Cod Almighty | Diary

1st year? Completed it, mate.

5 July 2023

Mr Target Demographic writes: I should probably write something about Town's first friendly of the new campaign last night. However, as it's been a long time since I've written, and it was only against Grimsby Borough, I feel you all deserve to catch up on the fish within the Toon. News was never really my style anyway as, looking back, I always found a way to diverge into something completely irrelevant from Grimsby Town Football Club. Strange, my other half says, as I never stop talking about Grimsby. In the one place you'd think I would be able to let all my thoughts explode onto the page, I end up talking about doing jigsaws in London, or which university I was going to end up at!

So, if you've come for the rundown on the friendly match last night, looking to see who could light up the league for us next season, then I'm sorry, as today's diary will be no different. That is because today I'll try and cram one whole academic year in a hall of 12 boys into fewer than 500 words.

It should be said, I'm leaving out a few stories from the past year because some of them, if told, could resurface when I become rich and famous, making a mess of my career. However, here is a flavour of some of things that 12 boys left to their own devices in a city can achieve.

Starting off steady, something I'm sure many people have been subject to in their early life was mattress moving. A fun merry-go-round of a game where someone's mattress was taken from their bed and lifted seven storeys up the building. This joke was one that went on all year round and nobody was ever safe. In a strange twist on this game, I had a mixture of cooked and raw fusilli pasta placed under my bedsheet and within my pillowcase for helping remove one of my friends' mattresses and placing it outside of our accommodation.

Moving to a more extreme joke played this year, has anyone ever taken a laxative? Well how about ten? That's right, we placed ten crushed-up laxatives in Bob's wine. We'll call him Bob for the purpose of anonymity. Safe to say, Bob went home early that night after almost soiling himself in the club and ended up not speaking to our group of friends for a while.

He did get me back, however! Well not me exactly, my partner. She ended up having a headache after a night out and took two paracetamol that I had left over. Long story short, the laxative victim had placed the tiny laxative pills within the capsules causing my partner to… well, you get the picture. They were only £2.49 for 12 from Superdrug and, in today's economy, a joke that good for that low a price is always worth it. 

How does this tie into football you ask? Well, it doesn't, but there has been an ongoing debate within my friendship group about what the real Borough, or 'Boro' as it's referred to, is. With a lifelong Middlesbrough fan claiming it's them and a lifelong Scarborough fan claiming the same, I hadn't yet thrown Grimsby Borough into the mix. But if anyone can make a compelling case, I'd be more than happy to put it forward. To be honest, I'm more bothered about the people from Scarborough claiming they have better fish and chips than GY. I mean, it's probably good there, but it's just not Grimsby.

To finish off today's diary, I recently went to Milan and went to look at the San Siro before it's torn down. I did all this wearing my Town shirt and it's unbelievable how many Italians approached me to ask which football club it was. Now, who knows how many Italians have heard of Grimsby Town before? I thought it might have only been Ivano Bonetti.

First year of uni? Completed it, mate. UTM.