Most Newcastle United fans will have woken up this morning hoping it had all been a bad dream. Sadly, like the morning after a ridiculously heavy night before, it will all have come flooding back, all the regret, pain, anger and confusion which made Tuesday September 2nd one of the club's worst.
For now, it seems, Kevin Keegan remains as Newcastle United manager, but we simply do not know whether the peace talks instigated by owner Mike Ashley are going to lead to a lasting truce.
Keegan is frustrated and he is angry and he is never at his most rationale in that mood. He feels promises to him have been broken and he is struggling to have a working relationship with managing director Derek Llambias and, perhaps, other members of the Newcastle board appointed by Ashley to run the club in his absence.
There will be more meetings this week but I should warn that, if Keegan does not get the reassurances he needs, if he does not get the feeling he has the 100% support of the board and if he feels his control is being undermined by other powerbrokers at St James's Park, his second spell as manager will come to an end.
This is crunch time for Ashley and I wonder whether he will have to make a straight choice, either Llambias goes or it's Keegan who heads for the exit door, ushering in the protesting masses as he leaves.
Ashley has been in football for a season and a bit and he is still - or rather the people he has appointed - are making far too many mistakes which pure football people like Keegan can't tolerate.
It will be fascinating stuff for the national media - and some serious questions have to be asked about the manner in which Sky Sports News reported the story, masquerading rumour as fact, before quietly shifting the emphasis when they realised they had got it spectacularly wrong - to pour over, but I'd imagine it is agonising for those who actually care about their football club.
I was asked to give an interview on Radio Five Live last night in which I described the events on Tyneside on Tuesday as "traumatic" and if ever such a powerful word should be used in football, I think this was it.
Of course the sound of a cockney talking about how much Kevin meant to the people of this city may have confused a few people who had tuned in before going to sleep - I'm sure I helped them! - but I think, caught up in the emotion myself, I might even have used the word love!
Okay so the rent-a-mob outside SJP were typically cringe worthy - why can't they ever find someone sensible to interview? - but the strength of feeling yesterday for Keegan was staggering. Probably because most sensible people are at work, but there you go!
If ever anyone needed evidence of why Newcastle is such a unique footballing city, they got it. Everyone, and I mean everyone, I have spoken to in the last 48 hours has had something to say about the situation - none of complimentary about the board.
Perhaps it is about time those from down south who have bought a vested interest in Newcastle United started to wake up and smell the coffee.
They have almost sparked the sort of mass rebellion rarely seen in Premier League football. They have pulled it back from the brink for now, but the situation remains on a knife edge and if you slip with your legs open it blooming well hurts!
I should probably finally add that the wife - you know the Newcastle season ticket holder with the red hair and the short temper - is also keen to express her view that, if Dennis Wise is appointed manager in the event Keegan leaves, she will never go to watch them again while he is in charge, three year season ticket deal or not!
I suspect she won't be the only one finding alternative forms of Saturday entertainment if that does indeed turn out to be the case. Let's just hope it doesn't come to that...
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