Cod Almighty | Postbag
Postbag: I'm not crying
29 November 2007
Hello 'bag fans and welcome to another edition of everyone's favourite poorly edited, infrequent Grimsby Town and related collection of e-mails sent to Cod Almighty.In this week's bumper issue: DataCoCo, more Grimmo slang, close encounters and other general rants and raves. As usual, send yer missives towards postbag@codalmighty.com.
A bit of abuse for everyone
If these bastards continue fucking whingeing about printing fixtures surely we can respond with 'fuck right off you stupid cunts', or even better 'I'm sorry, but we aren't violating any thing relevent to your goodselves as in fact we aren't a football team, contrary to popular belief don't play good football, and will not for the forseeable future.'
There... that'll tell them, though I also understand and appreciate that it'll upset all at Codalmighty towers as Lord Buckley can do no wrong. I suggest a visit to your GP who'll prescribe you a big jar of Nescafe and ask you to smell it every morning when you awaken from your sleep.
from Jason Ives
Letters Ed responds: Nescafe? Do I look like a fucking peasant?
Arse-ing around
In answer to Ben Gresswell, Soccerbase confirms it was 4-3 to Arsenal, and it was an FA Cup 3rd round game. But I don't remember it being an evening game. It was a Saturday afternoon, I thought.
Oh, and all I remember about it was sitting on the rail at the front of the Osmond stand (it was the home end for a bit wasn't it?) and Charlie Nicholas either scoring 2 or 3.
from Andy Holt
Town's problems resolved
Just done a course at work involving the development of action plans to plot your way through difficult problems during the working day. I have applied these skills to the Grimsby Town problem and have developed the following system:
Problem: we don't have enough points and have a lowly placing in the league table
Action plan: win more games thus developing more points. More points mean that the position in the table should improve
It's easy when you know how.
from Ian Jackson
Letters Ed responds: No, what we need to do is build a new stadium. The actual football isn't important.
Relegation: a guide from the experts
Yo Grimsby fun zine,
There is, of course, an easy, no-nonsense solution to your dispute with the desperate jobsworths at Football DataCo Ltd. It's called relegation.
Boston did it. Twice in as many weeks, as it happens. Consequently, we no longer need to fear lawyers threatening to close down any unofficial site that dares mention that Boston United are away at Vauxhall Motors on December 8thth 2007, kick-off 3pm. And if they did, we'd just say Tony Crane is our big brother.
That said, DataCo, as you're probably already aware, wasted little time in shutting down a Watford fanzine that attempted to resist their threats three years or so ago. It's a shame the much-publicised fallout from that episode has not dulled their thirst for bullying, so please try and avoid getting yourselves wiped off the internet if at all possible. I'm not entirely sure what I'd do without daily updates on Pilgrims tormentor-in-chief SPB.
from Pete Brooksbank
Letters Ed responds: The BSAD (Watford zine) fall-out is still out there on the net - people should go and look it up. If only they'd decided to take the fight to DataCo. As for the relegation issue, we've got that in-hand as we speak, thank you very much. I'm just going to drop this link in to ImpsTalk because it still makes I larf.
Trumpet mad
re: The Carlisle preview. Far be it for me to blow my own trumpet but have you not noticed my own site or something?
The independent Carlisle site for donkeys years, the unofficial messageboard, match reports on youth team and reserve team games, daily updates to reserve and youth tables, first team match previews, reaction and interviews, sponsors of first year professionals at the club etc. etc. etc.
Apart from that there is nothing on it.
from Tim Graham
Letters Ed responds: It's on the FootyMad network isn't it? We tend to avoid those like the plague. I'm sure it's a great site - just get it off there and roll it yourself.
Egging nogging
Came across your site last night - I'm a Grimbarian (Meggie really) living expatriated in Scotland for the last decade, and it made me laugh a lot and I shared the dictionary with a few more Grimbarians around the country/world.
I was just talking to my mum (West Marsh native) about 'egging back o'Doigs' and she said it used to be said a lot in a sort of "what are you doing?"..."I'm going to see a man about a dog" or "I'm baking a cake" kind of way (i.e. mind your own) but bizarrely enough my husband found a reference to this earlier this year (before I saw your site) in "Birds Britannica" by Mark Cocker & Richard Mabey (I thought you might appreciate this obscure Grimbo claim to fame):-
"The local name for lapwing in Grimsby used to be pyewipe and there's an area to the west of Grimsby Docks bordering the Humber estuary called Pyewipe, which is good for roosting curlew and black-tailed godwit these days, and presumably, at one time, for lapwings. When I was a child, if I asked a daft question like 'where's mum?', my dad or pretty well any other adult would answer sarcastically 'gone eggin" which I never understood at the time. The full version was "gone eggin' back o 'Doigs" with Doigs being an old shipwrights on the dock. So 'back o'Doigs' would have been West Marsh or Pyewipe area. When I've thought about this more recently, it's occurred to me that the saying may well have referred to poor folk hunting for plovers' eggs and those of other wild birds on the marshland in bygone days. It was quite a common saying in the town and I bet it's still used in some families."
So rather than being an area with no wildlife; the saying might refer to a time when there was wildlife used as a source of food!
The other reason I'm writing is that I love the idea of completing the set and getting Matt Tees in a 'Tees Shirt' - I appreciate the sentiment of this shirt and think it's great that you are drawing attention to a real legend of Grimbo - and I wondered if Matt knows about his fame on your website...? So I also asked my mum if my dad sees much of Matt, and she said, well funnily enough he was sat with him at lunchtime today... I'm printing copies of the website to send to the folks back home and will ask my dad to check with Matt if he'd like a t'shirt. But then I thought; if the Matt Tees shirts are no longer for sale; how can we persuade him to pose with one?
Hope this reaches the right person to see if any copies of the Matt Tees shirt are available & hope the 'egging back o'Doigs' anedote from a glossy coffee table book is useful too. I'm planning on introducing the phrase to Scotlandn now to cause a bit of general confusion; I had a good few folk of all nationalities 'singing when they're fishing' this year at Oktoberfest in Munich so frankly anything is possible!
from Skipper Meech's daugher Julie
Letters Ed responds: I'm sure we can sort something out Julie, if need be. Just drop us a line.
The kids are all (far) right
Nell Farrell seems suprised that bigots are alive and well in Sheffield. She can't have been to many matches as every club has an element within its supporters. Go into the Pontoon on any given Saturday and you will see a minority who use bigotry and racism as a way of supporting their club.
The thing that suprises me is their age, most don't look old enough to be in "long trousers" (this must be a sign of my age not theirs). This does not bode well for the future of football in this country. I for one want to be entertained without having to put up with the vile abuse.
I have however found a solution to this in the form of Leicester Tigers - that is the rugby club and not the football club. The atmosphere is as good as any football match with the added advantage of it being family friendly.
I don't believe I have just said that but it is becoming true. I can take all my family, have a beer whilst watching the game, stand next to an "away" supporter and discuss the finer points of the off side rule without any problem.
While football is classed as a battle of tribal proportions it will always attract hard line bigots and it does not make any differance trying to educate this out of the game as children brought up within this culture see it as the norm.
Thats enough of my rant.
from Keith Falla
The Emporer's Newey clothes
Is that pillock of this world? If he was working in the real world he would have been sacked for gross misconduct. Or is netball the latest Blunder Park diversification to increase the attractiveness of the Fentydome?
Talking of the pillock which I am, it's just struck me - maybe JF bunged him a tenner to ensure a replay to boost the cashflow a bit. Last bit of the Newey raging - I thought it was only Slade that he was conning with his "I'm the best at free kicks and kick offs so I will take them all or cock up the third pass after kick off - everytime" routine, but he seems to have convinced AB of the same. AB needs shaking up or TN needs a kick up the bit where the sun never shines.
If you are the manager AB, manage and DO SOMETHING, now - the whole of the Barratt/ Findus/John Smiths/Carlsberg/whatever stand is laughing at you.
from Phil Shorter
A message from SPB
Gayers
from Anon
Letters Ed responds: No, you are.
Orm farming
How about the word ''orm'' for the dictionary? My old gadge always used to say it when we were too close to her (e.g. "stop orming and go and play on winnie fields").
from Bangkok Boy
Letters Ed responds: Gadge?
Gay essay hurray
Thank you so much for running the article on homophobia in football. It was really well-written, well-reasoned and very thought-provoking. Hats and scarves off to Nell Farrell for writing it and for arguing it all through so well. I've also registered with the FA for info on their campaign. All the best.
from Char March
Destiny of the Darek
My name Darek i am intersting and fan club GRIMSBY TOWN FC. I am collection souvenirs, very very dreams of pin badges and t-shirt. Very very please send of one's dreams pin badges.My post address - DAREK PIK LODZ 93-252 UL.FELINSKIEGO 20 M 23 POLAND
from Darek Pik
Letters Ed responds: You heard the man...
Doric day
Thanks for a linguistic trip down memory lane to my youth and my home town - I left Great Grimsby in the early 1980's. I lost a lot of my Grimbarian dialect whilst in the RAF, though my wife says I still revert to type whenever I speak to family from "home". We live in Aberdeenshire now, so I'm more fluent in Doric than Grimmo. Fit like?
A couple of words maybe for you to add to the dictionary:
bains: like the scottish bairns, children. As in "No duck, not in front of the bains."
sannies: sandshoes, cheap 1960's black trainers, aka tackies or pumps. My 11 year old boy still has to wear them for "gym" - school rule, not some cruelty on my part.
Ta-ta, as my Nanna (with 2 n's) would have said.
P.S. we also went egging at the back of Doig's, but with a glass hammer. Elastic bands were sproggy bands, Christmas was Crimbo. Sloppy ha'peths (soft/daft people) would be invited to go play with the buses on Bargate. And the bar at the Wheatsheaf was the other sixth form common room. And Lawrie MacMenemy was God.
from Steve Barrow
Slang bang
I have just had a good laugh at the Grimmo Dictionary - boy could I have done with that 20+ years ago.
Having moved to 'sunny' Cleethorpes in the 70s, I spent a couple of years at school dazed and confused as to what the various slang terms meant (I still didn't know some until today!).
You should get this handout printed off and given out in the Libraries & Tourist Information Centres!
from Sam Goffin
Absolute zero
I can't remember whether I have told Codalmighty about this close encounter before, so if I have ignore me, but it was memorable for me and it is worth telling.
The game in question is GTFC v Exeter 1991 at home - jog the memory? The Division Three promotion game. Well at the I didn't think anymore about the game until I recently dug out the video for a morale boost.
The close encounter was with Kelvin Morton, the referee, and took place in 1998 prior to the England v Columbia World Cup game in Lens, France. My company had come by some tickets via French black market colleagues and they decided to send some jolly boy staff to entertain some customers. I was one of the jolly boys selected. We overnighted at Ashford prior to travelling to northern France, where we met up with the customers. The evening was the usual mix of beer, small talk and general niceties as we were not all familiar with the customers who were invited (including a tattood Pompey fan who didn't like strong Belgian beer?).
I thought nothing of anything until I was introduced to Kelvin Morton, an accountant with one of our larger customers. At the time his name didn't register, even though clearly on the video he is give plenty of recognition by John Helm! It was only when people got onto the subject of hobbies that Mr Morton trumped us all with his retired League ref status and the penny dropped.
Now, up until then I don't think Mr Morton had exactly been the most sociable of the guests, but he sparked into life when me, a Grimbsy Town fan, quizzed him about THAT game. I think he thought I was a wierdo for asking him about Cockers 'off-side' goal and his thoughts on how to end a game where the crowd were clearly on the touch line and intent on a pitch invasion.
For the record he stands by Cockers goal and he blew the whistle at the closest point he could to the tunnel so he could get away.
from Ian Jackson
Free the fixtures
Anyone wishing to protest the nonsense that is Dataco and copyrighted fixture lists ought to sign the petition at FreetheFixtures.com. Pass the link on to your mates and stuff!
from Pete Green
Snek pass
Only in Grimsby is your front door or back gate "on the snek". Other places have a catch or a latch or a lock. We have a snek - that little bit of hardware which attaches your gate to the post opposite the hinges. Or even the bit on a yale lock which stops you getting back in the house when you've let the door slam shut behind you. Usually whilst fetching the milk in wearing just your undercrackers.
from Mik Boon
Pond life
Re: Chapman's Pond. Growing up in Cleethorpes I was brought up on the 'fact' that it was 'as deep as a house'.
Just stumbled on your site - I almost feel nostalgic for the old place.
P.S. Subsets of Chapman's Pond knowledge - sheer genius !
from Sue