I surprised myself by going to a ridiculous 240 matches last season, beating my record by 36. The shrinking "close season" was more bearable than usual, thanks to daily coverage on TV of the World Cup in Germany.

But I should own up to missing a couple of the group fixtures – one to watch some athletics on another channel that featured a world record for the 100 metres and one to take in a documentary on Attila the Hun.

I’ve never been a huge fan of pre-season friendlies – some of them can be pretty dire – and I didn’t mind waiting until last Saturday for my first match for six and a half weeks.

At lunchtime down in Eastbourne there was thunder and lightning and torrential rain – but it was over quickly and there was no danger of Borough’s match with Gravesend & Northfleet being called off. In fact, the Priory Lane pitch looked perfect.

‘Fleet, now a full-time Conference club, notched a goal in each half to win 2-0 and the attendance was a respectable 311. For "The Barber" it was a typical first match after a long break. When I thought it had to be half-time, I realised they’d only been playing for 12 minutes.

On Friday I was delighted to be invited to the London Football League’s Presentation Evening at the International Students House in Great Portland Street.

I’ve watched about a hundred of their matches in the last two seasons at Paddington Rec and the teams coming up to the stage to collect their trophies were all very familiar to me.

What I wasn’t expecting was to pick up an award myself!

No, it wasn’t for "Fan of the Season" because I’m basically the only one they have. I was aware there was going to be a "World Cup Quiz" during the evening but had assumed wrongly that it would only relate to this summer’s tournament.

It actually covered the whole history of the World Cup back to 1930. I was part of the "Referees and Fan" Team for the Quiz and we got 42 points out of a maximum of 43.

I hope to see my second match of the new campaign, and 5,134th all told, in Bournemouth at the weekend.