Thatch is making a comeback complementing the white-washed Dorset cobb of some homes

Thatch is making a comeback, complementing the white-washed Dorset "cobb" of some homes.I'm standing in the midst of the vast woodland, whose depth makes this area so important to naturalists. Building sticks to tradition - the flint fronts of the cottages are divided in regular fashion by a couple of lines of bricks or, in the grander churches, by stone. Among the trees, roebuck and fallow deer still breed and shelter from the gun. Some days you can see perhaps a dozen fallow deer lying in a huddle in the fields, enjoying the warmth.

A dangerous habit, particularly this month, when foreign hunters seek trophy heads during the rut. It is an extraordinarily empty land, which at times seems untouched by modernity. From the top of Dorset's Cranborne Chase you can look down to where the kings of England stalked deer for hundreds of years. This land of rival estates descends through a series of interlocking hills and valleys, the chalk downs cleared for farming, their clay-topped brows covered with dense woodland. We stopped and had a good chat, Cropredy is the only place where you could do that."But how long can it go on? Pegg turned 50 in November and the rest of the band are not far behind. "At the rate we are going it's impossible to even slow down let alone stop," affirms Pegg.The only time the band feel old is when fans queue at the guest tent for autographs weighed down with piles of Fairport album covers and they realise just how long they have been around.The village will not let them stop.

"The first exhibition I got him was between the till and the toilets at an Italian restaurant in Pontefract. The next was at the Royal Festival Hall."Showing alongside Malkin's powerful charcoal sketches of life underground were stunning photographs by a former Fryston colliery blacksmith and barber, Jack Hulme, who was in his eighties when Lewis discovered his work. "I'm world famous round here," Hulme told him and proceeded to show him a Leica camera which had cost him pounds 92 in 1943. "I once interviewed the great Bert Hardy, a big-time photographer, and he could only just afford a Leica," muses Lewis..

Britannia is too cool to drink tea. The nation's love affair with its once favourite brew has soured, research published this week shows. Busier lifestyles, the inexorable rise of the soft drink and our growing passion for America's latest cultural import - the coffee bar - are all to blame. Oh, and the fact that a growing number of us think the humble cuppa is, not to put too fine a point on it, dull Think tea, think slippers Dunkable digestives Cosy kitchens. Associations with clubbing, dining out and the work hard, play hard ethos of today's bright young things seem tenuous, to say the least. UK tea sales have fallen by 3.5 per cent in the past five years, research from market analysts Euromonitor reveals.

True, not a major collapse but just as worrying: a gradual demise. "The market has been static, if not in decline, for the past few years," admits Chris Thomas, marketing director of Premier Brands which owns Typhoo."Older people are fairly well-established in their habits. When it comes to tea they've drunk the same brand day in day out for 30, 40, 50 years Young consumers are saying tea is old hat. We need to perk it up."Which is why Typhoo's new advertising campaign is designed to get us dancing to our kettles. Feelgood shots of everyday people doing everyday things in unusual ways are neatly choreographed to a musical accompaniment by Seventies funksters Kool and the Gang. The commercial, aimed at young housewives, marks an attempt to make tea more relevant to our time. It's a far cry from chimps in frocks.Meanwhile, the Tea Council last month unveiled a generic logo for tea. The sun and cup motif is described by its creator, designer Ken Windsor, as: "A light-hearted bon vivant device to re-position tea in the hearts and minds of the consumer as a healthy, hearty drink."Windsor, creative director of design company Siegel & Gale, explains that worldwide, interest in tea is flagging.