Found one!

After looking at quite a few - tiny little over-designed ones, big decrepit ones, shabby newish ones - I've found the perfect mix for me. Its a three bed semi with a porch built on, but the porch actually extends the hallway to provide a lovely open space when you go in. There's a wooden fence at the side to ensure privacy round the back, which is fully fenced in itself: and there's an outbuilding and a wooden shed back there too, as well as a really good size patio.

The garden is 50'long - big enough for me, with mature planting all around the edges - bliss. Its been kept in shape, and doesn't look too weedy, though there's a volunteer ash tree about four feet from the house at the side that will sadly have to go. It can, however, become my Christmas tree for many a year, once its dried out and painted gold - I've done that before, and its very successful :) And its the ultimate in doing Christmas the green way, though I'll have to put a bit of research into paint if its to be totally green.

The area is lovely and quiet - right by a recreation field, and 50 yards from a pathway to a wood. Some houses about a hundred yards away are scheduled to be demolished and rebuilt, but I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

And its definitely the straight up and down, easy to maintain outline that I wanted, apart from the porch, which is ground level anyway, thats easy enough to maintain, using my super-bendy aluminium ladder that goes into three different shapes.

Does it appeal to me - yes it does! Its lovely, a gorgeous little thing to me. Its 15 minutes from everywhere, the main shops and the railway and the touristy bit on the edge of town, oh and 20 minutes from the big supermarket. I'm chuffed :)