'IN 2004, all formal ties with the NFWI ceased and the Markets began trading ... under their new name, Country Markets."

And that, you would think from Jo Major's introduction to her photographic essay, was that. It wasn't, of course, and only a year or so ago my e-mail in-box, and my ear, were full of the hurt and indignation of many who ran, stood behind stalls, baked, jammed and grew for that wonderful institution, the WI market. For a multitude of reasons, they did not want the name to change, but they lost a sometimes bitter fight.

Well, technically and legally the name changed but, as Jo Major admits: "The new name, Country Markets, has yet to figure in the public consciousness," and so, throughout Time to Play Shops (The Lutterworth Press £12.50) she refers to them as "the WI markets".

Reluctant to accept her mother's invitation to join the local WI market's annual outing a few years ago, she found that, not only was it not a "homely pursuit ... slightly beneath me", but that it also ended her search for the right project to complete her MA in photographic studies. The result, eventually, became Time to Play Shops.

It is subtitled A Tribute to the WI Country Markets but it is also a history, a celebration, a social exploration, a nuts-and-bolts description of how they work and even a guide to starting one up and a directory of current markets.

Having decided on her project, Jo Major obviously took the markets to heart and revels in their standards, the way they are valued by their customers and the pleasure market members gain from their involvement.

All that is expressed before, after and in between the real celebration, which is the pictorial essay on the range and variety of goods, venues and people who go to make up this national asset.

Here is no studio-set-up food photography, with all the tricks it can involve, but food as found on market visits and it looks just as good - a basket of strawberries, three-dimensionally luscious; a mouth-watering box of buttercream fancies, correctly packed and labelled, or some intricate sugarcraft.

A very wide lens makes for some rather curved halls, but enables one shot to cover the whole stall, as in Stokesley's range of baking and Northallerton's crafts.

If I hadn't already been a fan, and a customer, I'd have searched the book's directory for my nearest market. I hope Time to Play Shops doesn't just interest those already involved but gets into places where it can convert the uninitiated.

My only quibble is the book's rather unwieldy A4-on-its-side format ("landscape" rather than "portrait" for those of you used to setting up printing on a PC).

l Just before I sat down to write this, I read of the Suffolk West WI members whose coach was held up for an hour or so in Calais while sniffer dogs searched it for explosives (the "traces" a scanner had detected were put down to nail varnish remover in the end).

Did the WI whinge, demand compensation or at least an apology or tear a strip off the French officials?

Not a bit of it. "It was a bit of an inconvenience ... but the French authorities have their job to do," said the trip organiser. "You can't be too careful these days."

Just what I'd expect from the WI.