Fortunately, it never went to my head because I remember the price crash in the early nineties. I was in negative equity for TEN years!

I was lucky in that I could rent out a room throughout that period which covered the mortgage payments – which meant the house never actually cost me anything

But I do remember on very cold winter, when there was no work, no tenant and certainly no money and I turned the pages of the local newspaper (it was pre-internet folks) and found an advert saying “Houses Bought For Cash”. I tentatively rang this number and was greeted by a gruff voice who offered me the princely sum of £5000 cash. Trust me, even in 1992, that was bloody cheap. I declined his kind offer at the time.

Recently, we’ve had a really nice house on the market for over 18 months now. 60 viewings, not one sensible offer. We’ve even dropped the price by 20%. Still no takers, so I’m wondering, even though I’m not in the same desperate position I was back then, whether I should consider contacting on on those quick house sale companies?

Haven’t blogged in a while. This was supposed to be one of those regular things that I’d update weekly or even daily. Ha!

Life intervened.

Anyway, art lover that I am, something I saw recently woke me from my blogging slumber. Lovely video for a fine production, The Hired Man, which played at Bolton’s Octagon Theatre, just north of Manchester.

I was introduced to the production by ivideoproduction, friends of a friend Mark Attwood. Sometimes the arts can rejuvenate you so much!

Art lover that I am, I’ll be visiting my local art gallery this weekend, which is exhibiting an interesting display of cardboard shapes, created from soaking them in watery glue and letting street debris cling to them naturally. The idea is to represent the chaotic mix of urban modernity, the underbelly of the city, and the sad and generally ignored fall out of what we today call social “progress”.

I hope to write about that soon!

“Why are you called Brutmann?”

Let me first explain. Brut aftershave, at one point in time, was the envy of the average high school teenager. Rocking up to the school gates in your Cortina with a pungent scent of Brut was the surest way to find your way into the hearts of many a short-skirted high school lady. And as a result, many a young high school gentleman was dousing themselves daily in the stuff.

It’s just that I took it too far. Before I was aware, an underground reputation had emerged – I was the guy who wore too much Brut! And the green trainers probably didn’t help.

Well, this is what you wanted isn’t it? Some kind of entertaining history about how I came to be called Brutmann? Well – sadly for you, it’s all BS. Brutmann is my name. European. In Europe, it’s actually quite common. That’s it.

Although I do like a bit of Brut when hitting the town on a Friday night…

Here’s Obama Bin Barak using the BP incident to push alternative energy. Did you really think this guy would be any different to Bush?