Cod Almighty | Diary

Home, home again, I like to be here when I can

20 September 2024

Join your A46 Diary and picture a scene from late September, early Autumn, a Saturday afternoon at a quarter to three on the east coast of England, Cleethorpes, Grimsby Road, any year in the last 125.

When the sky is blue, faded, the cobalt of summer still a close enough memory to please, but now a baby blue, ready for this new-born season. When the wind blows, lifting the litter, chasing the early fall of dead and dying leaves, the yellows and oranges bright against the crush of shoes, loud beneath the heels. When the new floodlights lift into the sky, indifferent, their attention focused on the pitch below. When the old floodlights thrust into the baby blue, indifferent, as if looking for something else, something more, looking but knowing, understanding, that right now this little patch of green in the terraced streets of Cleethorpes is all there is.

When the buses, diesel engines grumbling, crawl to a halt and disgorge laughing fans onto the crowded pavements outside the new flats, the site of the old pub. When the bins overflow with fish-and-chip wrappers, plastic forks and empty cans of pop, dirty white, bright blue, metallic red, spilling onto broken, heaving paving slabs. When the traffic is forced to stop as people pour out of Blundell Avenue, Hart Street, Combe Street and the Blundell Hotel, fresh from their walk through Sidney Park and their drinks at the bar, and stride across the road, black and white scarves untied, swinging loose, just jackets, no coats yet, past the new burger joint, the old cinema. When footsteps and chatter clatter down Imperial Ave, the sounds bouncing between terraced houses, filling the tiny front gardens, sliding across the glass of front rooms. When the great grey gates, the old brick arch, rise before the crowd. When the Findus looms, the Barret sits. When old friends shout across the street as they jog to the ticket queue. When an away fan, lost, swaps chuckling comments with the friendliest face they can find as they receive their directions around the back.

When the turnstiles click, old raffle books, older cash, new cards, passes now, are handed over. When we push through that steel-barred breach and spill like litter, like early autumn fall, into the ground, tossed for a brief moment, a newness, a rebirth, a world of possibility, of imagined outcomes, then familiarity rushes back. When the Findus roof stretches high, the prow of our good ship Grimsby.

When we see the green, flat and stretched, somehow not real down here at this angle, the grass longer, the players giants.

When we make our way in old, muscle-memory footsteps, the paths to our seats marked out in our heads like bowlers' run-ups. When we pause to look, just briefly, at the Osmond, fuller in years before, squeezed in the corner now, a smattering of stillness. When we remember the years before and the people, the aliens from funny places with funny voices, singing and surging, forcing our voices to sing and surge. When we slow and watch the players practise. When we dodge a ball. When we hear it smash into a seat. When we wonder how the plastic survives. When we nod at the same faces, at the same points, at the same steps, the same rows as we climb into our Pontoon amongst our people. When we edge along to our place at our pew. When we greet old friends, the people we only see here, the people we only know here. When we swap wry glances or excited smiles. When we moan about the last defeat or babble about victories too often too long ago. When we're filled with dread. When we're resigned. When we're excited.

When a train rattles through the gap between Main and Pontoon, the passengers surely craning to get a view of the green in the grey. When a ship moves past, ponderous, enormous, unstoppable. When its white hull shines in the gaze from the low sun. When I'm convinced it has slowed to linger at this point, to gaze at this thing on the south bank of the Humber. When its tower, red or blue, windows dark, stretches to see over the roof of the Main.

When we turn again to this special place. When we see the four sides, the old full corners, the new empty spaces. When we turn to the green, a proper rectangle now, a real pitch, a perfect green, the white lines and goals stark, brilliant, ready, bars of impossible frost in this still warm autumn sun. When the players go in. When we applaud politely. When the moment nears, its horizon suddenly close, the air suddenly heavy with expectation. When we focus together in this place, this place that's been ours for so long. When this place stirs, comes alive, like it's waking, like it has slept as it has waited for us. When our presence fills this place with more than just our voices and our bodies.

This place, this Blundell Park, is when and where we join, where we laugh, where we cheer, where we rage, where we hope.