[07:15] Alarm goes off. Nudge girlfriend aside and open my SIGames curtains (Fabric : £130 , Seamstress : £110. Opening your eyes in the morning to see your room illuminated by the sun shining through a massive SIGames logo : Priceless). Get grunted at because I didn't come to bed till 4:30am after the last clan game.
[07:45] Showered. Had Breakfast. Left just enough time to go onto the site and check out today's updates to GPG before work. Text message arrives. "Solomon Kalou to solve your midfield crisis. £22M plus Glen Johnson". Damn you Bob, you know I'm at my weakest to resist in the morning. Text back with "I know about your secretary". Bob sends a revised message offering him for £6M.
[09:15] The boss isn't in today. Corporate team building exercise apparently. They're all off driving quad bikes up a mountainside with 20 layers of waterproof clothing. Didn't get an invite since they caught me using the overhead projectors and subbuteo figures to visualise my 4-3-3long ball counter attack. When I asked why I wasn't invited they said "You spend too much time building a team as it is". Have they been reading my Clan updates?
[10:30] First couple of rounds of coffee have been digested, and with the boss out the office, I'm spending a lot more time getting on with what's important round here - that being persuading IT that I have permission to host FM06 on the company servers. IT seem to be coming round to my way, then I let it slip about me being the guy who changed the company screensaver to a screenshot of To Madeira's stats , and the line goes dead. Next time, ill just tell them I know where they live.
[12:00] I'm a bit worried now. I haven't heard from Denise all morning. I sent her flowers to say sorry for last night, but no text messages proclaiming her undying love for me. Why wouldn't she like the flowers, especially after I arranged that great wreath with the FM06 logo on it for her dad's funeral? He loved that game. Maybe she's just working too hard.
[13:00] Lunchtime and a stroll down to the shops. Well, THE shop, that being the local games shop. Dave's been working hard there; despite his failures to manage an FM06 side, he's now managing the shop. This means a healthy set of discounts and a heads up when there's a new game guide coming out. He's thinking of expanding the store and opening a new branch in a local retail park. When I ask why he's not happy with what he has, he reminds me that I replaced Lampard with Ronaldinho despite Frank scoring 22 league goals and providing 18 assists. I try and convince him that if you stand still in this world, things pass you by. He suggests playing them together, and I'm late back to the office explaining why you can't because they're too similar.
[14:45] Boss phones. Wonders why I wasn't at the meeting he scheduled this afternoon. I thought he was teambuilding, but he explains that multitasking doesn't just mean running FM on a laptop and a base unit. Besides, it's a videoconference, and in my absence, it's been decided that the company is "Refocusing its synergy to reflect the growing market presence of its product". I smile, nod, promise to run the project (like I did the last three times we Refocused our Synergy) and ask him if he wants me to realign the business model with the Michels-Kovacs strategy. He's very pleased that I've been taking such a diligent approach to my research. I tell him it's my new "Total-Business" strategy within the office. Damn, I'm good!
[16:00] Tonight's game is still being hosted by Alan Wilson of Sprockets Inc. The amount of business flowing between the two companies has ebbed and flowed considerably. When Alan won the League Title, the amount of business dropped to zero as his club was unstoppable. When he was suddenly sacked after failing to retain, and had to take a lesser job as manager of Huddersfield, business picked up tremendously, possibly due to him signing or loaning most of my youth team. The Sprockets business is a funny old game.
[17:00] Home time. Alas, I have to stay late tonight, despite the game being up from 18:30 onwards. The boss pops his head round the door to be told that I'm just "re-evaluating the Neeskens-Muhren strategy and its benefits to the goal of a modern office". In reality, I'm just telling yet another brain-dead moron from OTF that I think his clubs potential to be Champions of Europe is on the same level of potential as Notts County winning the Premiership. Clearly I cannot leave the computer until this guy backs down, or his mum calls him for dinner. Ooooooh, damn. Dinner. Supposed to be going to Dinner with Denise tonight and I've let it clash with a game session. WHAT A SCHOOLBOY ERROR!
[18:20] I get home and Denise is ready to go. She's not too upset that I'm late, since she knows it takes me 15 minutes to get ready, as I only have 2 shirts and she won't let me wear the AFC Wimbledon one. Apparently, we are going to La Bistro, and it's taken her 3 weeks to get a table. She says that Cindy is coming and so is Bob. BOB? Well that's good news, it means he's going to miss the session as well, and since he's chasing me in the hunt for a Champions League spot, it means that we have a topic of conversation, and his assistant manager has to control the team.
[19:30] La Bistro is a wonderful restaurant. The atmosphere is serene, the waiting staff polite, well mannered and well dressed, the food expensive, but magnificently cooked, and the wine list to die for.
Of course, both Bob and I don't notice any of this. In fact, it's visible to everyone else on the surrounding tables that neither of us wants to be there. When we do talk, it's in a hushed tone so as not to get beaten about the head by Denise and Cindy. It's obvious he's also under orders not to talk about "That bloody game". We devise a cunning hand signals system which enables us to discuss tactics but it's eventually found out when the waiter threatens to chin Bob for giving him a single finger salute. Busted!
[21:45] I'm heading home alone. As is Bob. Denise and Cindy, having decided enough is enough, have gone out on the town and we are not invited. RESULT! We both grab taxi's home and sprint in to the computer room in our respective houses. Games been up for 3 hours, I'm out of the League Cup! Beaten by Doncaster Rovers. Dammit. How can things get any worse?
I check the game date. Oh no. Oh god no! February 2nd. They've played right through the transfer window without me. I can't get Kalou! Or ... anyone. I try and rationalise going through an entire transfer window with a single panic buy, but I just can't do it. It's like my entire season is over. I bang the keyboard hard in frustration.
And it breaks.
Now I'm in trouble. The game is up, I'm in, and the mouse still works, but I can't chat with the lads. I can't make any deals. And if the game crashes, how do I type in the new IP? Oh woe is me!
[23:00] Games been dead smooth, and so have I. We have a couple of relatively new players, and one of them, a Turkish lad called Orhun, has a very good grasp of written English, but a rather naive approach to the game. He expects us all to play fair and to win in an honourable manner. So when he loses his star player to a minimum fee release clause (which I advised him to use to attract the player in the first place, knowing I planned on stealing him once he had adjusted to the Premiership) he's not best pleased. And when this is followed up by me signing 2 of his coaches, and a wonderkid 16yr old, Orhun starts to complain to anyone who will listen. My gloating gets the better of me and I mock him by text message. He sets himself on holiday to check google and find out what a "Schoolie" and a "n00b" are.
[23:45] I knew it would happen. Game crash. Unsurprisingly, it's again just as the host loses an important cup game to a lower league side. Everyone sits around waiting for the game to come back up and rejoin. It's not that simple for me. I'm frantically texting Alan, Bob and Dave telling them my keyboard is broken, so could Alan please make sure he does NOT reset his router in case the IP changes. I don't get any responses.
[00:00] First text response. From Dave: "This is what happens when you stand still in the shop and let a new keyboard pass you by".Second text response. From Bob : "That's unfortunate mate. You could drive round here and borrow my spare, but Cindy will kill you the second you open the door. She's just got in and she's really aggressive when she's drunk"
WAIT! The Laptop. I'm saved. I just have to.... Ahh crap, it's in the office! Where are my car keys?
[00:30] "No, seriously officer. I'm not drunk. I've been out for a meal with the girlfriend and I only had a couple of beers. See, I was playing FM and I missed the transfer window, and then I got mad so I smashed my keyboard, and now I'm driving to the office to get my laptop so I can play again. You want me to blow into the little tube? Well, I suppose that's ok officer. What does it do?"
[02:30] Denise arrives at South of the River Police station. The desk sergeant takes her details, opens the cell door and comes to let me out. The taxi is outside (and that's going to cost me the commission from the Sprockets deal) and I slump out of the cell, head down, trying not to listen to Denise tell me that game runs my life, and she doesn't feel appreciated, and she wishes she had left me alone with that bloody cat.
It's a funny old game FM, isn't it?
