Wow. you've all been busy in the last day or so. My sympathies to Moonglow and all who have loved and lost this poor lady.

3 viewings up north yesterday... the house in Belford is 200 years old in part, and SO me. However the kitchen has flooded 3 times in the last 5 years due to there being a little channelled stream (with the chance of trout in it too) right next to the house. There is work going on between the Environment Agency and Newcastle University to make "catch ponds" further upstream, and there are plans to straighten out the course of the stream further down below the village. However, I would hate to be constantly watching it - and the co-op supermarket across the road (although it's only a small one). On the upside, there is a fantastic 2 storey outbuilding that would make a work studio, and there's a craft gallery about 200 yards away in the village/town centre.

Viewing 2 was the pretty white cottage. It is very sweet and cosy, but I think it is going to be too small, as there is nowhere for my books, instruments, craft work, and, as my daughter put it last night, "all the crap that we both know you would be miserable without!" It's on the back burner, and we may decide to give it another look next week. The 3rd was one which i suspected would be too small - it is. And the garden is barely half the size of the one I have now. However, the agent said that she had only just been to value another property at the other end of the village which should, if they go with her valuation, be within my budget. It is empty, and has has new wiring and plastering. It has (I think) a breakfast kitchen, living room, dining room, ground floor double bedroom (aka a room I can do stuff in), and 2 double bedrooms (big ones) and a bathroom upstairs. It also has a decent sized garden. Apparently it's been inherited, and the new owner wants to sell it on.

Well I went and looked at it from the front and had a peek in. It looks great, although the front extension is very strange: it's flat-roofed, but has a semi-hexagonal or almost semi-octagonal wall line. Nothing that a custom built pitched roof wouldn't glam up a bit, I think. The agent said she'd try and contact the vendor and see how things stood. I think if it had been in the heart of the village it would have been more, but it's about half a mile from the actual centre - and about the same difference from the bridge over the river into Scotland!

Well having seen the space (or lack of) in some of the houses yesterday, I've chucked a few more bits out of my wardrobe. Need to do the same with footwear too. So it's de-cluttering phase 2 now.

Andrea