Penny Jackson finds out what successful, independent thirtysomethings are are looking for. It is hardly new to say that the influence of women in the matter of buying and selling homes is strong, to put it mildly, but now the cult of the young, single woman has appeared in the first- time buyer market.
When they walk into an estate agent’s office asking for a two-bedroom terrace house, it doesn’t mean they can be persuaded to look at a one- bedroom basement on a busy road just because it’s their first purchase.In London, single female first-time buyers have a clearer idea than men as to exactly what they want, finds Hilary Wade, director of Winkworth, the estate agency. Later, Malinese women reveal the secrets of traditional body decoration and hair styling.Grow Your Greens (Fri 12.30pm) Sophie Grigson meets Joy Larkcom, who cultivates oriental vegetables in her Norfolk garden.. Give all the scented candles and joss-sticks away to the industrial north to sweeten up their air – and keep our senses clear, so we can enjoy the full flavour of our food and wine, untainted.The Nosh Brothers’ `Winter Nosh’ is transmitted on Carlton Food Network on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.The book of the series, `Winter Nosh’ (pounds 7.99), is available from all good bookshopsThis week’s highlights on CFN:Antony’s Scotland (today 12.30pm) Antony Worrall Thompson embarks on a gastronomic tour of Scotland , meeting locals and finding out about traditional dishes, such as cullen skink tart.A Taste of Africa (Tues 1.30pm) Dorinder Hafner visits Mali, and on a voyage up the River Niger, samples freshwater fish, cooked brochette-style and served with salad.

The Bridget Jones’s of this world may not know what they want in their men, but when it comes to their homes they certainly do. Most notorious, of course, is the ioniser – having blown the monthly lottery budget on beeswax, madam then decides it’s time to “look after your lungs”.Along with meters to tell you when your houseplants need watering (what’s wrong with putting a finger onto the soil surface?) and shoe tidies, ionisers are a surefire way to part a fool from his (or her) money.So don’t be tempted to cloud the issue. Young marrieds in the suburbs used to be grateful if they had a sanded- wood floor of their own. Now they can’t sit still unless they have verdigris- effect candelabra and untold tapers perfumed with more frankincense than a Papal “steamin’ handbag”.Not content with welcoming guests into a steamy cloud of floral bouquet or churchy mist, they then commit the double faux pas of buying hi-tech nonsense from one of those “innovative gadget guides” that fall out of your Sunday papers in a most irritating way. The explosion of lifestyle magazines and home-decoration guides are mostly to blame. As we all were about to tuck in to some serious nosh we resolved to deliberate on the smouldering debate.

Is smoke an inconsiderate oversight, or, a retro statement and therefore seriously trendy?

It has to be said that the overpowering whiff was reminiscent of The Body Shop on a hot summer’s day. And, as smell is key to the enjoyment of food it was more than a little off-putting.
As everyone knows, if you have a cold and have difficulty smelling, then your ability to enjoy food is way down If you smoke, you smother other peoples’ senses. Even a heavy smoker knows that it’s possible to be “smoked out” and put off by the residue of atmosphere from other heavy smokers in a confined space – say, a taxi or an aircraft cabin.The other culprit has to be scented and coloured candles. In fact, most of Beaven’s concerns look winningly up-to-date.. At a dinner party recently, we were astonished to find scented candles and joss-sticks burning in the dining room. But who would have made a better fist of the Tehran hostage crisis, he or JFK?As the misadventures of Bill Clinton show, Kennedy could not have got away with it today. Even exposing oneself to an Arkansas state employee and vacuum-cleaning the Asian-American community for campaign money are small sins compared to whoring in the White House, carousing with mobsters, and enabling giant corporations to bribe and blackmail for huge defence contracts.

Hersh leaves little doubt that General Dynamics used knowledge of Kennedy’s affair with Judith Campbell Exner (the mistress he shared with Chicago mafia chief Sam Giancana) to force its unwanted F-111 bomber on the US army and navy, despite unanimous and correct expert warnings that the plane was a disaster.Today’s celebrity-driven journalism has none of the inhibitions of Ben Bradlee (then of Newsweek), trapped by friendship and veneration of Kennedy’s office into complicitous silence. Watergate has seen to it that the press no longer accords any benefit of the doubt to occupants of the Oval Office JFK was Clinton’s boyhood hero. For all the modern baggage, and the neat, thematic extensions provided by Ralph’s Falkland War memories, the final effect is pleasantly reminiscent of Francis King’s under-rated 1950s novels: tense, claustrophobic, full of badly contained postwar English irritation This may make it sound like a period piece. Beaven’s sharp, elliptical paragraphs, stuffed with acute set-piece descriptions of scene and incident, sometimes need to be read more than once to yield up their design, while Ralph’s anxieties over memory lapses – not to mention the number of resolutions which take place parenthetically – are mildly confusing.Among a raft of well-drawn characters, Mr Chaunteyman, too, is not much more than a caricature. But where succeeds – in the slow unfurling of Robert and Penny’s love, say, or in Ralph’s razor-sharp recollection of life in 1950s Plumstead with his sadistic old dad – it does so admirably.