Cod Almighty | Diary
Happy John MacAtee Operation Day
19 August 2022
Does anyone else feel weirdly irritated by abandoned matches? It's not just the distance travelled, which is much lower for me than for many more, or the inconvenience. I think it is because football is a ritual and the ritual has not been completed.
It's like going to a wedding, and just after the couple take their vows they sit down and have a sandwich, the vicar starts checking his phone for messages and everyone else just wanders off. That isn't how it supposed to be! We require the process to be carried out in full! The word is coming to me. Unfulfilled! That's the one. I feel unfulfilled, and I will only feel complete again when the match against Sutton tomorrow has reached a natural and logical conclusion. The forecast is good, but since the forecast for Tuesday night was "light rain showers" perhaps we shouldn't get too optimistic.
Also, has anyone else noticed that Paul Hurst's chest seems to getting wider and wider? When he started off here he was quite a slim man, but he has now developed the physique of the Mighty Atom. The logical explanation is that he has been hitting the gym on a regular basis, but I have another theory. I think he is the Incredible Hulk but in reverse. The more contented he gets the more his muscles grow until his shirts start ripping and hanging off him in aesthetically pleasing raggy ways. I'm sure he widened by about a foot after the successful play-off campaign. If we lose a few matches he will return to normal size, but if we beat Sutton tomorrow he may well become too broad to fit down the players' tunnel. I'm going to pitch my Incredible Hurst character to some TV moguls and see if they bite. Saturday teatimes may never be the same again.
Incidentally, the Carlisle game has been rearranged for the 27th September. The club sadly failed to check Grimsby Auditorium's listings, otherwise they would have noticed that Steve Hackett is performing the whole of Supper's Ready that night, and that BOTB diary has his ticket booked. Fenty would never have allowed this. Now there was a real chairman. Sort it, Jeremy Stockbook and Bobby Sausages! (note to self – must find out their real names).
League games before big cup games always bother me slightly. No player wants to be injured and miss the biggie, and I worry that there might be a slight reticence in the tackle. Luckily the current team seems refreshingly free of egos and shirkers and I think we will give it everything. I'm told we have never played Sutton before, which is odd, because I remember doing so. Is this the Mandela Effect people have been yammering about? Or am I just an idiot with a bad memory? Please don't answer that rhetorical question.
Oh yeah. One more thing. Doesn't anyone want to go home anymore? After Tuesday night’s Unfulfillment it was of course absolutely shitting it down. My natural response was to rush back to the car and go somewhere where it wasn't wet, i.e. my house. In order to do this I had to manoeuvre around several groups of Town fans standing in loose circles, chatting, dawdling, chewing the fat and striking up improvised bridge foursomes. Perhaps not that last one, but the point remains. Go home! Go to the pub! You're getting wet! Or perhaps I'm just a soppy middle-class diarist and everyone else was behaving normally.
Mind you, in my Main Stand days trying to actually leave the ground at the final whistle felt like being a copper trying to remove peaceful protestors from the Russian embassy. Hurry along there, sir. You can't just stand there, madam. 'Aven't you lot got 'omes to go to? The game is over. Bloody move! It's like when the lights go green and you're only the third car back but you don't start moving for 20 seconds. I've seen herds of cows move in a more determined fashion. Anyway. I seem to have forgotten myself there slightly. Sorry.
UTM. Bye, bye, bye. Love you. X