Chapel Street
Oh now this is so so so close. It's a house, just round the corner from East Didsbury station, on a quiet back-street. Plain decor, original fireplaces (not working but still there) a good kitchen with everything we might need, a utility room (including a suspended clothes rack) and a garden. We agreed the house itself ticks just about all our boxes. The only potential spanner in the otherwise perfect works are that the quiet back-street is a pot-holed dirt track and the locks and general security might not be quite up to scratch. It also doesn't have much of a feeling of community.

Didsbury Road
At the very other end of the Didsbury Road from Chapel Street was this 3 bed semi. This had quite a lot of space inside and out but is right on the very busy main road and very windswept. It was reasonably tastefully refurbished albeit to the taste of the obviously middle-aged landlord with that spongy embossed wallpaper - there is a name for it but it just won't come to mind. The agent wanted to take us off to the next place so we hurried in and hurried out again.

Buckingham Road
This started well as we walked in the door with stripped wooden floors and a nice big garden with fruit trees... but went rapidly downhill as we climbed the stairs. Enormous brown fitted wardrobes were complimented with lingering flipflops and pet-hair. It stank. We told the agent so and went, completely baffled as to how they had bothered to do the downstairs so nicely but fail to as much as hoover the upstairs.

Oakburn House
Our one flat of the day (or should I say duplex) was large and decorated to a good standard and came with a pleasant (but slightly flash) landlord. A good location in Heaton Moor Village with that nice community feeling. But there wasn't a freezer or any outdoor space. The open plan staircase provoked images of lots of late night tumbles, as the bathroom was strangely off the downstairs living space - and it sounds like they are about to start building some more flats next-door. the reasons to dismiss this place seem a bit trivial but overall it just wasn't right. Never mind.