You know what they say, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. They're wrong: I know. I was in the pub with Bob Geldof the other week (I know, I know: just shoot me: I've asked family and friends not to press charges posthumously) and he explained how a tide of melancholy sweeps over him when darkness falls of an evening. He still needs to put the lights on to ward it off.
Some people might scoff, but I can see his point. I used to feel that way whenever summer came. I think it was a combination of the end of the football season and the morbid fear of family holidays. Today, it's not quite the same, but it's still there: there's still that sense of mourning as the football season comes to a close. More importantly, I really don't want to pass my dislike of holidays on, so I have to grow up a little and re-evaluate both beaches (ugh, all those grains, billions of them) and sun. I estimate I will once again experience the joys of a city break (you can pretend you're not a tourist in a city) in roughly 13 years. I may be incontinent by then.
This season I felt the loss of football so early there were about six games to go, but that sense of loss went away early too, before the season actually ended in fact. I'm really not sure why. Anyway, who could be maudlin at the prospect of Swansea, where they have a 35mph speed limit between the M4 and the Liberty Stadium? It's the press day, pre their play off victory over Reading.
They can't do it it at the training ground because they haven't got one. Last time I was down here. I spoke to Rory Fallon in a leisure centre canteen. Everyone's as pleasant as pleasant can be. There's hot drinks and some kind of unidentifiable food I can't bring myself to sample - I'm not ready for solids since I was on the road at 8 - and a rum selection of hacks to talk entertaining rubbish with.
Brendan Rodgers is truly fascinating. There's no shortage of ego behind the gentle demeanour, there's a chip on his shoulder about not having made the grade as a player ("I came from nothing," he tells me more than once; but he's talking about playing career rather than his NI catholic background), but like the great managers - he may not be great in the end, but he's got something - there's that mix of hubris, charisma and an ability to understand others more than himself. The consensus seems to be that Swansea will easily survive in the Premier League. That may be premature, but I hope not. Let's hope too that Rodgers doesn't start to believe his own hype. It happens y'know...
And thence - is this going to be the world's clumsiest segue? Perhaps - to Old Trafford for my last match of the season, Huddersfield Town v Peterborough United for a place in the Championship Swansea were so desperate to leave behind. God, I love the play-offs. Alas, the people of Peterborough seems less interested, but it feels like half of Huddersfield is here.
Weirdly, there's hardly anybody I know well - and not the person I really wanted to see - and I'm the only one who seems genuinely excited by the whole afternoon, but no matter. The game is too strange for words. In Twitter form (Aizlewood1, thanks for asking: the same gibberish, but shorter): "Huddersfield all over Peterborough. Peterborough score three. Peterborough promoted". I swear nobody in the ground saw it coming. I didn't. In my runner, there may have been a sentence about the inevitability of Huddersfield scoring. I wasn't alone.
Afterwards, Lee Clark is so bereft, he's almost inaudible. I ask him about team selection, but only gently. He bats it away gently, but he has a point: their defensive away formation had meant they'd been unbeaten in 2011. He'll be back, but it's going to be a struggle for him. If they don't do it next year in a tougher Division 1, as Jim Reeves once said, he'll have to go
Darren Ferguson takes an eternity to join us. I feel sorry for him, having to deflect questions about his dad all the time and I do wish he wouldn't slouch like some recalcitrant teenager, but he's the real deal as a manager, despite the misstep at Preston. Going back to Peterborough speaks volumes about his attitude. Going back to Peterborough and taking them up speaks volumes about his ability.
He won't stay there forever and already his side is looking like it's breaking up with the terrific Craig Mackail-Smith and George Boyd surely sure to flee. Then they'll be struggling again. Then things will get tricky again. Then he'll be off again.
I drive home slowly, wanting to drag the season out for a little longer. Just like I used to hang around the ground after the last match of the season. Some things can never change.