I was excited about Bradford away — damn my thin blood!

AS you read this, I'll either be in, or just discharged from, the Vascular Unit at Barnet General Hospital.

When I was a kid I had a deep vein thrombosis and this week's surgery is a bid to slow the steady deterioration of my leg due to the consequent lousy circulation.

Apologies, incidentally, to this newspaper's editor for finishing a paragraph with the phrase 'lousy circulation'.

Nothing to be alarmed about guv'nor, back to the Saturday lunchtime gin and tonic...

I had originally managed to get the operation scheduled for the summer, well away from crucial League Two fixtures.

But it had to be cancelled at the last minute due to the spectacular warfarin-induced thinness of my blood.

"It's not safe to operate", said the surgeon. "And with blood that thin it would make a right mess in our operating theatre."

Regular readers will note with interest that it's not just my brain that shows every sign of being decidedly sloppy.

Although, I can at least turbo-charge the classic football fans boast: "If you cut me, I bleed Grecian red blood ... and very rapidly indeed too."

So the surgery has been rearranged for the week of perhaps City's most enticing away trip of the season.

Certainly for this Grecian, with a love of big games at big grounds in front of big crowds, missing an early season encounter at Valley Parade is a real choker.

I also love big cities — and in particular those with a touch of Victorian industrial grandeur to them — so a trip to Bradford was always high on the 'must-do' list.

Oh, and word on the street is that with scores of Asian restaurants in and around Bradford, there's a decent karahi gosht to be had there too.

Ah well, that's life. At least — and I know I've mentioned this phenomenon many times before in other contexts — I go under the knife off the back of a City win, rather than skulking into hospital fretting about our poor form.

I may stop short of waving away the anaesthetist with a confident: "Ahh, don't bother with that stuff, bauy, City won at the weekend so I'll feel no pain."

But it was lovely to start a week that I've not exactly been relishing with a timely little morale boost from St James's Park.

Good old City, eh? They NEVER let us down.

It's been 15 years since I — or Exeter City — last set foot in Bradford.

I was about to write that City lost 6-1 but, having checked the records, I now realise that it was a 6-0 defeat.

A strange case of false consolation goal syndrome there.

Future City striker Sean McCarthy and future Premier League manager Paul Jewell scored two each for Bradford that day, incidentally.

As we forlornly left Bradford, a group of pre-teen kids banged the roof of our car and shrieked 'naha, 6-0!', followed by a few choice words of Yorkshire abuse. One of our lads wound the window down, and shouted back: "Yeah, we were counting." As comebacks go it's pretty weak but, for some reason, it's stayed with me as kind of disarming.

It's funny to think that those gobby kids are now well into their 20's, and could easily be taking a nipper of their own to today's big game.

It's less funny to think that on our last visit to Bradford I didn't have a care in the world other than Exeter City.

And now, I can't even make it to the ground because I'm having trouble with my circulation! How middle-aged. But, if truth be told, I still don't really have a care in the world other than Exeter City... Enjoy the day then, fellow Grecians, with love from a jealous old crock. Give em a shout from me. Geddon City.