Just 24 hours to go then, to the biggest sporting event of the year. You have to feel for the Chinese - years of work and billions of yuan poured into the Olympics, only to have the attention of the world diverted from the opening day by Barrow against Oxford.
So, are you excited about the new football season? No, me neither.
When I was a kid it seemed like a lifetime from one season to the next, but these days it seems like I haven't digested the one just ended before the next one is upon us. Part of this is undoubtedly just me being older, because we all know that time passes so much faster as we age. (A while back I booked tickets for Stevie Wonder and noticed that it was exactly three months until the concert, and realised that when I was young that would have passed so slowly. Without me noticing, it is suddenly only five weeks away.) But another part of it is definitely the sort of blaring, endless hype parodied so brilliantly by David Mitchell here.
That said, it will be nice to be watching a football match I actually care about, as opposed to one in which I have little more than an academic interest. History is a curious beast, is it not? I imagine when Oxford played their first ever league game against Barrow on 18 August 1962, the Cumbrians must have wondered what they were doing playing a lowly team like Oxford. And I bet that many an ignorant Oxford fan will be thinking the same tomorrow. Let's just hope that playing on TV against the biggest team in the division - sad but true - doesn't inspire them the way it did the titans of Droylsden and Histon against us last season.
Anyway, time to resume my non-league travelogue. Barrow was a small fishing village (32 dwellings and two pubs in 1843) until the Industrial Revolution, when it became a centre for shipbuilding. From the 1960s nuclear submarines were built there, but the end of the Cold War has not been good for Barrow and unemployment has risen. Some Barrow nuggets:
1) In 2002 Barrow suffered the UK's worst ever outbreak of Legionnaire's disease - seven people died.
2) The population of Barrow has barely altered in 100 years, fluctuating between 73-75,000. The ethnic population constitutes just 5.7%, the non-white population a mere 2.8%.
3) 23% of people in Barrow are on benefits (the national average is 14%).
4) Former England football captain Emlyn Hughes was born in Barrow.
5) So was original Jethro Tull bass player Glenn Cornick.
OK, I'm struggling now. Incidentally, Glenn Cornick has a website full of wonderful old pictures of his time in Jethro Tull. It's a really tremendous resource for people interested in the band. Makes me wish I was one of them.
