position of sideboxes or centre boxes

[confuseduk]

Hi all,

Trying to get my cart sorted out and have managed pretty much on my own (with the help of various posts on here of course) but have come across a problem.
I would like the side boxes and the centre part to be level, as illustrated by the dashed black line. At the moment the side boxes are a little higher than the centre.
I would also like to have the "displaying 1 to..." only at the bottom and not at the top, and remove the heading (gothi/cult in this case)- these two actions in themselves may actually align my boxes. I have tried and tried but cant seem to do it.
I have also noticed that this varies from page to page - presumably because I have not yet set all my other pages to the same as the home page as far as the various display settings go.
The only way I managed to change the vertical position of the side boxes was to alter the css to add padding but of course this increased the space between the boxes.
I have taken a screenshot of what I mean. I do have other questions but will post those under seperate topics if I cant sort them out myself in the next hour or so.
Thanks for taking the time to read.

EDIT: Using version 1.3.8