Cod Almighty | Diary

Stray thoughts on an idle day

23 July 2024

One of Newbegin Diary's favourite holiday destinations over the last few years has been Grimsby Central Library. The scenery, you might think, leaves a lot to be desired, except that emerging from the basement one late afternoon to see the Dock Tower gleaming in a deep blue sky was as fair a sight as a sleepy Greek island or a Cumbrian fell. It may be after we beat Wrexham one night. Should Max Wright racing clear of the defence and faultlessly rounding the keeper to seal the win be my last sporting memory I won't complain, and the feeling of joy it fostered the following day is still something I can touch.

All human life is in the library: in the people who come to research their family history, the fate of a trawler or the origins of a street. In the resources they consult: glossy microfiche; the creaking bound copies of newspapers, poignant in their ancient topicality; and books on subjects that might seem esoteric but which were a labour of love to their authors, a message in a bottle to the person who would one day want to know what they had discovered, an intellectual connection across space and time.

My own holiday task has been to look through old copies of the Telegraph and Grimsby News, like the detective of cliche: I'll only know what I'm looking for when I find it. Experience has taught me that there is hardly any point looking from the third week in May until the second half of August. If there is football news, it will be terse: a player, with this name, position, height and weight has been signed, full stop. No quote that he can't wait to get started, no speculation that the club have done a good bit of business. If there is no news, there is no news, and a bit more space on the page for cricket and bowls.

Football didn't die. It revived with the pre-season programme, nothing more than two practice games between sides made up of members of the Town squad, which nevertheless drew an attendance of thousands, the gate receipts donated to the local hospital. The crowd for the first game of the League season was often the largest until Christmas Day. Far from having suffocated, deprived for three months of the oxygen of publicity, the absence made the Grimbarian heart grow fonder.

The desire of the Nigel Farages, the Donald Trumps and the Viktor Orbáns to have the 2020s play out as a tribute act to the 1930s would be grotesque if it wasn't frightening, but for Town fans there were compensations. I wouldn't say no to a summer where we hardly give football a thought until it is ready to come back to vivid life.