Cod Almighty | Diary

I am keen to progress this diary

5 November 2021

I've got to be honest with you, this BOTB Diary feels even more redundant than my usual nonsense despite the fact that we are playing the Kidders in the FA Cup tomorrow. The CA Butcher has already picked the bones out of Kidderminster Harriers in his excellent rough guide, leaving me only to churn out the following:

The Duff Guide to Kidderminster Harriers

Harriers is usually a name for a running club, isn't it? Amirite? Strange really, because harriers (the bird) aren't known for being fast. Peregrines and swifts are the birds you really need to be naming your running club after. Football harriers make more ornithological sense, so credit to the Kidders for getting their name right whereas running clubs around the country have frankly made fools of themselves.

Incidentally, have you noticed that Southend have appointed Stan Collymore as "Senior Football Strategist?" Presumably he is in charge of several junior football strategists? I expect them to surge up the league now, as clearly nobody at the club had a strategy regarding football and they have just been kicking the ball in random directions and hoping for the best. Actually, now I write that, we could have done with a Senior Football Strategist last season.

Kidderminster is a town I've never been to, but I suspect it's a mish-mash of shitty new housing estates approved by bent councillors, dead high streets, huge, ugly out of town shopping centres and a general sense of malaise and unhappiness. That's because virtually every town in Britain is, apart from the places where the tourists go which have cobbled streets and ghost tours. Has anyone ever been to Kidderminster for any reason apart from football? Why would you? Presumably it has a minster. That'll pull 'em in.

Last time I was in Wales there was the worst tourist attraction I've ever come across. There was this dog, you see, and it brought the baby to its master, right, and the baby was covered in blood. So the master kills the dog and then somehow finds out that the dog had actually rescued the baby from a wolf, hence the blood. So he buries this heroic dog, see, and his grave has become a tourist attraction. Except nobody knows if this story is true, or even if there was a dog, or if there was a dog, where it was buried. But a small enclosure in the middle of a field has this dog's name on it, and it attracts a steady stream of visitors who make their way along a path and look at a plaque for a (probably) imaginary dog in the middle of a random field. Ice creams available nearby.

Perhaps Cleethorpes should try something like that. We could have the grave of Sammy the Seagull, who successfully fought off the Spanish Armada by dropping barnacles on them. I'd bet you that after a few years you could get t-shirts, mugs and tea-towels featuring Sammy, who just emerged randomly from my head. It worked with the Loch Ness Monster and the bloody dog, it might work for us.

So Kidderminster. They have a player called Anna Nicole Smith or something who apparently used to terrify us when he played for Macclesfield, but I can't remember him. Hang on, Amouri Morgan-Smith. That's him. They are in good form. We're not, but hopefully we should still have too much for them (DISCLAIMER: Magic of the cup, no easy games, 11 versus 11 on the day etc).

In other news, Councillor Jackson has announced that he is "keen to progress a new stadium." I hope he also wants to progress his English lessons so that he can tell the difference between a noun and a verb. Fenty used to talk like that. Do all Councillors have to go on a gibberish course before they are allowed to talk to the press? 

LATEST: Joel Grant back in training. Which reminds me of an old joke. Two negatives make a positive, but two positives can never make a negative.
Yeah, right.

This week's diary is dedicated to the memory of Sammy The Seagull.