My first day on the Algarve for Sunderland's pre-season friendlies has already thrown up a surprise or two. A maverick taxi driver who almost brought my trip to a premature end by ploughing into the back of a coach and the sight of Roy Keane sunbathing at my hotel.
I was still recovering from my near death experience - okay so I probably wouldn't have died, just suffered a bit of whiplash but still - when I arrived at my four star hotel in Albufeira and discovered I was not alone.
Using the lift to get to my room, the doors opened and there was Graham Kavanagh waiting to enter. Surprising because I'd forgotten he was still a Sunderland player and surprising because, quite by accident, I had managed to book into the same hotel as Sunderland.
Now this sort of thing is generally frowned upon by football clubs who don't want journalists hanging around, but I thought as long as I kept a low profile and Roy doesn't see me I'll be fine.
Fat chance. Having spent the afternoon working hard after a brief wonder around the town I decided to catch some evening sunshine to put some colour in a pasty chops.
Unfortunately, having lay down to engross myself in a good book I failed to realise that Sunderland's coaching staff were sat about 20 meters away with Roy apparently meditating on a sun lounger.
Do I get up and leave without drawing attention to myself...too late Roy is up and walking in my direction. Eyes hidden menacingly behind sunglasses I think he is about to say something, but thankfully he just looks at me and looks away, refusing to acknowledge my presence in classic Keane style. I don't think I've ever been so glad to be ignored!
There was a time - when I was still at school I hasten to add - when journalists mixed freely with both players and managers, often sharing the team coach to travel to away games, as well as swapping stories over a pint in the local pub.
Those days, however, are long gone. Both Sunderland and Newcastle have attempted to stop players having any sort of personal relationship with journalists, even asking new signings to change their numbers so that anyone in the media who did have their number no longer has it.
This is the age of the press office, official websites and official magazines where brands are marketed and public comments sanitised before consumption.
Of course, we hacks do not give up that easily and most of the half decent among us still have "contacts" at clubs which have escaped the press office radar, but it is getting harder and harder to establish any sort of personal relationship with the people we write about.
That isn't always a bad thing. When I was a 15-year-old on work experience at the East Anglian Daily Times the vastly experienced sports writer - Tony Garnett - told me that he was reluctant to like a manager or a player because it made it more difficult to be objective.
There are journalists out there - you know the ones that give the rest of us a bad name - who wouldn't think twice about plunging a knife (in this day and age I should hasten to add the knife is metaphorical) into a "friends" back for the sake of a good story, but he had a point.
I won't be making any friends with Sunderland players while I'm here and I certainly won't be making a friend of the man who "doesn't do friends," Roy Keane!
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