Who'd want to live in the South of England, particularly in London and the Thames Valley, given the price of housing down there?

The other week, visiting relatives in a pleasant, civilised, small town on the banks of the Thames in south Buckinghamshire, I did a bit of browsing in estate agents' windows and was left wondering how on earth people who live there can ever afford to get on to the home-ownership ladder.

There was very little under £100,000 (two-bedroomed terrace houses), and modest three-bedroomed 1930s semis like Priestley Towers were on offer at around £150,000-plus. And since then, of course, prices have surged ahead.

Admittedly there are quite a lot of well-paid professional people living in that area. But there are also a lot of people in what you might call "ordinary" jobs. How do those who deliver the post, or work on the checkouts at the supermarkets cope with the demands of a mortgage? How do the building society clerks, traffic wardens, factory workers, teachers or, for that matter, local newspaper journalists ever manage to buy themselves a place to live?

And if they can't afford to buy one, how do they manage to find the money to rent one? Costs are exorbitant. There was a feature in one of the national newspapers last weekend highlighting the plight of young people in London who are shelling out £220 a week for one-bedroomed flats (purchase prices start around £135,000).

A huge chunk of the wages of even well-paid people in those parts of the country must have to go on simply putting a roof over their heads. And increasingly, if they want to buy, that roof has to be shared with other people - friends, acquaintances and sometimes even virtual strangers - via a joint mortgage and a complex legal agreement.

What a nightmare! And what a powerful argument for the companies which employ these financially-stressed people to shift their operation to the North of England where house prices, though currently rising steeply, are still manageable within an average income.

Far better to have a workforce able to concentrate on the job instead of being forever distracted by the pressures of personal finances. In fact, why not make part of Bradford's sales pitch the price of property here?

Admittedly, there are some areas of this city which no-one would thank you for wooing them to. There are some inner-city suburbs and estates which could never be described as "des res" areas. But every big city has those and a share of the problems that come with them.

What Bradford also has, though, is a lot of attractive outer suburbs extending into splendid countryside. And that's only the start of it, because this is a large and varied metropolitan district.

Within less travelling time than most Londoners devote to their daily trail to work there are some pleasant satellite towns and very pretty villages. In the more select of them you could probably find some property prices which would almost match their southern equivalents.

But by and large, anyone moving here from the South East would be able to buy a good house at around half the cost and enjoy a quality of life that those trapped in the traffic-choked brick-and-concrete jungle of London can only dream about.

And as for the pretty towns of the Thames Valley? Well, they're very pleasant and I love to visit them. But I couldn't afford to live there and expect to have much spending money once the mortgage had been paid.

I've been spoiled by living in West Yorkshire, where there are also pretty towns and villages containing houses that you can buy and still have money over for fun.

l Many thanks to readers who took the trouble to send me pilchard recipes. I shall give them all a try - even the curry!

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.