panicfc
30 Dec 2004, 12:11 PM
Lifted from the West Ham mailing list on Yahoogroups.com...with Sarf's permission.
==============================================
This genuinely happened to me last night, though I've obviously embelished some parts:
I went to bed quite happy though not overly so. I lay there for a while, for some reason a little hot rather than cold, unable to get to sleep. I opened the window in an effort to cool down but no, I was still hot. West Ham was not on my mind at this point, I was simply frustrated at not being able to get to sleep and if I didn't, I knew I'd have a hard time waking up in the morning. Anyway, midnight came and went, then 1am. Eventually I think I dozed off, but what followed all seemed very, very real. It went something like this:
A hot sunny day in May 2011, and West Ham are doing a lap of honour around the Upton Park, with their latest Premiership trophy. Unbeaten for three seasons now, we are the most successful team ever to grace the European circuit, with five European Cups in five successive seasons. I glanced down from the Director's box into the capacity 75,000 crowd, 30,000 of whom had been granted free life-time season tickets for staying with the club through thin and thin.
What was I doing in the Director's box you ask? It all goes back to early 2005, when I wrote a begging letter to Bill Gates, as follows:
Dear Mr Gates,
I write to you out of pure anger and desperation. I know you're not really into sport, but there is a little known part of East London which houses a legendary football (soccer) club. They are called West Ham United, and you've probably never heard of them. We are the only club side to ever win the World Cup, and were once the pride of the East End. Though you have probably never set foot in East London, I would like to request that you do. You should see this cauldron of pride and passion created by a desperate group of supporters.
In recent times we have seen our club raped, pillaged and abused by its current owners. They have overseen the systematic destruction of our club, selling our best young players and committing us to a life of scrounging. All this, while some Russian gangster has spent his piles of cash turning a previously unknown club into a European force.
Now Bill, this is your chance to really make yourself a household name in Europe and more importantly, a hero in the East End of London. You've got more money in your back pocket than the Russian could ever dream of, and I beg you, please put it to good use. Please help me to make West Ham United great again.
btw I've always been a big fan of your operating systems and associated software, and believe that the improvements to DNS in your release of Windows 2003 were genuinely worthwhile. I know all of our other supporters feel the same.
Yours,
Sarf
Anyway, thinking no more about it I was sitting at home the following Saturday. Listening to us struggle away to Rotherham, the doorbell rings. I open the door only to be confronted by a couple of blokes in dark suits and glasses, asking me to accompany them "for a little chat". "Oh ********" I thought, who have I upset? They wouldn't tell me anything and just kept telling me to "shut up **************". I was a little bit disturbed by all this, but I stayed calm for the short trip to what seemed like East Ham. Anyway, the limo eased past East Ham town hall and turned right off the Barking Road into Green Street.
Before me sat the Theatre of Cream, aka Upton Park, with its huge plastic turrets displayed in their fullest glory. There was something different about the old place, though I couldn't put my finger on it at first. Anyway, we pulled into the players' car park and I was told to get out. I did, seeing as by this time I was more than a little curious. I was hushed in, up the stairs and into one of the deluxe dining suites of the Quality Hotel. I was shoved inside and the door slammed behind me. 'twas a long room, with double-doors at each end. I stood around for a while and the door at the other end of the room opened. In walked some scraggy looking bloke with a perma-tan and messed up grey hair. Covered in bruises he was. I thought "I recognise you" but I couldn't put my finger on it. I remembered back to the one AGM I'd previously attended and then it hit me; it's Terry Brown. What could the uber-Chairman want with little me?
"You'll be needing these" he said as he threw a set of keys at me.
"What these for?" I said.
"this place, I've been told it's yours now"
"really? says who?"
"says Mr Gates, just take the bloody things, please"
Not wanting to cause him any further distress, I thanked him for the keys and told him to "******** off out of my house". He scuttled off, perma-tan flaking off before my very eyes, sobbing.
I sat there in the dining room for a while, stunned and not a little amazed by my new found fortune. "mine" I thought, "all mine". Oh well, better celebrate I suppose, so I reached for a bottle of West Ham-labelled Merlot from behind the bar. Downed it in one, then reached for another. Downed that and burped. As I burped, I was over-come by a feeling of being watched. I turned around to find none other than Bill Gates standing there.
"Sarf, my name's Gates, Billy Gates"
"Is this the place you were talking about?" he said
"Well yes, isn't it wonderful?"
Surprised by my classification of Upton Park as wonderful, he bit back
"What, this ********-hole, I've burst better boils on my arse"
Offended, I said "what you doing here then?"
"Well, I thought you wanted to dominate Europe"
"I do"
"So take this [hands me a claret AmEx, which apparently is now above black, issued to Gates only] and build a new stadium - £1 billion should cover it, right?"
"Yes Bill, no problem"
So I did. I went online to the new Microsoft Stadium Maker (www.microsoft.com/msm) portal, which listed all of the best deals around, together with design tools for putting together your dream stadium. I took a couple of minutes thinking about it, 2-tiers, maybe 3, 4. Anyway, my initial design of a 27-tier triangular shaped structure, comprising comfortable seating for 3,000,000 fans seemed a little OTT. It was within budget though!. I ended up settling for a modest 3-tier model with retractable roof and Recaro seats throughout, just like they use in the Italian League dug-outs. Seating for 75,000 as requested, and a guaranteed delivery and installation of only 3 weeks, providing the stadium was in stock. It was in stock, and so for a mere £340m, we were shortly to have the stadium of our dreams. Among the optional extras were heated seats with massage attachment, only £10m - I ordered them.
I didn't order any executive boxes, because we really only wanted supporters who were willing to slum it alongside real fans. In fact it struck me as a good idea to test their real-ness by making them eat a Balti pie and see if they survived. Probably a bit excessive though, seeing as the pies were known to contain real lava from a recently active volcano.
Anyway, on with the story. I told Bill that we had £650m left and he told me to buy myself a new team with the change.
While all this was going on, Saturday just seemed to drift into Sunday. I nipped out across Green Street for a packet of ******** and some tabloids. Here's when I noticed a very pleasing headline: "Abramovich Abducted". Reading further, it seems that the powers-that-be in the former Soviet Union had become a little upset with his affluent life-style, which he'd created out of ripping off the Russian people by somehow obtaining most of their oil and utility industries for little more than £15.60. All of his assets had been frozen and he was missing, presumed doing hard labour in a Russian prison camp. LOL I thought!!
I turned to the back-page and the leading story was "Lampard: Why I Love West Ham" in which he insisted how the mis-quotes had made him out to be a bad person and that he always hated Chelsea really. "They made me kiss their badge" insisted a tearful Lampard. "What I'd give to play at West Ham again" said Lampard, unable to see where his next new house was coming from.
By all accounts, Chelsea had been told they could no longer play at Stamford Bridge and that unless a buyer could be found, they would be wound up by administrators due to the annual £500m loss in revenue caused by Abramovich's freedom with money and player contracts.
That's when the mobile rang. "Sarf it's Bill, don't we need somewhere to play while the old ground is being rebuilt?"
"Yeah, I thought maybe Leyton Orient or something?" I said
"Having a laugh, right? How about Stamford Bridge?" said Bill
"What about Chelsea? Where are they gonna play?"
"They're playing at Brentford until they can afford something better - it's more than big enough for their real fans"
"Sounds ideal, though all that blue is a bit offensive Bill"
"OK Sarf, I'll have the seats changed out"
"What should we do with it when we're finished?" I said
"Perhaps let our reserves play there - oh the irony!" Bill smiled
"Excellent, good stuff, let's do it"
So we did, and for the next few Saturdays we were playing at Stamford Bridge, with it all decked out in Claret and Blue, against the mighty Plymouth and Brighton.
We went on a winning run and for the last game of the season, our new stadium was ready. We moved back in just in time to celebrate our first trophy for 20 years, in front of a sell-out 75,000 crowd. Back in the Premiership at long last.
Rebuilding then began, starting with the management team. I appointed the Trevor Brooking and Billy Bonds as joint managers, with Alvin Martin first team coach. Then there was Ray Stewart and Julian Dicks, defensive coaches and Phil Parkes, goalkeeping coach. McAvennie and Cottee were striking coaches, whilst Iain Dowie was brought in as the token ugly bloke. Paolo DiCanio was appointed head of entertainment.
We went out and bought back all the players who were rightfully ours: Rio, Lampard, Defoe, Carrick, Cole (spit), Johnson, together with Beckham who was rightfully ours being originally from Hainault. John Terry was from Dagenham, so in he came. Ray Parlour wanted in but I told him "you had your chance Gooner". Thierry Henry was begging to come, so I reluctantly agreed, followed by several other international superstars. I thought they'd make a good stop-gap.
Within a couple of seasons, we had 11 home-grown players making up our championship-winning team - the entire England first team. We went on to win the World Cup and European Championship, which were eventually handed (rightfully so) to West Ham United FC instead of England. What's more, the national team now played in claret and blue. What a beautiful time it was. Nobody could beat us and we scored goals for fun.
We were so good in fact, that the Premier League once awarded us the title before the season began.
The entire area around Upton Park had been re-vamped due to our success. Billy Gates loved the place so much that he bought Green Street and built himself a new house. Nice little place, just a couple of hundred bedrooms for his software developer mates when they were brainstorming their next masterful piece of software. Perfect for a late-night coding session, he could have a few beers, write a new OS and stumble across the road to his pleasure palace. Perfect.
We turned Upton Park station into an international rail terminus, so that fans from all round Europe could flood directly to our ground. Not to mention the new international airport at Plaistow, and free car-parking for all out the front of Bill's house. To gain entrance to the ground, over-seas supporters needed to show a picture of themselves as a child wearing a West Ham shirt. No glory hunters allowed.
Nice dream anyway!!
Sarf
=====
Anybody got Billy Gates' email address? Lets flood his email with this story.
==============================================
This genuinely happened to me last night, though I've obviously embelished some parts:
I went to bed quite happy though not overly so. I lay there for a while, for some reason a little hot rather than cold, unable to get to sleep. I opened the window in an effort to cool down but no, I was still hot. West Ham was not on my mind at this point, I was simply frustrated at not being able to get to sleep and if I didn't, I knew I'd have a hard time waking up in the morning. Anyway, midnight came and went, then 1am. Eventually I think I dozed off, but what followed all seemed very, very real. It went something like this:
A hot sunny day in May 2011, and West Ham are doing a lap of honour around the Upton Park, with their latest Premiership trophy. Unbeaten for three seasons now, we are the most successful team ever to grace the European circuit, with five European Cups in five successive seasons. I glanced down from the Director's box into the capacity 75,000 crowd, 30,000 of whom had been granted free life-time season tickets for staying with the club through thin and thin.
What was I doing in the Director's box you ask? It all goes back to early 2005, when I wrote a begging letter to Bill Gates, as follows:
Dear Mr Gates,
I write to you out of pure anger and desperation. I know you're not really into sport, but there is a little known part of East London which houses a legendary football (soccer) club. They are called West Ham United, and you've probably never heard of them. We are the only club side to ever win the World Cup, and were once the pride of the East End. Though you have probably never set foot in East London, I would like to request that you do. You should see this cauldron of pride and passion created by a desperate group of supporters.
In recent times we have seen our club raped, pillaged and abused by its current owners. They have overseen the systematic destruction of our club, selling our best young players and committing us to a life of scrounging. All this, while some Russian gangster has spent his piles of cash turning a previously unknown club into a European force.
Now Bill, this is your chance to really make yourself a household name in Europe and more importantly, a hero in the East End of London. You've got more money in your back pocket than the Russian could ever dream of, and I beg you, please put it to good use. Please help me to make West Ham United great again.
btw I've always been a big fan of your operating systems and associated software, and believe that the improvements to DNS in your release of Windows 2003 were genuinely worthwhile. I know all of our other supporters feel the same.
Yours,
Sarf
Anyway, thinking no more about it I was sitting at home the following Saturday. Listening to us struggle away to Rotherham, the doorbell rings. I open the door only to be confronted by a couple of blokes in dark suits and glasses, asking me to accompany them "for a little chat". "Oh ********" I thought, who have I upset? They wouldn't tell me anything and just kept telling me to "shut up **************". I was a little bit disturbed by all this, but I stayed calm for the short trip to what seemed like East Ham. Anyway, the limo eased past East Ham town hall and turned right off the Barking Road into Green Street.
Before me sat the Theatre of Cream, aka Upton Park, with its huge plastic turrets displayed in their fullest glory. There was something different about the old place, though I couldn't put my finger on it at first. Anyway, we pulled into the players' car park and I was told to get out. I did, seeing as by this time I was more than a little curious. I was hushed in, up the stairs and into one of the deluxe dining suites of the Quality Hotel. I was shoved inside and the door slammed behind me. 'twas a long room, with double-doors at each end. I stood around for a while and the door at the other end of the room opened. In walked some scraggy looking bloke with a perma-tan and messed up grey hair. Covered in bruises he was. I thought "I recognise you" but I couldn't put my finger on it. I remembered back to the one AGM I'd previously attended and then it hit me; it's Terry Brown. What could the uber-Chairman want with little me?
"You'll be needing these" he said as he threw a set of keys at me.
"What these for?" I said.
"this place, I've been told it's yours now"
"really? says who?"
"says Mr Gates, just take the bloody things, please"
Not wanting to cause him any further distress, I thanked him for the keys and told him to "******** off out of my house". He scuttled off, perma-tan flaking off before my very eyes, sobbing.
I sat there in the dining room for a while, stunned and not a little amazed by my new found fortune. "mine" I thought, "all mine". Oh well, better celebrate I suppose, so I reached for a bottle of West Ham-labelled Merlot from behind the bar. Downed it in one, then reached for another. Downed that and burped. As I burped, I was over-come by a feeling of being watched. I turned around to find none other than Bill Gates standing there.
"Sarf, my name's Gates, Billy Gates"
"Is this the place you were talking about?" he said
"Well yes, isn't it wonderful?"
Surprised by my classification of Upton Park as wonderful, he bit back
"What, this ********-hole, I've burst better boils on my arse"
Offended, I said "what you doing here then?"
"Well, I thought you wanted to dominate Europe"
"I do"
"So take this [hands me a claret AmEx, which apparently is now above black, issued to Gates only] and build a new stadium - £1 billion should cover it, right?"
"Yes Bill, no problem"
So I did. I went online to the new Microsoft Stadium Maker (www.microsoft.com/msm) portal, which listed all of the best deals around, together with design tools for putting together your dream stadium. I took a couple of minutes thinking about it, 2-tiers, maybe 3, 4. Anyway, my initial design of a 27-tier triangular shaped structure, comprising comfortable seating for 3,000,000 fans seemed a little OTT. It was within budget though!. I ended up settling for a modest 3-tier model with retractable roof and Recaro seats throughout, just like they use in the Italian League dug-outs. Seating for 75,000 as requested, and a guaranteed delivery and installation of only 3 weeks, providing the stadium was in stock. It was in stock, and so for a mere £340m, we were shortly to have the stadium of our dreams. Among the optional extras were heated seats with massage attachment, only £10m - I ordered them.
I didn't order any executive boxes, because we really only wanted supporters who were willing to slum it alongside real fans. In fact it struck me as a good idea to test their real-ness by making them eat a Balti pie and see if they survived. Probably a bit excessive though, seeing as the pies were known to contain real lava from a recently active volcano.
Anyway, on with the story. I told Bill that we had £650m left and he told me to buy myself a new team with the change.
While all this was going on, Saturday just seemed to drift into Sunday. I nipped out across Green Street for a packet of ******** and some tabloids. Here's when I noticed a very pleasing headline: "Abramovich Abducted". Reading further, it seems that the powers-that-be in the former Soviet Union had become a little upset with his affluent life-style, which he'd created out of ripping off the Russian people by somehow obtaining most of their oil and utility industries for little more than £15.60. All of his assets had been frozen and he was missing, presumed doing hard labour in a Russian prison camp. LOL I thought!!
I turned to the back-page and the leading story was "Lampard: Why I Love West Ham" in which he insisted how the mis-quotes had made him out to be a bad person and that he always hated Chelsea really. "They made me kiss their badge" insisted a tearful Lampard. "What I'd give to play at West Ham again" said Lampard, unable to see where his next new house was coming from.
By all accounts, Chelsea had been told they could no longer play at Stamford Bridge and that unless a buyer could be found, they would be wound up by administrators due to the annual £500m loss in revenue caused by Abramovich's freedom with money and player contracts.
That's when the mobile rang. "Sarf it's Bill, don't we need somewhere to play while the old ground is being rebuilt?"
"Yeah, I thought maybe Leyton Orient or something?" I said
"Having a laugh, right? How about Stamford Bridge?" said Bill
"What about Chelsea? Where are they gonna play?"
"They're playing at Brentford until they can afford something better - it's more than big enough for their real fans"
"Sounds ideal, though all that blue is a bit offensive Bill"
"OK Sarf, I'll have the seats changed out"
"What should we do with it when we're finished?" I said
"Perhaps let our reserves play there - oh the irony!" Bill smiled
"Excellent, good stuff, let's do it"
So we did, and for the next few Saturdays we were playing at Stamford Bridge, with it all decked out in Claret and Blue, against the mighty Plymouth and Brighton.
We went on a winning run and for the last game of the season, our new stadium was ready. We moved back in just in time to celebrate our first trophy for 20 years, in front of a sell-out 75,000 crowd. Back in the Premiership at long last.
Rebuilding then began, starting with the management team. I appointed the Trevor Brooking and Billy Bonds as joint managers, with Alvin Martin first team coach. Then there was Ray Stewart and Julian Dicks, defensive coaches and Phil Parkes, goalkeeping coach. McAvennie and Cottee were striking coaches, whilst Iain Dowie was brought in as the token ugly bloke. Paolo DiCanio was appointed head of entertainment.
We went out and bought back all the players who were rightfully ours: Rio, Lampard, Defoe, Carrick, Cole (spit), Johnson, together with Beckham who was rightfully ours being originally from Hainault. John Terry was from Dagenham, so in he came. Ray Parlour wanted in but I told him "you had your chance Gooner". Thierry Henry was begging to come, so I reluctantly agreed, followed by several other international superstars. I thought they'd make a good stop-gap.
Within a couple of seasons, we had 11 home-grown players making up our championship-winning team - the entire England first team. We went on to win the World Cup and European Championship, which were eventually handed (rightfully so) to West Ham United FC instead of England. What's more, the national team now played in claret and blue. What a beautiful time it was. Nobody could beat us and we scored goals for fun.
We were so good in fact, that the Premier League once awarded us the title before the season began.
The entire area around Upton Park had been re-vamped due to our success. Billy Gates loved the place so much that he bought Green Street and built himself a new house. Nice little place, just a couple of hundred bedrooms for his software developer mates when they were brainstorming their next masterful piece of software. Perfect for a late-night coding session, he could have a few beers, write a new OS and stumble across the road to his pleasure palace. Perfect.
We turned Upton Park station into an international rail terminus, so that fans from all round Europe could flood directly to our ground. Not to mention the new international airport at Plaistow, and free car-parking for all out the front of Bill's house. To gain entrance to the ground, over-seas supporters needed to show a picture of themselves as a child wearing a West Ham shirt. No glory hunters allowed.
Nice dream anyway!!
Sarf
=====
Anybody got Billy Gates' email address? Lets flood his email with this story.