Once Upon A Time in the West . . . Country Read Online Free

it’s something of which I’m rather proud. That’s why buying a house with a garden that faced north would be out of the question. So, that left us simply requiring a house with a breathtaking view, and with a garden that faced south. Not much to ask.
    The three houses we did eventually view, late that afternoon, weren’t right, and we both knew it the moment we walked in through the front doors. They felt too plush for us, too upmarket, too ‘look how well we’ve done’. The poor estate agent 3 did his best to talk them up, but he must have seen that we weren’t excited and that this particular outing was not going to produce any commission.
    The problem was that if you wanted a big garden with views, then it seemed that you had to buy a grand house, and we wanted something modest. We knew that it wouldn’t be easy – perhaps even impossible – to find what we were after.
    ‘If it takes eighteen months to find the right place, then let’s take eighteen months,’ I said, as we went to bed after a delicious meal with our hosts.
    ‘Yes, we’re not in a hurry,’ said Fran.
    ‘Goodnight.’
    ‘Goodnight.’
    At 4 a.m. on the Sunday morning I was down in Kevin and Donna’s kitchen trawling the internet again. I’d been struck at an odd hour by a new thought. Could it be that we had been searching for a property in the wrong price range?
    ‘Where have you been?’ asked a sleepy Fran, as I tried unsuccessfully to slip back into bed without waking her.
    ‘I’ve been online. I was wondering if we were looking at houses for too much money?’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Well, so far we’ve based our search on what we think we’ll sell our London house for. That means we’re looking at grand properties. Maybe we need to be more modest.’
    ‘Hmm. Find anything interesting?’
    ‘One or two.’
    ‘Maybe I should take a look.’
    And with those words Fran slipped out of bed and headed down to the kitchen.
    Kevin and Donna were hosting a couple of very odd house guests.
    ***
    Sunday’s house search was more encouraging, but only marginally so. Fran’s ‘middle of the night’ internet session had produced an extensive list of properties and although we didn’t have any appointments to view them, we found that wandering around outside and peering through the odd window provided enough information to enable us to reject them. But we liked what we saw much more than on the previous day, and it was pleasing to know that if we could find somewhere in this price bracket then we’d have money to spare for any renovations or changes that might be required. But we had still drawn a blank. We’d soon be on the road back to London with tails, if not between our legs, then certainly not wagging.
    ‘One more to go,’ I said, as the car crawled up a steep and narrow hill towards another little village, and probably our tenth viewing of the day.
    ‘I don’t hold out much hope for this,’ said Fran, reading from one of the sheets she’d printed out that morning. ‘It’s a cottage. It’ll be quaint and tiny, no doubt.’
    ‘Another head-bumper,’ I added, with some resignation.
    At six feet three, I’m taller than I seem on the radio, and I fall foul of the fact that in the nineteenth century people were considerably smaller, and couldn’t reach high enough to build a ceiling at a reasonable height. High ceilings were for the nobility, who were well-connected enough to have access to ladders. They invested in this extra elevation so they could cater for gentlemen in extravagant hats and ladies with unreasonably lofty hairdos.
    Cherry Cottage looked pleasant enough, but it didn’t arouse our interest greatly when it first came into view. It was a long, pretty building, looking like it had started out as two cottages that had now been knocked into one. It was a little nearer the road than we would have liked, but we hadn’t passed another car getting here so we had every reason to believe that speeding cars were as