This is an email I sent to a new friend to try to explain what it is like supporting Palace. I've shown it to a couple of fellow supporters who suggested that I post it.......forgive some slight inaccuracies, non-football fans are not really interested in the intricacies of the play off schedule etc. As you will see written the day after Spurs away.

"I wanted to try to give you a flavour of what it is like supporting the Eagles. When my older son was four and we were living in East Dulwich he decided he wanted to support a football team. We lived nearer to Millwall than Palace but as they have a rep for being racist and thuggish I steered him towards Palace and we started to go to see them a few times a season. Some weeks after we started supporting them we lost 9-0 to then mighty Liverpool in the league. Absolute humiliation. At the end of the season we completely improbably beat them 4-3 in the FA Cup semi-final to set up an FA CUP FINAL with Man Utd at Wembley (we lost).

The first team I supported was Reading where I was born and I used to go and watch them, but certainly not every match, from when I was I think about 7 years old. Although I have always followed sport - first pages I read in the papers - I ceased my allegiance to a particular team when I went to Uni. So having only supported Palace since 1988 means that, unlike my son, I am not a true supporter - a bit like my mum having only lived on the Isle of Wight for 30 years.

There is a song we sing to the tune of Pinball Wizard: When I was a young boy my father said to me 'listen here son your CPFC', here we are, you know us by our noise, pride of South London, the famous Palace boys....... At one of the big matches that my son comes up to we had a lovely father/son moment when we were singing it and gave each other big grins. BTW Palace are a little club in comparison with Spurs, Chelsea etc but we regard ourselves as the biggest club in South London.

The highs and lows of being a Palace fan are really quite remarkable. It is rarely dull and uneventful. This season is special as we are in the Premier League and NOBODY - fans and pundits alike - believed this was possible.Two seasons ago we were in administration (step away from going bankrupt and out of business) and at the least in danger by the last match of the season of being relegated to the third flight. We won that match and stayed up but last season were the pundits' favourites to be relegated. Instead we got promoted to the top division but of course not in a straightforward manner. We lost our first three matches of the season and were bottom and also lost to a littler team in the Cup. We were playing awful football, so bad that if I did not have the discipline of having a season ticket I would have missed matches. Then (my version which I think has a lot of truth in it) the Chairman had a big row, in the car park at Bristol City's ground - actually happened I am told - with the manager ( a Palace legend who played for us for many years, scoring many goals including one that some years previously kept us up in the second flight on the last day of the season) and we suddenly started playing wonderful football - the best I have seen us play. We went on an unbeaten run of 10 wins and 4 draws. One home match we were 2-0 down and then won 3-2. This is quite unusual but by no means unknown. The next match we were 2-0 down and won 4-3. For this to happen two matches in a row is very unusual. Suddenly we were up near the top of the division.

THEN our manager, the Palace legend and fans' favourite, betrayed us and left for more money to a club that were in the same division but were seen by him as being bigger and having more potential than us. This came totally out of the blue and there continues to be debate about whether we should honour him for his years at the club as a player or regard him as a Judas who should be booed and vilified (His club are now languishing in the second flight and he is unpopular with his fans and in danger of getting sacked). We got a new manager and our form began to dip alarmingly. Luckily in the last match of the season we secured our place in the Play offs. In the division the clubs that finish first and second go up automatically to the Premier League. The clubs that finish 3rd to 6th play each other in a mini cup with the final being played at Wembley. If you succeed this is the best way to go up as the tension and euphoria is so great. If you fail the sense of dejection of being so near and yet so far is that much greater.

However we were playing so poorly that I had said to one of the guys I sit with ( or at the moment stand as we are usually on our feet with the excitement of it all ) that I did not want us to be in the Play Offs as I thought we would be humiliated by, amongst others, our arch rivals Brighton. Very very few fans thought we could beat Brighton, particularly after the first match at our ground when they pummelled us. We managed to draw 0-0 but then almost everyone assumed that they would easily beat us in the return leg at their ground (home advantage, the better team etc). In the return leg it was 0-0 at half time and again Brighton had dominated us but failed to break through. About 25 of us Palace fans were watching the match in the flooded and now still closed Half Moon in Herne Hill. It was as if for one night only it was our pub and whether people knew each other or not - lots of introductions - there was a wonderful sense of comradeship in the face of adversity. Like the team we were refusing to lie down and die and holding on to the hope that if only we could hold on Brighton might tire and we might snatch improbable victory.

With twenty minutes to go we scored! And then scored again. I am dewy-eyed writing about it now. Everyone in the bar was leaping up and down, cheering and those who had been strangers to each other two hours previously were hugging each other. It was a highlight of my life (sadly?). I have the second half on video and watch it from time to time. The drama goes on (BTW I am not embellishing any of this, any Palace fan who read it would concur with 99% of this).

So, we beat Watford at Wembley with a penalty in extra time (They were hot favourites to win). A great day. I came up from Faversham on the 9.30am train. Half a dozen other fans in Palace colours got on with me. Then at the next stop more and still more at each station stop. When we got to Victoria before 11am the whole concourse was a sea of red and blue shirts, scarves, balloons and painted faces. I met my son and friends in the nearby Wetherspoons for the first drink of the day (One of our group who has two children of around 8 and 10 years of age was on holiday with them and his wife in Venice - he flew back with his boy and girl to watch the match and then flew back to Venice the next day).

We are now in the Premier League and being ridiculed by the pundits as one of, if not the, weakest team ever to have been in the top division. We start off very poorly and are bottom of the division. Our manager has a psychological meltdown, says he's not up to the task, and falls on his sword. For a month, we can't get anyone to replace him but miraculously the team start picking up points here and there. Not many but enough to keep us in touch with the pack. We now have a new manager. We are currently having lost to Spurs yesterday now bottom again BUT in touching distance of the teams above (A further layer is that on each of the previous four occasions we have been promoted to the top flight we have been relegated straightaway and so if we stay up this time it will be particularly memorable). If we win next Saturday - at home to the team that sacked our current manager at the end of last season - there will be real hope we can stay up.

Back to yesterday, we played incredibly well in the first half, dominating Spurs at their ground BUT we missed a penalty to go ahead. At half time I spoke to my son and we were both astonished at how well we had played. I was euphoric but wary. They came out and outplayed us in the second half and we lost 2-0. Deflation is not only an economic term.

It may or may not be coincidental that much of this has been occurring in the last 16 months or so of my life and the big changes that have been taking place. I wondered with my friend if we are bipolar as the highs and lows can be pretty intense. But there is something for me about sticking with things through the bad times in order to experience the good times. Incidentally I had a pretty bad time at work for around a year when a manager was giving me a hard time up until shortly before she took early retirement around Sept 2012. Eventually I knew I had such a strong evidenced case that I called in the top managers and wiped the floor with her in the meeting. Shortly afterwards she took early retirement and as she also had a rep for picking on a couple of other team members previously my hope is that the managers told her it was now time to go.

I hadn't realised until now this coincided with the upturn in Palace's fortunes that I have described............

Hope you enjoyed reading this xx"

You could have saved yourself a great deal of time. Succinct is always better.

Dear friend. If you can imagine have sex with a well-endowed man and Kiera Knightley at the same time, one end being violently abused while the other is entering paradise, then you have grasped supporting Palace.

Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.

Brilliant email, however, the above sums it up nicely ....... still laughing now.

Why, for the love of god why!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fantastic read thank you, well written & the moment you & your son looked at eachother I have done the same with my son whom is now 21... our moment came when he was only 5... We were sitting in the Arthur Waite, pouring with rain, freezing cold my son had turned blue & was shivvering like no tomorrow... Half time arrived we were 1-0 down losing to Grimsby...I looked down at the little fellow & said Ry, I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to change to Arsenal like all your mates at school... He looked up & said "Dad, I could never do that"... It was & still is emotional.....