Alex Cooke has decided to have some calm down time, why don’t you..?

You are on a beach, a beautiful sunny beach. The warm sea laps gently at your toes. The drink in your hand is perfectly chilled. All you can hear are the calls of birds singing in the shady trees. Breathe in. Hold it. And breathe out.

There.

Feeling a bit calmer now? Good. You should be because over the last few days This Is, Twitter and the Town End Forum have seen more lost head than a skip full of Betty Blew, The Big Blew and The Rodfather DVDs.

First, the highly paid Simon Ferry was released and Twitter moaned as if a hog roast had been held the Wailing Wall. Then a highly paid (and frankly on the slide) striker called Paul Benson didn’t move to Oxford and suddenly panic buying saw every shop in Swindon run out of tins, powered milk, and nooses. Finally, Aden Flint’s transfer request was turned down and three blokes in Dorcan went outside in bright sunlight holding magnifying glasses and wearing overcoats of super unleaded.

Of course, everything isn’t fine at Swindon Town. There are many reasons to be genuinely concerned at the direction of the club but panic, wanton abuse and general twattery really doesn’t help. Even using Tim-Berner’s Lee’s world-changing invention to call chairman Jed McCory a ‘back-of-spoon-reflected pig-bloated fiddlehole’ probably won’t help.

Just relax, for a bit.

At the moment many, many people have about as much perspective as LS Lowry, but they are far more prolific with their grim sketches of life. Certainly, worry about the total lack of a vision for the club. Worry about the lack of meaningful communication about everything from the manager’s position to the board’s composition. Worry about how investors seem to appear only to be dismissed like pop-up windows on porn sites – and often with the same chance of passing ‘fit and proper persons’. In fact, you can worry about all of these things, but just don’t joining the mass knee-jerking, it’s getting like a cockney wedding out there.

Instead of panicking, ask questions of those in power yourself, or support those who want to ask them on your behalf, such as the Trust. Do some research on comparable League One wage structures or fan ownership, even write a blog – after all it has helped me calm down, a bit.

If you can’t do that, find yourself that beach, find yourself that cold, cold drink, or lose your smart phone for a month or two. Or, as Walter Sobchak says ‘fuck it dude, let’s go bowling’.

And breathe.