Today is one of the big days of the sporting calendar for me.
I always look forward to the first day of a league season and as it draws closer I get excited.
As I head for Tannadice this afternoon there will be butterflies in my stomach, something that usually only happens these days when I’ve had a dodgy curry the night before.
Grumpy as ever, though, I have to admit my sense of anticipation this time round has been tempered by one unhappy fact I cannot escape from.
Dundee and United are both in the Championship and it makes me sad.
It really does, it’s depressing.
Now I know because they are the two biggest clubs in there, there’s been a lot of hype about the coming campaign.
And the return of city derbies for the first time in three years is something for us all to be looking forward to.
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But I can’t get excited even about them because, for me, and I am sure every diehard Arab or Dark Blue out there, I am sure they would much rather the big game was taking place at Premiership level.
I’ve been doing this job for over 30 years, or “too long” as my sports editor describes it, and this is only the second season in that time that both my teams have been out of the top flight together.
If it was such a good thing they’d have tried it far more often.
It means my hope for the coming nine months is not to be entertained or even excited by United and Dundee.
It’s to escape the purgatory of not being able to watch Premiership football on a regular basis unless I travel or switch on my TV.
Over the last three years seeing United go close, but fail, to regain their status in the top division has been a major disappointment.
If both were to miss out this season my upset would be off the Richter Scale.
It goes, therefore, without saying that my definition of a perfect 2019/20 campaign is one where one of them gets automatic promotion and the other goes up via the play-offs.
It might, even could, happen, but given the ever-hazardous nature of the Championship, it might not.
United could be burdened by the memory of those previous failures of the past three campaigns.
And Dundee kicked off last night with the knowledge that it’s traditionally very hard for a relegated club to bounce back.
Despite that, I’ve seen enough of both them and United to be cautiously optimistic about what’ll happen. Hopefully that will mean an end to this football hell.
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