Cod Almighty | Diary
The things that you love start to own you
5 August 2026
When you're a kid, the six week summer holiday seems absurdly long. Six weeks! Oceans of time! An infinity of happiness!
When you're my age, this is what it feels like. "I see the kids have broken up for their six week holiday." Sips tea. Reads newspaper. Goes for a walk. Comes back. Pours tea. "I see the kids are going back to school today."
Football seasons are much the same. Oh, the season's started. That was a good game. Oh god, its nearly over! What happened? What do you mean, the new one starts next week? I've just put my slippers on!
When I was a kid I never believed half the things adults told me. When they said time goes more quickly as you got older, or that they needed a three hour rest between activities, or their knees hurt, I though they were just weird whiners trying to unsettle me. If anything, they were understating it.
So, we're on the verge, some might say cusp, of a new season. To our younger reader – if he's reading this – this will feel like oceans of football, an infinity of matches and excitement and drama. To us superannuated old gimmers it's another brief chapter in our GTFC-supporting lives. I've known seasons so good they would bleed out from Blundell Park and carry you afloat through your personal lives like a metaphysical buoyancy aid. I've known seasons so bad you left for Blundell Park with a feeling in your stomach like you'd just swallowed a whole grapefruit, and were feeling like it had exploded in your duodenum. I've come back from matches elated, angry, depressed, jolly, unconcerned and indifferent. Nothing is ever forever, which is sort of reassuring, and also sounds like a Kate Bush album title, but it isn't.
Whatever happens in the game, the following things are inevitable. I'll need a rest before I go out in the evening and my knees will hurt. My body is no longer strong enough to celebrate a goal like I celebrated Paul Wilkinson's winner at Everton where I started in P34 and ended up in D31 without even noticing I'd moved. I will feel slightly sick when the opposition score, the sudden bulging of our net feeling like the aforementioned grapefruit has given birth to twin cantaloupes. Even if we're five-nil up at the time.
Old people, eh? Age brings wisdom, they say, but I think age has trusted DPD with the delivery because it hasn't arrived yet. What age actually brings is dodgy knees, acid reflux and a reality clouded by your own experiences.
I didn't go last night to the GY Borough friendly, though I did have a good excuse. I Could Not be Arsed, choosing intead to play cricket with people who can no longer manage a quick single, but are sometimes happy to risk a slow one if their heart monitor approves. But on Saturday I'll be back at BP treating every defeat as though it were the end of the world and every victory as though it was the beginning of a brave new one. I'll never learn.
If you're wondering what all this "we used to live in cardboard box in middle of t'road" is about, look at the newsfeed from Blundell Park. I think it might actually be broken, possibly rusted up from lack of use or maybe it actually died of boredom. It's funnier watching York, who have started their season like a sinking ship. Go and check it out. This is what happens when you let people who own football clubs run football clubs. Lovely stuff.
Oh, jeeeeeeez, I've just looked at the newsfeed. The Pearson Bombshell has landed. So no news was good news after all.
UTM