I can't honestly remember the last long, hot summer. Not weather-wise, anyway.
Football-wise and I have a strong suspicion that the summer of '08 is going to break all records – it will be very long, very fraught and for some, all-too hot to handle.
In part that is the nature of the beast when a manager sets his heart out on staging a revolution. On the field or, indeed, off it, City boss Glenn Roeder is ripping Colney to pieces and starting all over again.
And if it takes until the fourth week of August before all his pieces are in place, so be it.
The new Canary chief has long made it clear that he relishes life on the edge and if he has to wait till the 11th hour to prise, say, a Ched Evans out of Mark Hughes' grasp at Eastlands then he will wait until the 11th hour. After all, that's what makes life worth living – being out there, on the line, where the metal meets the meat.
Certainly those of a nervous disposition should go and find a darkened room somewhere and not venture forth until the start of September when, finally, the dust might slowly start to settle.
The likelihood always was that a whole generation of Academy 'starlets' would bite the dust this summer; there was always a chance that Roeder would grasp the nettle marked 'D Huckerby'. So the exit of nine players this summer was pretty much written in the stars.
It is the bloodbath among the back-room staff that has probably left one or two people feeling slightly uneasy – particularly when, for now, only one person has been replaced, namely the kitman Terry Postle.
Otherwise with three weeks to go before the start of pre-season, the Canaries are still without a physio department, a sports scientist and an Under-14 Academy coach.
But with Roeder now back from his own, short summer break, you suspect that the pace of appointments will pick up – as will the pace of transfer activity witnessed by the way in which the whole Shola Ameobi saga has taken a new and, potentially, dramatic twist over the last 24 hours.
Because at some point in the none-too distant future, something has to give. Someone, somewhere has to start the summer transfer ball rolling as players and managers alike start to drift back from their summer breaks and look for an answer as to where they will, actually, be come July 1.
As ever, those first in the market are those with the cash to spend. Which in the Championship's case is Queen's Park Rangers. They can go out and have first pick because they have no need to wait for the real, hard bartering to start. The lad wants ?14,000 a week… Fine. Job done.
It was similar with Charlton last season; with a Premiership parachute payment to burn and the strong conviction that they would only be with us for a season anyway, they hit the ground running and whipped Luke Varney out from under Peter Grant's nose. A lucky escape, you can't help but feeling.
Forest, too, appear set on making a big splash on their return to the Championship – ?2.75 million is a big sum to be slapping on Robert Earnshaw's head. Someone there means business.
The interesting one – the real unknown – is the one down the road, Marcus Evans.
Watch the boardroom politics at play at Portman Road and something is afoot. David Sheepshanks' removal to a figure-head only role as 'non-executive chairman' looks for all the world as if Evans is rolling his sleeves up and really getting stuck into the Suffolk club – woe betide Jim Magilton is his season doesn't get off to a flier.
Which is why the Ameobi move is so telling; he is the classic 'in-betweeny' of Roeder's thoughts; a man who could 'blitz' the Championship – dodgy hip notwithstanding.
Now if QPR have already decided that their interests lie elsewhere, then Ameobi's signature becomes the prize fight for the Championship's second-tier of clubs financially.
Rangers have the field to themselves; Iain Dowie has a bottomless pit of cash to play with.
Who holds the next strongest cards is the big question; just what do the Turners come to the table with this summer? At Wolves, has Steve Morgan's love-affair with Molineux proved a costly mistake? Is he going to keep on pumping fresh cash in?
Is everyone thinking along the same lines loan-wise? Will one almighty scramble unfold in the second and third weeks of August when what's left of anyone's transfer budget gets hoovered up by Premiership loan fees and agents' expenses as the Gibbs, the Bertrands, the Corks and the Evans' of this world are gently brought to the table by their top flight masters?
That's where the real war will be fought – over someone else's players. And that's the tragedy; that all the Championship clubs will merely succeed in feathering nests of the Premiership clubs; that the long-term 'value' of hitting that teenage loan market hard is next to nil.
It is little more than a short-term fix for a potentially huge short-term gain – but it is all short-term; sticking plaster solutions to the fundamental financial divides that bedevil the relationship between Premiership and the Championship.
So, if you are anxious now, you ain't seen anything yet. It will be long, messy, fraught and potentially very painful. Don't say you were never warned…
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