Cod Almighty | Diary

Lovely boy!

13 July 2023

Good morning campers, your Guest Diarist is here with the usual mixture of songs and sketches and jokes old and new. Which is a mash-up of a sentence combining the very best of English sitcom represented by Hi-di-Hi and the swept under the carpet casual racism of it It ain't half hot Mum. Today, we celebrate not 1981 as Deviant did that yesterday, but 1979 because the 13th July is, of course, George Kerr day. I bet he loved a good sitcom as much as he loved a good drink, bless him.

And I bet our George said goalie rather than keeper. Goalie has been largely supplanted in the colloquial by the rather sterile, anodyne word 'keeper. Even the leading apostrophe has withered and dropped off. But Town's new, er, stopper young Mr Cartwright is properly old school in this matter as he repeatedly proved in his video interview published yesterday. He is a goalie through and through, and he says so repeatedly. I was disappointed that the the interviewer forgot to ask "what kind of goalkeeper are you?" though. Nonetheless, after hearing 'one of our own' Harvey talk lovingly of being on the books at Town and also watching the Mariners every week from the age of seven, the interviewer (not named here for fear of dragging him in to the Huw Edwards saga) managed to ask him what had attracted him to the club. So, a new twist on the old list of predictable questions. Well done I chortled, that's in the same league of funniness as "what first attracted you to millionaire Paul Daniels".

Twitter also told me that things are going from bad to worse at poor old Scunny. Quite why the leagues do not make it a condition of entry that a football club must be in control of its own ground is a mystery to me.

I renewed my lease on the Parisian pied a terre last week. This is where I go to watch Town matches on MarinersTV. If it is John Tondeur commentating I always listen but the other commentator is just too garrulous for my taste. I am a fan of the 'less is more' style of commentary so I must confess that I turn him down way down low. One of the funniest things about having radio commentary whilst watching on TV is, because the TV camera is on the opposite side of the ground to the commentator, we the viewers can often see what has happened under our noses whilst JT struggles to know. Maybe he should come to Paris and sit by me to do the commentary then he would see all the shenanigans going on under the shade of the frozen horsebeer stand.

But the shock news came when I went to renew my MarinersTV season ticket. The crafty buggers have not only dispensed with the early bird price but also with the full season ticket altogether. The only option is to pay £25 a month. Now a nine month season adds up to more than twelvety pounds in total. £225 in fact. So don't accuse us streamers of not supporting the club! See yer.