Hi Ian, nothing wrong with been self critical, I've done that myself and it's taken me 2 years to get the site how it is now haha.
www.holiday-rentals.uk.com is the domain if you are interested in checking my site out.
Yes, I would stick to black font, but maybe change the font? One thing to bare in mind with webdesign is that if you use a font that someone hasn't got on there PC then it will come out as Times New Roman (or whatever the PC's default font is)
I would always stick with Arial or Verdana, and a size of 10 or 12 would be fine. You might also want to have a look at CSS styles, this way when you change something on the CSS file the complete site changes. Again have a look at my site and you'll see what I mean.
About links, good idea to have a category, then pages linking from that. I must admit my links page isnt that good, but I am using it more for optimising my site for the search engines then I am for receiving traffic.
When you get sites to link to you, make sure that they have a good
PR - 3 and above would be good as this would assist in the placement on Google and will raise your websites
PR.
If you would like any assistance on optimising your website let me know as I have learnt quite alot in the past 2 years. Check out
www.seochat.com too.
Hope this helps
Darren
note: when you have a domain name let me know and I'll place a link on my links page for you.