They say time heals, and its wheels seem to run more quickly during New Year, so now seems like a good time to get my broken love affair off my chest.

It happened a couple of years ago, around the time when Swindon Town appointed Paolo Di Canio as manager. In fact, it was on that very day.

I used to think STFC was in my DNA, but despite watching many hundreds of matches at the County Ground, visiting half the country’s football grounds for away games and even writing a handful of match reports for this paper, it all ended abruptly.

Di Canio made fascist salutes to Italian fans and has tattoos glorifying Benito Mussolini.

Not many people in Swindon thought this had much to do with football at the time and some fans maybe wondered who Mussolini was. But maybe I was too keen a student of history, because I couldn’t see past what I knew about Mussolini, an ethnic cleanser and an ally of Hitler who sanctioned – among many other atrocities – the bombing of Red Cross hospitals.

No friend of Mussolini is a friend of mine, so suddenly the club didn’t seem to belong to me any more, nor I to it, even though I was (and still am) a shareholder.

Even worse: when I questioned the club’s wisdom on Twitter, it produced a vitriolic response from a few fans who considered themselves ‘true fans’ (but sounded more like a mob), which seemed to prove my point.

The feeling at the time was that Di Canio was going to transform the club, although some fans now tell me they think he took it backwards – and nearly into oblivion.

I saw no option but to break off the affair, but it was made much less painful because I had also fallen out of love with football in general.

What we used to justifiably call ‘the beautiful game’ seemed to get more sordid by the day, and that was even before the likes of Luis Suarez were made into heroes and once-proud clubs thought of giving sanctuary to a rapist.

Football still seems fatally flawed at all levels – from the bottom, where poor grass roots coaching is still at the root of the perennial failure of the England team, to the top, and the dubious motives of the FIFA bigwigs.

And when league clubs, for example, choose money over the magic of giving their fans a run in the FA Cup, the writing is on the wall. Only a fool continues an affair that has no romance.

On New Year’s Eve my brother, who still has a season ticket, asked me if this year would be the one when I returned to the fold.

But I doubt that my appetite for football will ever return.

Worse still: there is no way of falling in love again, once you’ve fallen out.

I now spend most of my Saturday afternoons with somebody I haven’t fallen out of love with, and I’ve watched my last game at the County Ground.

If I sound bitter, I’m not, and I wish the best for the club – firstly because I am friends with or related to far too many people who haven’t lost the faith, but especially because Town now have an intelligent manager who has a great philosophy, including playing attractive football and putting faith in young players.

And it’s just my luck that after sticking with the club through some very dark times indeed, as soon as I turn my back they start winning.