Dagger to the heart

I'M noticing strange things happening around me.
I guess it reached a crescendo at about 3.45pm on Saturday.
I just happened to mention that I was going out for a "breath of fresh air" and spotted something out of the corner of my eye.
One of my work colleagues - not realising I was paying attention - nodded his head in my direction, whispered to the boss and pointed to his eye.
You know, like that moment in Italia '90.
Midway through extra time of the semi-final between England and Germany.
The bit where Gary Lineker fixes Bobby Robson with a stare, points at Gascoigne and then puts his finger to his head.
"He's gone", he is saying.
Perhaps my colleague thinks I'm gone.
No doubt it's because I have just heard the awful, or Ifil, news. Our centre half of the moment Jerel Ifil (about the 20th to be tried in that position this season) has been sent off.
Worse still, from the resulting free kick my beloved Gas have gone 1-0 down to Dagenham and Bloody Redbridge in our collosal relegation clash at the Mem.
And maybe it's because, as a consequence of this, I have found myself singing a verse from Bristol Rovers' anthem Goodnight Irene. Not the first verse, the well known one we all sing on the terraces, but the lesser known one.
The one that says: "Sometimes I live in the country, sometimes I live in the town, sometimes I take a great notion, to jump in the river and drown."
After all, 13 floors below me and just a hop and skip away are the dark waters of the Thames.
I think my workmates are expecting this awful latest twist in the Bristol Rovers tragedy to push me over the edge.
Not yet. Even with 10 men we might be able to achieve a remarkable turnaround with 45 minutes to go.
And with 10 minutes left we appear to be still in the game. In fact, judging by the BBC feed I have to rely on we actually seem to be pushing forward quite a bit.
Then Sky wakes me up to the fact - 2-0 Dagenham. Game over.
I am destroyed.
Whipping boys of Bristol 0,
Home of that bird who finished in the top six of the X factor 2.
I have a three-hour journey home in which to digest this latest news. To consider the fact that even our manager Dave Penney is now admitting that we will almost certainly get relegated to League football's dingy basement.
It makes matters worse when a section of the poxy M4 is closed and I'm diverted around the wilds of Wiltshire, extending my journey even further.
How did we get here? What has gone so terribly wrong?
And I have to concede that the writing has been on the wall for a long, long time - not just the 13 games that the underfire Mr Penney has been in charge.
I think back to all the promises made by our board of directors that promotion via the play-offs at Wembley in front of more than 30,000 loyal gasheads was "just the start".
The ambition was to carry things on to the next stage, become established in League One and then aim for the Championship.
Maybe even developed our OWN purpose-built stadium, something the club has never possessed in its history.
Not sure what the timescale was for our glorious elevation to the Championship, but I don't think three years was pushing it.
Other teams in recent times have done it, of course. Blackpool are the shining example, but Swansea City and Doncaster both push them close.
There may be others, too.
But somehow the conviction never rang true with Rovers, however much I wanted to believe it.
Better teams inhabit the third tier of the football league these days. Even when we went up we had to contend with the likes of Leeds.
We've also had to encounter Southampton, Leicester, Charlton, Sheffield Wednesday - all massive football names with massive football budgets.
In comparison we rely on the goodwill of a few local businessmen, have NEVER really had a professional backroom operation, play at what looks like a glorified cattle market pen and on a churned up paddy field of a rugby pitch, and rely very heavily on the amazing fanatasism and goodwill of an extremely dedicated and loyal fanbase.
If success did come our way it would be a miracle on a par with satisfying the hunger of an entire Glastonbury crowd with five cans of Carling and two bags of pork scratchings.
Paul Trollope and Lennie Lawrence did what they could but, let's be honest, if it hadn't been for a few clubs being docked points we could have been back down at the first time of asking.
They managed to get us to the lofty heights of 12th next season - and I must admit I was pretty excited about what might follow. After all, the one constant was that we had a prolific goalscorer in our ranks called Rickie Lambert, who was helping us to punch above our weight.
Sadly, just one game into the next season he had gone. To Southampton for a decent fee.
We were told the money would be made available to replace him but we never did.
And, despite a decent early spell to season 2009/2010 it soon became clear that all was not rosy.
A 5-1 defeat at Norwich was followed by six successive defeats (including one in the cup) and though we managed to recover thanks mainly to a couple of decent loan signings in February, our season petered out with another shambolic set of results.
In the summer Lennie departed, leaving us with Trolls and our youth manager promoted to the post of assistant coach.
And despite the assertions that we would be pushing for the play-offs, I harboured fears of what was to come. The squad was pretty small, experienced players had been replaced by relatively young men, and there didn't seem to be an abundance of seasoned battlers in the ranks.
Outwardly I was excited about the season.
Inwardly, I am not sure whether it was natural pessimism or cold hard realism that told me it was going to be a struggle.
Ah, this season. Where to start? Well, perhaps leave that for another day.
Feelings are too raw at the moment, my mind too numb.
It would be easy to call for ANOTHER managerial sacking, another upheaval, another straw to clutch - as many are already doing on the message boards.
But for the moment I've got duties to perform at home, like put out the bins.
That's if I can find my shoelaces.
My wife seems to have removed them from every piece of my footwear in the house.