Assuming that station was reading. trains at the moment are 35 minutes into paddington and then you've got a fair trek on the tube east to where most of the work tends to be. I live on the north edge of London at the moment . My preference would be to be as central as possible but with prices as they are thats not going to happen.

Yep - Reading station. But when we lived there, we were not working in London. We were working in Reading for a little over a year so the location was ideal. A 15 minute walk around the Thames (where I could feed the swans and geese 15 pence a loaf "swan bread") into the office. The last 6 months we were commuting back and forth to Holland. We just went into London to see shows, shop, do sight-seeing or to see Andy's brother who had a flat in Horseshoe Wharf.

I hear you about the prices. If we had wanted to buy the house that we were living in back in 2000, it would have cost us almost a million pounds back then. I dread to think what it would cost now....