John, somthing along the lines of "Passion Fruit" comes to mind. I found this little gem at a 7-11 behind a copy of "Gentleman's Weekly". It was full of gorgeous garden photos, unfortunately they were all badly out of focus and it was hard to get my eyes past the scantily clad nymphettes holding a variety of garden produce. The world needs more books like that. What i particularly liked about this magazine was the emphasis on the art of the vegitable. I'll never look at a wet tomato the same. I never would have imagined that there was so much i didn't know about gardening. For example, did you know that if you light a daylilly bloom correctly it becomes translucent and barely hides anything? Yes, this was one of those books that changed our lives. We used to throw zucchini away. Now my wife wants me to let them grow, "...just a little bit more..." she says with a hint of smile. Poppa

I made delicious crockpot meatballs at one of our Christmas gatherings. I used two large bags of frozen meatballs (I did one turkey, one beef). Two cans of cranberry sauce (the gelatin style one), and an equal amount of your favorite bbq sauce. 4-5 hours on low in the crockpot. Delicious!

I have just asked my mum to buy "The Boy with the TopKnot: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton" - Sathnam Sanghera. It's a memoir (duh) about an boy who grows up in England and looks to be really funny. Couldn't find it in the US so hoping to pick it up in person next autumn when I go to home (UK home) for a bit. This book just came out in paperback in April in the UK. Probably not much call for memoirs from Wolverhampton in the US.

Vee, I think what you're suggesting is true. Just as in Wales, there is now nothing whatsoever remaining of the old coalmines and coalfields - it's as if the whole industrial revolution had never taken place: 'Nothing beside remains: boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away' as Shelley said. Halifax for instance, a bowl set amongst hills, was once almost invisible from above for the smoke and fumes of the factories etc. which functioned there. Now the old buildings, cleaned up and turned into things like Art Galeries and Craft Centres and Boutiques, it is really rather a chic place. Dear old Bradford - Priestley's Bradford - he would hardly recognise were he to come back for the immigrant population, as you say, and the curry houses at every corner - you get some of the best curries in UK there. And then there's the tourist industry...... 'Last of the Summer Wine country (Holmfirth) and 'Emmerdale country (around Leeds). and in the early '60s, when I first visited Haworth to pay my respects to the Brontes, the Black Bull (where Branwell bought the gin for Anne......) was just like any other pub and buses ran up and down Main Street. Later, I lived there for 17 years and when I left it was almost totally overrun with tourists to such an extent that it was better known as 'Bronte Village' than as Haworth. Purists and locals threatened to deface the 'Bronte Village' signs, in fact - especially since most of the tourists were bus trippers who'd been taken for a day's outing and had never even heard of the Brontes. But they loved the cobbled streets and the quaint little pubs and probably thought us residents were pretty cute too! Stan Barstow gives us this picture of a changing Yorkshire, too, in his later books - touristy Haworth appears in A BROTHER'S TALE(1978). But in his Ella trilogy (1990s), he turns right back to WW2 to tell his story Dido