HOUSE prices are on the increase again. For some strange reason, this makes the experts cheer. Why? Maybe the experts don't have small children.

Many mothers no longer take their full entitlement of maternity leave, said a recent report, because they simply can't afford it. Instead, they put their children in nursery and rush back to work as soon as they can.

These are not women consumed with a selfish yearning for designer shoes or Caribbean holidays. Mainly they're just ordinary mothers trying to keep a roof over their heads.

The vast majority of full time working mothers always say they would like to work far less, or even not at all if their children are very young.

Dream on.

Once upon a time, the average man could afford the average mortgage on the average house on his average wage alone. Not any more. No matter how couples scrimp and save and live on lentils and leftovers, it is virtually impossible these days to buy a family home on a single average wage. It's harder now than it was last year and will probably get even harder.

Meanwhile, one of the world's most popular parenting experts, Steve Biddulph, has warned that nurseries are not much good for tiny children. Children under three need one-to-one care to develop properly, he says. And in nurseries, they just don't get that. After three is a different matter, but for the first three years, small children need their mothers, or someone very like them.

There are still few government incentives, help or encouragement for mothers to stay at home. Despite the enormous advances in technology and communications, most of the working population still trudges back and forth each day into the workplace - dropping off children on the way.

Come to that, there are old people in care homes because, even if they wanted to, their children couldn't afford to give up work to care for them.

Government and employers all pay lip service to flexibility, to the work/life balance. But it doesn't seem to translate into very much. Fine for people like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown who live over the shop, but not much fun for the rest of us.

The average three-bed semi in this country now costs £170,000. The average wage is £26,000. You do the sums.

We need a radically different approach to flexibility in work, career breaks, tax breaks and child care, especially for the under threes.

And in the meantime, the least we can do is stop cheering when house prices rise even further out of reach.

FEELING foul with a rotten cold, I treated myself to the newly released DVD of the film of Pride and Prejudice as the perfect comfort viewing.

Maybe I'd been watching too much Big Brother (very little, actually, but still too much), but what struck me this time round was how articulate it all was.

After listening to the half formed sentences, the completely ill thought out arguments, the total utter drivel that passes for conversation and meaningful discussion in situations like the Big Brother house and pretty much everywhere else, to listen to Keira Knightly as Elizabeth Bennett (pictured above), was a joy and delight.

In her arguments with Mr Darcy she burned with passion and perfect sentences - complex ideas, immaculate grammar, fluent subjunctives.

I don't suppose, even in Jane Austen's day, people really spoke like that in normal conversation. But gosh, it was wonderful to hear.

ARE we getting nastier? After years when we turned to romance and family sagas for a bit of escapism, it seems now we're turning to thrillers, the nastier the better. Instead of gentle romances of the Northern working class lass achieving romance and riches by her indomitable character and sweetness of spirit, the most borrowed title from libraries is Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell - full of blood and guts, literally, with a serial killer, a werewolf on Death Row and rotting corpses. Ooooh lovely.

The rest in the top ten aren't much better - Kathy Reichs and Ian Rankin. In fact, it's a bit of a shock to see Maeve Binchy and Josephine Cox still hanging on in there, though heavily outnumbered.

People used to read romances to escape from the humdrum drabness of everyday life. Maybe we now need blood and body parts because in our everyday lives we have to be nicer.

We can't be rude or make unflattering comments or cruel jokes in case we're accused of sexism, racism, political incorrectness. Everyday life has become a bit of a minefield as we daren't risk an unguarded word. So, being human, the nastiness needs to vent itself somewhere.

And better on the pages of a library book than on the real people we meet every day. Especially if we fantasise about pathologist Kay Scarpetta and her scalpel.

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