Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Tuesday 9 December 2003

9 December 2003

First up, my apologies for the lateness of today's Diary. It was my little brother's 21st last night and I was forced to drink beer! Before I knew it I was married to a sycamore in Great Limber and spent most of this morning dashing between the bathroom and the solicitor. I tried texting Cod Almighty to call for a guest diarist, but the bastards are now insisting on 24 hours' notice. So here I am, bloodied, late, but unbowed and ready to bring you another day's news on the football club we all love and cherish as our own.

Not that there is very much of it, anyway. Michael Boulding's hip, and how could he not be with that hair, so we all knew that already; and as for his hip injury, your guess is as good as mine is as good as Paul Groves's. The Town gaffer eventually popped up in later editions of yesterday's Grimsby Telegraph to shrug his shoulders, and so we're all going to have to keep sweating on Mick for another day or two. I dunno - if you ask me, this alternative medicine lark really is going too far.

So we're left with the Mariners' globetrotting Welsh left-back Darren Barnard talking to the Telegraph about the possibility of his going head to head and cheek to cheek with top model David Beckham in the qualifiers for the 2004 World Cup, which begin after Euro 2003, and for which England and Wales were of course drawn in the same group. "I think playing left back and marking David Beckham, it will be the second time I've done it, will be nice and interesting," says Dar-Bar, who now has 21 international caps and 17 chickens.

A lucky dip into the Diary's inbox comes up with two apples and an email from Tony Rogers, who writes: "Given the Diary's eye for the BBC's more unusual/useless use of English (if I am to include the BBC Humber site as part of the BBC's family), what do you make of Auntie Beeb's increasing use of the phrase 'won it' on Ceefax? For example, 'Brett Ormerod won it for Southampton with a late winner'." Well, Tony, I have no objections to the phrase in its own right, but the example you give is clearly tautological. "Brett Ormerod won it for Southampton with a late volley" would be quite acceptable in my book. What does get my stylistic goat about Ceefax, though, is the way they use the word 'admit'. Now the word 'admit' imputes a certain degree of shame or culpability to the act or intention being admitted, does it not? "Michael Howard admitted yesterday that he nightly quaffs the blood of young virgins," that sort of thing. But Ceefax uses it as a straightforward synonym for 'state', with no moral aspect, as in: "John McDermott admitted yesterday that he was happy to sign a new contract with Grimsby." This is plainly wrong. Now if he'd said he wanted a transfer to Hull, for example, 'admit' would be entirely apposite.

Today's final fling is with Grimsby Telegraph columnist Pete Green, who takes issue with Justin Skinner's dismissal of Coventry away in the third round of the FA Cup as "a rubbish draw" - which would of course have been Town's glamour fixture had the Mariners prevailed at Peterborough on Saturday. "After losing all my local away games when we were relegated," writes Pete, "and there only being ties with Kidderminster and Bromsgrove to hope for in the first two rounds of the cup, Coventry away would have just done me nicely." Sorry mate, but if you will insist on living in the midlands then you deserve everything you get.