THE evidence mounts of a significant fall in house prices. This week the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Halifax bank, the country's biggest lender, confirmed the trend that the national media has been full of over the last two months.

An estate agent acquaintance of Spectator's, who could be forgiven for being on the point of slashing his wrists in the current doom and gloom climate, was surprising sanguine this week.

He said he could remember days when house prices did not increase in price year after year, when sometimes they went down a little as well as up.

He thought that long term, this dip would be good for the market and for people's expectations of what buying a house was about - that buying a house was about buying a home to live in, not a strategic investment decision.

He further thought that once the financial markets sorted themselves out and the mortgage market became competitive once more, first-time buyers just might be the beneficiaries. Amen to that.

Never-ending task

SPECTATOR feels sorry for the Darlington's gum busters - the intrepid duo tasked with removing discarded chewing gum from the town centre's expensive new pavements.

Their high-tech equipment, which includes high pressure hoses emitting a steaming substance, looks mighty powerful, but then Spectator tried to count the flattened gob-lets of gum as he walked down High Row and gave up after ten paces - there were just too many.

Being a Darlington gum buster must be like painting the Forth railway bridge.

Jolly poor show

SPECTATOR doesn't wish to rain on Air Chief Marshal Sir Glenn Torpy's parade, but a degree of exasperation could be detected among certain media representatives at the disbandment of 25 Squadron at RAF Leeming.

Reporters shivering on a windswept aircraft apron had learned that they were to be denied access to squadron veterans and their families on the official pretext of unusually tight timings associated with a private lunch being attended by the visiting Chief of the Air Staff.

With respect, interviews with top brass are all very well, but such a historic occasion should have had more to do with the memories of those who kept the outfit going on the ground and in the air during its 93-year history.

To modify a cliche associated with the service and heard in countless films of the Kenneth More ilk, not such a jolly good show.