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Diary - Thursday 10 September 2009

10 September 2009

Your Guest Diarist returns shamefacedly to admit the cunning plan promised yesterday failed a risk assessment, was judged politically dubious, and was found to be in contravention of all laws passed since 1995. So while I go back to the drawing board and fart about with Coke and Mentos, today's Diary is filled with readers' responses which have been trickling into our inbox and which we have completely and wilfully ignored until now.

Paddy Atkinson told us a good story a week ago: "I don't get down to Blundell Park too often, living in New Zealand, but I was there a few weeks ago. First week of the season, midweek, in the shop, to buy some memorabilia for some sport-loving Kiwis. Fenty was jumping around the place, not happy with the press coverage he was getting. However, his main task in hand was organising the view the CCTV cameras were producing around the ground. He was on his mobile, Bob Monkhouse like - left a bit, right a bit, up a touch - perfect."

Then Paddy delivers his final thought: "If he hadn't moved them from the positions they'd drifted into over the lazy summer, maybe they would have picked up the Conlon incident."

Matt Pakes appears to be in danger of fully supporting the Diary's crazy solo campaign launched a couple of weeks ago. His email came in soon after last week's pasting at Port Vale: "For fuck's sake, just shut down the town." On the same day we heard from that noisy bloke at the back of the Pontoon, Mark Shepherd, advocating a direct action strategy: "A few people have written in who have issues with your Shut Down The Town campaign - and I would like to join them. I've bought a season ticket, for God's sake, man! If your campaign doesn't show some urgency I'll actually have to go to Blundell Park again this season. It's alright designing a pretty banner - I want to see progress. At least source some napalm or something."

Martin Robinson wrote in on Tuesday with a small monograph snappily entitled "Things I'd rather spend my money on than watching Town at the moment". Then he provides a list for our consideration:

• Watch county cricket for £15 + kids free (matches at Trent Bridge and Headingley coming up... Been to Scarborough to watch Yorks this year, what a great day out!
• Playing local cricket, £5 subs, couple of pints of Batemans after... lovely
• Go watch some local music - Choice this Saturday - Rory Ellis (Aussie urban folkie) at the Ropewalk in Barton or Lynyrd Skynyrd tribute band on at Yardbirds, Freemo

But the letter we most want to track down is the one that reputedly appeared in Tuesday's Grimsby Telegraph but which I cannot now find on their web site. I'm told it was from former team coach driver Ron Sharp, claiming that Messrs Newell and Fenty sacked him after the Cheltenham game on the grounds that they considered him to be "unlucky". Persistent rumours that animals have been sacrificed late at night in the Pontoon end penalty area will now be taken seriously, and investigated using Google Earth. I know that Gallimore insisted on downing a 'lucky' pint before home games but singling out the bus driver seems a tad harsh, don't you think?

'Sacked', I've just been told, means sacked from the job of driving Town's coach - not sacked from the job of coach driver. So anyone planning a nice coach trip to the set of Emmerdale or summat, think on. You may be driven by an unlucky chauffeur! If any reader can find this story and send it to us at diary@codalmighty.com then we'd be well chuffed, as we collect such things and store them in a thick tome with a working title of Really Stupid and Uneccessary PR Gaffes by Town.

Finally, Town chairman, local Tory bigwig and possibly very superstitious person John Fenty has told the Telegraph that the club's tax debt is down to £85,000 and is scheduled to be paid off by the end of the season. Fenty, in his usual masterly display of strangled English, tells us (I think) that the tax payments haven't reduced the playing budget because the director(s) have paid them. But they have hurt the playing budget because the directors' children's inheritances have been used to pay a tax bill rather than get better players. See yer.