The confrontation of urban and rural lifestyles is the major source of fun in the novel which would be incomplete without due references to the WI where "tradition decreed that one should wear a tweedy A-line skirt with a delicious lemony-coloured twin set" (119), where one can get one's hand "on loads of those hand-knitted gnome families they always make" (118) and where new members are introduced into the mysteries of "how to knit Mrs Santa Claus or the Three Bears in lime green wool remnants" (118).