At the end of this week, it will have been a full month since the curtain came down at the end of Swindon Town’s worst-ever season and the wait for something or anything goes on.

In a surprising turn of events, the news began to happen the day before I took a five-day end-of-season sojourn last week rather than as soon as the wheels left the tarmac at Heathrow. Although I had intended to try and switch off from Swindon, it was, admittedly, a mistake to go and watch a lower-league team struggle to make any progress with a short-passing style and then concede soft goals. I am sure the cold sweats and Vietnam flashbacks had to do with something else in the Bavarian sunshine.

But before all of that attempted relaxation, the key event of last week was that The Trust sent a clear message with their open letter. What felt like a necessary ultimatum to try and spark change was met with a limp response that committed to absolutely nothing but a meeting some ways down the road. It was worth a go to set something in motion but all we continue to know is that the club are still stewing over a route forward. This had better be some tajine they are cooking up.

128 days feels like enough time to settle on a new boss, but now even the Derek Adams talk has faded away and a decision seems as far away as ever. Every team now knows what division they will be playing in, Bradford City have started going about signing the whole Stockport County squad, and Swindon are not even at a point when you can start speculating about how the summer could go.

Swindon tread water in a footballing and non-footballing purgatory, their legs not trying to kick in any particular direction. The Early Bird season ticket deadline draws ever nearer and as Trust Vice Chair James Phipps said when I spoke to him, what has happened for the numbers that were low enough for it to be mentioned in the Advisory Board meeting to have gone up?

If there was truly a desire to go out and win hearts and minds this summer, to prove that those on social media were overreacting then where is the road map for that? I think, instead, the sat nav remains in the box. What the Trust did was not really an attack on the ownership, but an invitation for the club to display why they feel they are doing the right things. Instead, that tortoise head continues to recede so far back into its shell that you can see its neck from the back.

Personally, I don’t buy into the fan paranoia of seeing other clubs make early signings and think that has any impact. You can be prepared and make progress without having snapped up all the people willing to take the first offer that comes their way, but that is not what this is. Any sense of calm goes out of the window when nobody appears to be driving.

All of this may be a bit déjà vu, as I have asked the question a fair few times about what is going on with the manager search. Believe me, I have been trying to find out. But when a football club reaches rock bottom and then seems paralyzed by inaction, it is hard not to feel like as we pan out it turns out that we are rolling down an even bigger crater. Shouting “Wake up!” doesn’t seem to have made an impact, does anyone have any idea of what might?