Cod Almighty | Diary

Everythang’s corrupt

14 May 2020

One thing writing a bi-weekly CA diary teaches you is that a fortnight isn't very long when you're old. Bottom-of-the-barrel Diary has only just simmered down after my last rant and here I am again, frothing.

So, it looks like the lower league football season will be abandoned and places decided on some mathematical formula. This seems to be the worst possible option for many reasons.

Firstly, when the lockdown started its purpose was to flatten the curve. That achieved, its purpose has now mutated to Lockdown Until All Infectious Diseases Are Destroyed and Death Shall Have no Dominion Over the Earth, which is rather more ambitious. Since we have no idea when that might be – and it seems unlikely it be on 8 August this year, just in time for kickoff – we don't even know if we'll be able to start another season let alone finish this one. So theoretically we could have several months to finish this round of games and leave out next season instead.

Secondly, the general consensus seems to be that this virus is far more important than football, and the correct response is to drop your head, look chastened and declare all football an unimportant frippery which matters not. People determined to show how morally splendid they are will always pursue this course, because if they were to declare that football is too important to bugger about with and Wycombe shouldn't be promoted over Peterborough because hey ho it’s only football, they would be accused of wanting to kill grannies.

Incidentally, that reminds me, people are now staying in because they might pass a nasty disease onto an elderly person who will die as a result. This has of course been the case for all of us every day of our lives thus far, but previously we didn’t seem to give a shit. Funny that. You probably remember the Hong Kong flu in 1968 which killed 80,000 people in Britain? Or you might be too young to remember. Or you might be old enough, but you don't remember it because the world didn't stop. I've gone off at a tangent. Where was I? Oh yes...

Thirdly, it just IS. It just IS a stupid way to end a season. You don't play 36 games of rufty-tufty football just to have your hopes and dreams dashed at the end because there's a scheduling issue. And ultimately that's what this is - a scheduling issue. The future of the virus is unknown. The hysterical nonsense pumped out by the media in future is unknown (but guessable.) The reaction of people to any offered freedom is unknown. You can't make decisions based on an unknowable course of events. Natural phenomena don't fall in with our timetables. Just hold on. Wait.

In the meantime, get out, enjoy the sunshine, walk, run, golf, tennis. You can't spend warm summer days in doors, writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg. If you ask me.

I remember those lines from many fortnights ago. They go so quickly now. Seeya.