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It’s getting closer. The signing of Fraizer Campbell from Man Utd was a welcome start to Steve Bruce’s transfer dealings; more news can be expected soon. Pete Sixsmith is already in pre-season training, and tells of a visit to Brighouse that included a few moments with George Mulhall, a fondly remembered winger of the old school who served Sunderland superbly back when Pete and I first started going to Roker Park …

The town of Brighouse, along with its smaller neighbour Raistrick, is synonymous with brass bands.

Who can ever forget cringing at Terry Wogan’s stilted movements as he “conducted” the band in The Floral Dance – and reached the Top Twenty with it. Goodness, he even appeared on Top Of The Pops complete with equally stilted grin amid the hot pants and short skirts.

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The response to our publication of extracts from Tash Scott‘s evocative account of her first visit to the Stadium of Light, from her home a long way away (Cornwall, but she’s as Red and White as her father and grandfather), spoke for itself. If ever a story deserved to be told in full, this was it. Here, then, is Tash’s tale, written at 14* …

Mum had once again decided that the house looked like “a bomb had hit it”, and sent me and my brother upstairs to tidy our mess ridden rooms. I stood tentatively in the doorway looking into the abyss. The bright sun was shining through the translucent window, covered in a thousand finger prints. It shone gently across my unmade bed as though it was a blanket laid neatly across the mess.

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That, says Pete Sixsmith (the only around here who seems to be working, but come back soon for the full version of Tash’s brilliant essay), is the question. He reports on concerns voiced elsewhere about our failure, so far, to land a single new player. Those concerns may be premature. Man Utd, having lost a special if immensely irritating Portuguese individual, have barely begun their own buying (albeit with less need than us) and already we’re fretting. But perhaps the thoughts being expressed just now reflect the impatience, suspicion and fear that, together with a weakness for being unfair constitute the essential attributes of the true Sunderland fan …

The first friendly is a week away. We have not signed one player yet. Bruce needs to get something sorted out quickly or else we will be left behind in the race for mid table respectability. This is not good enough for a club of our stature. We should be looking at Ibrahimovic, not Crouch, Vidic not Da Silva, Etoo not Bent.

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It’s summer. Not much going on, save for transfer speculation (Roy Keane maybe in for Carlos and Nyron, us undecided between Rooney and Drogba – well, the first bit is true, according to the papers) …the new season approaching but still far enough away not to worry about. Let Pete Sixsmith, then, introduce Tash, a great new Salut! Sunderland writing talent with heartwarming words about her first visit to the Stadium of Light …

As June limps out and July dashes in, the new season comes ever closer. There are just over two weeks to our first pre-season game at Darlington and here, at Sixsmith Towers, there is a little flutter of excitement in the not inconsiderable tummy as yet another dawn arrives that promises to be as true as an Elvis Costello shot rather than as false as a Labour Party manifesto.

The love and affection (and occasional contempt) that the grizzled veterans of Roker Park have for the club is well documented.

Some live close enough to feel it 24/7, while others live far enough away to have a more detached view. Sometimes, we take Sunderland for granted, with the world weary, cynical view that we have seen it all before and no doubt we will see it all again.

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Pete Sixsmith‘s many qualities were not previously thought to include a talent for fashion commentary. Then Mike Ashley decided to have yet another (last?) laugh at the expense of Mags by coming up with the ugliest, most inappropriate away strip imaginable. Pete’s first reaction was “Yellow and Gold: ugh!!” This is his second …

Just when Newcastle supporters thought it was safe to come out of the house, the new away strip is launched on an unsuspecting and incredulous public. Yellow and orange stripes are, in the words of one of my Magpie students, “absolutely minging” and just about sums up the general feeling of anyone with any kind of colour/dress sense.

It could well be that this is Ashley’s parting gift to the club and city that has come to loathe him as much as we loathed McMenemey 25 years ago. If so, it’s a hell of a leaving pressie, expecting the rapidly diminishing number of Toon Army foot soldiers to walk around looking like giant deckchairs.

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The front cover, very amusing, is as good a reason as you need to buy the latest issue of When Saturday Comes.

Better still, buy two and send one copy to me.

And then get hold of the new A Love Supreme …

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