Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Friday 3 June 2005

3 June 2005

Leeds, 7:06am
Check the usual breadth of Town sites. One tick for the club's environmental business practices (check out that management bollocks speak) as the OS features a recycled story/reminder about shares. Basically, they want you to BUY SOME. Dave Boylen recalls the time he scuffled in the tunnel with "King" Kevin Keegan.

10:13am
One Cod Almighty wag reckons "scuffle in the tunnel" could be a euphemism.

11:43am
Decide to have a read of the latest rough guide. Given the lack of news and other Town related articles around at the moment, I wonder how hard can it be for a full-time writer to pen something in the close season that is of the quality of the current rough guide, ie. a) engaging, b) interesting, and c) well-written.

More salesmanship as you are urged to BUY A NEW SECOND KIT. For some reason inexplicable Phil Collins is quoted. For some reason explicable our Andy's research on last season's kit wearing is also indirectly quoted. Is our Andy happy that his research is being used as a means to justify a new kit?

12:14pm
More vagueness from Russ. Maybe a midfielder is coming, maybe another - Stacy - is staying. If, when, why, what. All it'll boil down to is "how much have you got?"

12:34pm
Nothing new on This Is Grimsby.

12:47pm
Realise we're going to have to pad out the diary with lots of reader's letters. Lucky we've got some after yesterday's call for alternative careers for our current crop of players. "Anthony Williams could be a juggler. Hang on. No he couldn't." Thank you, James Thundercliffe. Mat Hare next. "If Stacy was going to leave football to become a fireman can we infer that he has the biggest hose of all the Town squad?" Yes, the macho, sweary Mat Hare thinking about willies. And it doesn't stop there. "Tony Crane certainly has the biggest arse so perhaps he could make a few quid by allowing kids to use it as a trampoline or renting it out to policemen as a road block. And yes, I did just suggest Tony Crane could rent his arse out for coppers." A turnaround from the Stace situation where he couldn't get into the public services then.

12:57pm
Still nothing new on This Is Grimsby.

1:03pm
Thank goodness for Pat Bell, a man of higher standards - and more thoughtful late afternoon tea breaks than most of us. "A shame we didn't know about Coldicott sooner - all sorts of Coldicott poured cold water on Southend's promotion hopes, Coldicott was usually on hand to extinguish any danger copy suggests itself." With the kind of play-down strategy that Bald Russ could learn a thing or two from, Pat continues "I'm rubbish at the sort of alternative careers thing you suggest, so I'll content myself with the obvious suggestion that whatever they were, they'd all be temps." I can see it now. 'Can you do ten copies of this please Master Hockless?' "This with the exception of Macca, who, depending on the state of his moustache, often looks like a Second World War NCO. The problem is players are gone so quick you don't get time to attribute any personality to them. Rob Jones could maybe be a sort of giant car mascot - nodding donkey kind of thing." Is he Town's back-line's mascot then?

1:22pm
Receive an email from a mate who has done a fireman test. "The written test is a piece of piss. Word association, numerical sequences and logical shape matching. If you pass that it's the bleep test and some strength tests, then some ladder climbing, crawling round in BA and such." This sounds too easy. "Then an interview." Aaaah. "He must have failed at the written part, 'cos an footballer should have no probs with the physical tests. There was an ex rugby league pro on my course." Now the question is: did the rugger player get through? And does this mean ex rugby pros are 'better' than footballers? Not that this is the end for our Stace reckons my mate. "Looks like Stacy will have to settle for bin man then!" Or another season with Town.

1:29pm
Still nothing new - or even recycled - on This Is Grimsby.

1:34pm
Time to contemplate an afternoon nap, and timely advice from that man Pat with his cures for insomnia. "Assuming the insomnia thing to be a genuine enquiry, my basic strategy has always been to carry on reading in bed until I'm physically unable to keep my eyes open, so my mind doesn't have time to get going after I turn out the light. Can lead to you imagining some wierd plot developments as you hover on the edge of sleep though - why is George Eliot suddenly speculating on the impact of a home win next Saturday?

"If the problem is less getting off than staying off, boringly enough a large part of the answer seems to be avoiding drinking too much or having coffee in the evening. If you do wake and your mind is racing, reading (again) requires a tolerant or heavy sleeping partner but stops you worrying about not being able to sleep, and stops your mind going off into unwelcome channels.

"Lately I've found that reviewing Wales' success in the Six Nations works pretty well for getting me off, but that probably wouldn't work for the average Town fan, and thinking about a distant Town success (and what other ones are there?) could just lead to angst.

"Sounds banal enough when I put it all down, but I'm bored, so this passes the time."

As I hope this diary has.