Cod Almighty | Diary
New cereal brainstorm
21 July 2015
Wicklow Diary writes: First and foremost today is the great news that James McKeown is out of hospital and back at home to rest up. The official site has suggested that he is targeting a return for the Peterborough friendly next week – a scenario that didn't seem possible when news of his illness emerged on Sunday. So like our number one, relax, put your feet up and enjoy today's diary.
In February, when the Town promotion train was in full puff, I took out a Mariners Player subscription. Being a cheap so-and-so, I opted for the monthly option and carefully timed the purchase to take me to the end of the regular season and no further. Five months on, I find my laziness has trumped my cheapness and I am still stuffing a fiver a month into t'internet coffers. A reward for my inaction has been the pleasure gained in watching and re-watching Pádraig Amond's pre-season goals. I know we had whatshisname with 20 goals last season but, as Miss Guest Diary pointed out yesterday, there is a calmness and confidence about Podge's finishing that suggests we have a real striker.
Hopefully this evening's game with Huddersfield Town will bring some more Amond goals to support this and justify my subscription. The Terriers, obviously alarmed by our defeat of Derby, are taking no chances and have prepared for their visit to the Costa del Clee with a week of acclimatisation in sweltering Marbella.
Ah yes, pre-season trips – remember them? Ones that involved packing up, not just hopping on your pushbike to Bradley Fields or popping over to Gainsborough. Do we avoid them due to the expense involved or are we still on the naughty step for our 2009 shenanigans in Devon? For anyone nostalgic for the fixture congestion of that July, we are attempting to cram in another game tomorrow night. Having postponed a Lincs Cup tie with Grantham, it now seems Paul Hurst has requested a game at Brigg instead. And the hosts have announced that we'll be taking our first team to the Hawthorns. I suppose if a disease with a terrifying name can't derail your pre-season, what harm can back-to-back games do? I am taking the extra fixture to mean good news on the injury list – perhaps Robertson and Brown are now fit and ready to clock up some game time.
Televised games were announced yesterday for 31 August and 5 September, and more good news is that Town aren't involved in either. The manner of the announcement is a departure from the usual process of releasing three or four months' worth of fixtures at a time. I am not sure of the reasoning for this but it's not a surprise that it doesn't appear to have supporters or their travel plans in mind.
Yesterday, I ignored the CodPod advice and logged on to the Fishy. I know I shouldn't – I'm old enough to know better – but I also knew I could cover my tracks by deleting my browsing history afterwards. Dodging a kerfuffle over Town taking the cheap option again by sending Jamie Mack to an NHS hospital, I clicked on a thread about the new stadium. As I scanned each argument I was reminded of the image of a snake eating itself. We've all gone round in so many circles that we've created an inescapable vortex and I was almost sucked in.
"The Docks is unattainable pipe dream eh? Well let me ask you this, building on a greenfield with your anchor tenant and your fancy conference facilities – how's that working out for you? Didn't work at Great Coates...? Well let's try at PP... oh, a 20 million gap in the budget? That's not a 'gap', that IS the budget. Dealing with ABP and soggy foundations should be a doddle in comparison, etc…"
Moving on, and with a browser history deletion forthcoming, I decided I could really go for it. With a suitable degree of shame, I fell for a Telewag clickbait article about GY being ranked the worst place to live in for a man. The futility of both the survey and my clicking on the link was quickly established. Participants had deemed the criterion of "proximity to a supermarket" more important than "being near a beach/sea". What type of landlubbing lard-arsed 'men' completed this survey?
Later, I caught up with a mate who I hadn't seen in a while. He arrived with a gag about how the new Grimsby movie couldn't be filmed in GY because it would cost too much to smarten the place up to make it only look like an 80s shithole. (This made me remember why I hadn't seen him in a while.)
I haven't thought that much about the film and I've never found Sacha Baron Cohen that funny. He's a one-trick pony – but people who say his last few films are shit are seriously underrating his efforts. They are really, really shit. Grimsby the film has, for all the Hollywood stars they've thrown at it, got 'straight to video' written all over it. Shortly after its release you're likely to find it alongside the Beverley Callard pilates videos for 99p in the basket at the Co-op tills. I am indifferent to its production and was prepared to ignore it.
But then something happened. The Fishy, £20m gaps, the naff survey, my soon to be ex-mate's gag… anger was building. It just needed a spark. Last night, I sat down to watch a DVD. The piracy warnings about not copying it or playing it on an Australian oil rig with a ferret stuck in your trousers hung on the screen. In English. In French. In Finnish and then several other languages, as I mashed the remote trying to skip. "Action prohibited by disk." Arrgggh! Sony Pictures protecting its product and its precious bloody brand, and ping: the lightbulb moment (granted, a very low wattage lightbulb).
So here it is, an idea worth a million conference rooms: let's pay for the Fentydome by suing Ali G. In the capitalist-driven corporate world we live in, replace the name Grimsby with a high street brand like McDonald's or Sony. Then make a film featuring their brand and logo looking like a zoo for drunks and freaks. Get the picture? Hang on Sony, what about our town, our identity – or, in your language, our 'brand'?
Of course, they'll give it the "work of fiction does not represent any place or person living or dead etc" disclaimer at the end. But this is a film set in a fishing town on the east coast of England called Grimsby featuring a football team that plays in a black and white shirt. Laudable as Austin Mitchell's Great Grimsby film is ('positivity porn' to counter the 'poverty porn' – geddit??!!), it's more of a long-term play to improve the town and its finances. We need cash now and lots of it. We have to sue. And no plan borne of incandescent rage and several small bottled lagers from Aldi has ever gone wrong.
We are certs for a bumper payout – just as long as we don't get Justice Ross Joyce presiding. Who's with me?