages before they go back to Africa. They''ll mostly be gone by the time Blackpool roll into town No, the screaming swifts aren't a band. Ffs.

My name's Chris Packham, and I hope you've enjoyed this latest episode of Townwatch. Good night.