WHERE to start? Where to start? Where to start?

Last week my missus was looking at me in a funny way, with the kind of smile that makes me think she’s done something totally daft.

“You’ve got a grey hair,” she told me, practically giddy. I’m 25 by the way. She couldn’t get enough of it. Personally, I wasn’t surprised; this season was bound to have that kind of effect on anyone associated with Swindon Town.

It ended in the kind of brilliant mess that somehow the club has managed to manipulate as its everyday persona for the past four months – a last-minute equaliser, a never-say-die attitude and a missed penalty in a dramatic shootout. Absurd and mesmeric. Abhorrent yet utterly compelling.

One day we’ll look back on 2012/13 and raise a wry smile. Perhaps right now it is still too soon to even smirk. You, me and the guy in the seat next to you - all of us, in it together like some kind of sadomasochist marriage.

As a Swindon Town fan you can’t expect anything less. This club has been through the wringer enough times to wear you down to the brittle bone. But we always come back for more, as we will next season. And the season after.

We’ll never forget the past nine months of mayhem, not a chance. Too many highs, so many lows – it is a campaign that we’ll be harking back to when mediocrity returns, as inevitably one day it will.

Sitting down to write my review of the season last week I ended up writing a thesis, a horribly difficult analysis of how, what and why. It could have stretched to 15,000 words. Editorial directive limited it to a quarter of that.

The ‘what might have beens’ will forever rest on what we experienced. Had that team that so acutely dissected all opposition laid before it over the new year period been retained then automatic promotion may well have been the end result, and how magical that would have been. But it wasn’t. We have to face that.

Right now there is no point in playing the blame game. Feasibly you could point the finger at Jeremy Wray, Paolo Di Canio, Andrew Black, Phil Spencer, Sir William Patey, Jed McCrory, Kevin MacDonald and the bloke who insists on booing at the first misplaced pass of any given game. That’ll do no good to anyone.

Doug Coupland, the Canadian novelist, once uttered words that perhaps sum up our season. “Blame is just a lazy person’s way of making sense of chaos”. Chaos is exactly what it was; and chaos can be truly understood by no one.

Through these turbulent times there have been only a limited number of constants – the fans, the majority of the players and the guys and gals that make the club function day in and day out. You, all of you, have been magnificent. You deserved more.

Instead we now look forward while looking back, preparing ourselves for austerity. Necessary austerity, but austerity nonetheless. We can laugh, cry or scream bloody murder at the prospect, but it’s going to happen.

But we are Swindon Town; we know how to deal with this. Very few groups of fans in the Football League will have experienced the extreme and routine highs and lows as the hardy folk that gather at the County Ground every fortnight. We’ll move on, but we won’t forget.

We won’t forget James Collins sliding in at the back post at Stoke, we won’t forget Gary Roberts scoring from inside his own half, we won’t forget Aden Flint rising above the Brentford defence to inflict delirium in the away end at Griffin Park.

We won’t forget the pandemonium of January, the near-miss of a cut-price firesale, the unanswered questions, the missed opportunities, the depths of despair and the unadulterated ecstasy.

We won’t forget the nonsense in the nationals, the late-night statements, the bizarre twists and crazy turns, the midnight office raids, the smashed perspex, Chris Dunlavy and our old friend, the word embargo.

Perhaps in time we can forgive, but there is no way we will forget.