So Who The F##k Are You?

Hello.  I am the author of this blog.  I am Chris.  I am also known as Linux.  I am also known as Boutsy or Bouts (pronounced "Boots" or "Bootsy").  I am also called other names, but those are often just shouted and of the generic insult form.  Let's run through my names so you don't get confused:

1. CHRIS: Given to me by my parents some time around my birth, possibly a few months before, possibly after my birth, but most probably pre-birth.
2. LINUX: A shortened form of LINUXDOCTOR - a name that came into use around 2001-2002 and is in reference to the fact that I am quite good with Linux-based servers, especially when they are sick or not quite performing properly.  Also in reference to the fact that when presented with an IT or networking problem, I will suggest or implement a solution based around and doctored to Linux.  Also it is the name I get on my shirts, if I get a name, so virtually everyone at football calls me Linux, apart from virtually everybody else at football who instead call me:
3. BOUTS: Remember - it's pronounced "Boots".  So why the funny spelling then?  Well this name had it's birth around 2005, maybe 2006.  It was a cold, wet and windy Tuesday night and the mighty Cherries were playing someone like Clydesdale And District Working Man's Club in the Mrs Miggins Tea Pot Trophy (I think by this time it was actually the Johnstone's Paint (Pot) Trophy).  It was a shit game, I mean proper shit.  I had the beginnings of real-actual-proper-not-man 'Flu and I was dosed up on painkillers plus the 3 swift pints and a warming bottle of pre-match concourse beer.  I may or may not have had some herbal tobacco alternative, I can neither confirm nor deny 😉 My head was still throbbing though, and my sinuses and head were more blocked than Mexico's sewerage system.  In an attempt to inject some atmosphere into the dour proceedings, I was "asked" to start a chant that had sort of been left exclusively for only me to start at games now - that was how often I'd started this chant.  No-one else would start it because they all knew I'd pipe up with it at some point.  Thing is though I didn't really feel like screaming my lungs out as usual, but keen not to let the side down and to do my bit for the team (and to shut up everyone calling me a Scummer), I took a deep breath, and yelled,
   "Why don't you giiive me aaaaa......... Beee-ee-ee [Bee-ee-ee] Ooohooowoooh [oooohoooh] Yoooooouuuoou [youuuooou] TeeeeeEeeeee [-----absolute silence for about two whole seconds------]", then,
   "Whaaaat?"
   "You what?"
   "Ey?" amid many laughs, jeers, then more laughs, then about 50 people closest to me and thought to be amongst my closest friends took the remainder of the match pissing themselves with laughter and finding new ways to take the piss....

I even have my own song.... If you remember the James Coutts banging of the drum/wall/hands rhythm of "bang, bang, bang babang bang bang COUTTS!" then it's not too hard to guess what my own little personal chant is.  If you see me on a match day, feel free to join in, although in these Premier League games era I don't get to more than a match a season now really, due to ticketing and having long lost my old season ticket seat of R79 to the man from Sky with the big camera.

My first ever visit to Dean Court was in 1994, when I was a guest at a private party held by then Chairman Ken Gardiner at the old DCSC.  I had been swimming at Ken's house in his swimming pool earlier that day, I was a 13 year old boy.

I could leave it at that, and let you all draw your own conclusions, but I'm not that horrible and there is in fact a very reasonable explanation as to why two-Jags Ken had a thirteen year-old boy swimming in his pool and attending a party on licensed premises.  For a short time my sister was actually a WAG (before WAGs were WAGs, and certainly before the days of WAGs being attractive ;) sorry sis) and was engaged to Chairman Ken's son, so when it came to organising a venue for her 18th birthday party, the obvious choice was an old decrepit room in a corner of a virtually condemned tumbledown relic of a football ground.

After this, I didn't set foot in DC again until some 10 years later by which time the pitch had shifted 90 degrees, 3 new stands had replaced the 3 old ones and the bit of Brighton Beach, the Chairman had a Cowboy Hat instead of a Jag, Tony Pulis had been replaced by Sean O'Driscoll but the one thing that hadn't changed was Steve Fletcher, who was still leading the line up front.

That was Forest Green Rovers on a Tuesday night in November, an FA Cup first round replay, attendance of about 4.5k, I think.  I think Alan Connellalan scored, and possibly "Deadly" Derek Holmes too. I know we won.  I enjoyed it so much I didn't miss a single home game after that, league or cup, for over 4 years.

Back then you have to remember AFCB was a community club - the fan's group the Community Mutual (CM) held a so-called "Golden Share" which gave it a 51% voting right (effectively a veto and/or deciding vote) in certain Club decisions at certain board meetings.  For example, on the sale of the club, or the sale of the ground...  We were totally skint.  The few staff we had we couldn't afford to pay, so we relied heavily upon volunteers and people giving their time for free.  So I tried to get more involved with that, trying to help Playershare, and then meeting the then Head Of IT, a quite brilliant chap by the name of s4b, whom I worked closely with and offered my assistance to in IT matters more and more until an internal restructuring of the club resulted in or possibly was caused by the fact that he and AFCB decided to part company.

By this point, Abdul Jaffer had declared "Bond is Back" and AFCB continued it's gradual decline both on and off the field.  Paul Williams I believe it was who around this time sourced an old bass drum and entrusted it to me along with a pair of large "unbreakable" beaters which I broke after a couple of matches.  This drum was played until finally one day I hit it a bit too hard and went right through the skin.  Instead of a re-skinning, another drum appeared courtesy of Key Materials Handling, and I carried on banging this, with it being kind of adopted by the club as well, who would take it to away matches on the supporters coach meaning all I had to take on the train with me was a pair of drum beaters and my beer supply.  Result.  Only one shopping trolley needed instead of two when catching the 08:28 to Waterloo.

This culminated in trying to do a whole season home and away in 2008.  Mainly because it was a very real possibility that the 2008/09 season could be AFC Bournemouth's last ever season in the football league for the forseeable future.  We were in league 2, we had -17 points, we had a transfer embargo, we didn't need an embargo - we had no money to spend anyway.  With spiralling costs, dwindling revenues and an inept bunch of halfwits mis-managing the club both on and off the field, it very much looked like relegation was a certainty before we'd even kicked a ball.  And there was no doubt in anyone's mind - national league (aka conference) football would have meant the end for AFC Bournemouth as we knew it, there were very real and very serious contingency plans being worked on by supporters so if (or as we thought, when not if) the worst did happen then there would be a framework in place to create some sort of phoenix club to try and preserve the two football clubs in Bournemouth, and not have Bournemouth FC (The Poppies) the only football club in Bournemouth.