Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Thursday 25 October 2007

25 October 2007

Today you find the Diary in the vice-like grip of a beastly late-starting hangover. Does anyone else get those? You're kind of OK at eight or nine in the morning but by 11 you want to die? I know it's my own fault for setting about a hotel room mini-bar until the small hours of last night, but a bit of sympathy wouldn't go amiss. I've no idea why the term 'vice-like' is appropriate, really, unless it's one of those vices that makes you really regret having a massive breakfast two hours ago and feel like you're on a rollercoaster when you shut your eyes.

Anyway. Shaleum Logan, Town's ace new loanee with a strange cool name, has spoken to the Grimsby Telegraph about his temporary switch to North East Lincs. "The stadium is nice and you can't get better than the pitch here," says Logan, refreshingly, shortly before the club chairman smacks him round the head with a model of the Fentydome. The pacy Man City teenager admits to having had reservations about joining a fourth division side, in the belief that it's all long-ball stuff down here, but reveals that the Mariners' style of passing football won him over. This may come as a nasty shock to those responsible for the frankly bizarre notion currently being propagated on the messageboards that Town aren't actually playing any attractive football this season. Because, yeah, that first half against Rochdale the other week was just like watching Keith Alexander's Lincoln, wasn't it. Booo Logans booo, sak ver bord etc etc and so on.

Paul Bolland had a cracking first season with the Mariners in 200whenever it was, two years ago, I'm too tired to go and check, 2005-06 I guess, but even his greatest fans would admit that he hasn't performed with the same consistency since. Bolly's second album trouble, it seems to the Diary, has been down to a couple of persistent injuries, and Town ought to get him fully fit again rather than have him play ineffectively through whatever it is that's ailing him. Does that make sense? In a Mariners World interview today the battling midfielder expresses hope that he will be fit to face his first club Bradford this Saturday, but gives little indication as to whether his injury has cleared up properly other than "I've had a good week's rest on it now and it has settled down". I guess this weekend the proof is in the pudding, as people often say when what they really mean is that the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Speaking of words and stuff like that, Pete Brooksbank has emailed the Diary about one of them. "As a Boston United fan," he writes, "you might think I would be familiar with the rather wonderful word 'vicissitude', as in 'the vicissitudinous of Boston United's recent history'. Alas, I, the uneducated, wet-lipped mouth breather that I am, am sorry to report that I have never before encountered it. Nevertheless, I am always delighted when I discover a virgin word that manages to bamboozle both the MS Office dictionary AND the MSN Encarta thesaurus thingy at once, a red squiggly underline attempting to convince you, in an oddly tragic fashion, that the word is just a grave keyboard mashing mistake. For this I shall remain forever indebted to today's Diary." Glad to have been of service, Pete. For what it's worth, the Diary uses OpenOffice.org rather than MS Office, and I still get red squiggly underlines on words like 'rollercoaster' and 'messageboard'.

I'm going away next week, so Pat Bell's email here will be my last bit of Diarying until a week on Tuesday - but needless to say, the CA team has already lined up a string of more than adequate replacements in the meantime. "Riches here," writes Pat, indicating an article on the BBC Sport website about Lee Ashcroft hoping his Kendal Town team can land a tie against the Mariners in the first round of this season's FA Cup. What riches, Pat? "A rare revival of the 'no disrespect to the likes of Grimsby' theme, and confirmation that Ashcroft and Buckley finally got over that feud in the late 90s." Why yes! The piece is well worth a read for these very reasons, but does anyone know whether Aidan Davison and Wayne Burnett are talking to each other again?

So thanks for reading, and I'll see you all in 12 days' time. Now why can I never find a packet of Alka Seltzer when I need one?