Cod Almighty | Diary
Diary - Thursday 1 November 2007
1 November 2007
Oh God.
There are some nice things about living in Grimsby. The relative absence of traffic, for example. The unpretentious friendliness of most of the residents. The fact that you can often go two or three days without hearing a Cockney accent. The absence of the 'I wish I were a cat so I could lick myself all over' sense of smug superiority that has infested the middle-classes of so much of the rest of the country. The possibility of enjoying a nice walk in the Lincolnshire Wolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and wondering why it is considered an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty when it has been Farmed to Shit. The sea. The history and romance of the fishing industry. Weelsby Woods. All these things are OK. However...
Some of you may have noticed that the football team is giving us a lot of grief at the moment. We are a Gary Henshaw's width away from the foot of what tends to be called the 'basement division'. We are playing Rotherham shortly. We will lose. Then we are away at that team who play if Milton Keynes, where we will lose. Now I love Alan Buckley, and I was fully in favour of his re-appointment, but I must confess I have been having my doubts. Last Saturday, when we decided the best way to play against a team with a centre-half in goal was to continue to play neat triangles in the middle of the pitch, and brought on the World's Smallest Man to play up front when we had a Goalkeeper Devouring Lump slavering on the bench, crystallised these doubts. In fact it reinforced my long-cherished theory that footballers and football managers do the job because thay are too thick to be spectators. If the referee hadn't distracted me I might even raised an eyebrow at one stage, maybe even uttered an oath under my breath.
I'm determined to continue supporting Buckley however, simply to irritate Messageboard Nesbits, who recently have been spouting - yes, spouting - the most appalling piffle simply to criticise the man. Here are some of my favourite quotes of the season:
"Buckley's style of play isn't successful and it never has been."I may have paraphrased the last one slightly.
"I never liked him, even when he took us to Wembley."
"We aren't making any chances this season."
"His football is less attractive than we had under Slade."
"I am a know-nothing no-brained nesbit who hates Buckley because he has achieved something in his life and I never will, because I am a twot."
Now, I suspect that most people reading this Diary have two things in common. Firstly, they are pretty bright. Secondly, they don't live in Grimsby. These things are of course related, since people who are bright tend to take one look at Grimsby, say "hell, no" under their breath and take the first train to somewhere else.
This has had the result of making Grimsby a kind of Thick Ghetto. This is why the jaw tends to drop when reading a GTFC messageboard, or yesterday's front page story about the stadium which claimed that English Nature had reservations because "two Golden Plover lived there." Still, paradoxically, I love the place, and many of its people. I am Grimsby Till I Die. Next season, when Scunthorpe is the only Lincolnshire town with a Football League team, I will be irritable and distant, and friends will comment unfavourably on my mood.
By the way, Mr. Alan Buckley, I would imagine you are familiar with the Paul Bowles poem Once a Lady Was Here? No, PAUL Bowles. Not Stan Bowles. Well, the last line - "But yesterday is not today" - is one you'd do well to bear in mind when crowing about how great you are to the local press. I'm supporting you, but its gets harder with each passing (pun intended) defeat. I really do believe we are in big trouble here. Mind you, amongst all the other personality disorders I own and cherish (many a result of being brought up in Grimsby) I do have a pessimistic streak as broad as Tony Crane's pants.
Oh, before I go, do you find it unbelievable that John Fenty has said that he now has to find retail businesses to make the stadium project viable? Shouldn't he have done that beforehand? Now, no one respects our chairman more than me, and if I wanted a bag of kippers he would be one of the first people I'd turn to, but, as with Alan Buckley, sometimes one raises an eyebrow, Now I'm delighted he didn't appoint the then-available Danny Wilson or Ronnie Moore to manage Town, probably because he had never heard of them. Grimsby is an island afer all, and to appoint people from beyond the island would be just too avant-garde. And I'm delighted that he asked the judge if he could drive home after being banned from driving, which always makes me laugh when I think of it. In fact the man just delights me generally.
Forget I said anything. I'm abandoning this rant now, because I've just been told what Dave "Environmentally Friendly" Boylen said on Radio Humberside about birds last night (or may have been Jimmy Krankie - they look and sound so similar)... If I don't stop at this point I'll get into that, and our new goalscoring sensation, and Compass FM, and before you know it I'll have turned purple and have a vole as a best mate. Calm down. Deep breaths. Aaaaaaah. I'm in my special place now.