"WHAT do you want to look at that for, when we've just moved?"

My husband was querying my urgent search for the Evening Press 'homes' supplement which I was keen to retire to bed with.

For a moment, I couldn't answer him. After all, it is highly illogical. Having moved house a couple of months ago, you would think that the property pages would be as much use to me as they would to a nomad in the Australian outback.

But this is not the case. Every week I look forward to their arrival, either to take to bed or fold up to read while I'm in the bath.

My husband can't understand it, and as I attempted to justify myself I felt as shallow as a footballer's wife (sorry if you happen to be one, but that's the consensus).

"I just like to see what's up for sale, what other people have done with their houses, whether anyone we know is moving," I babbled.

Plus, of course, whether I like admitting to it or not, there's the price thing.

How much we might have made - or lost - in the past week. But while money is a key factor nowadays to anyone perusing a property supplement, it is certainly not the driving force behind what my husband calls my "unhealthy obsession".

Neither did my interest coincide with the purchase of our first home 15 years ago nor the relatively recent surge of interest in property.

Back in the early 1980s, when I was a student in London, a glossy magazine was delivered to our flat, the result of an upmarket postcode (yet distinctly downmarket home).

Called The Magazine, it was crammed full of photographs of gorgeous properties, all beautifully furnished. Many had long French windows leading on to ornate balconies framed by climbing geraniums. I dreamed of living in a flat like that and used to spend hours looking at the pictures like a child immersed in a fairy tale.

Even before that, when I was a teenager, and the occasional copy of Country Life appeared in our house, I would spend ages looking at the fantastic houses with tennis courts, swimming pools and paddocks.

I am certain that - whether it's the terraced house next door, the bungalow down the street or a rambling mansion in another county - looking at property pages for no particular reason other than voyeurism is a woman thing. I know that many men make their living as property developers, but unlike women, they don't have that plain old nosey streak. Men only look to buy, whereas with women, property pages are as interesting for what we can't afford as what we can.

My mum did the same thing when I was small. She would sit at the dining room table, the homes pages spread out in front of her, occasionally looking up and commenting to my dad on some property or other, to which he would grunt, "What? Oh, right", before going back to whatever he was doing. It's the same today, only if I'm home, I'll be at the table with her.

I also recall the times when either me, my brother or sister, would unthinkingly use the homes supplement to protect a table top from a messy art and craft activity. My mum would react exactly like I do now, and spend ages looking for it before finding soggy remnants in the bin and getting suitably cross.

My husband has resigned himself to my 'hobby' and accepts it. The day he will start to be genuinely concerned, he says, is when I begin picking through the births, deaths and marriages.

Updated: 09:08 Tuesday, July 20, 2004