EVENTUALLY, it seems, every dream must turn sour. Four Prague police officers were injured and several dozen people arrested at the weekend in protests in which shop windows, including that of McDonald's on Wenceslas Square, were smashed.

PETER ANDREWS has just added to the long list of British eccentricities. He's formed the Secret Shed and Handmade Hideaway Society - and is hoping that it will soon become a familiar name to all but a dedicated troglodyte.

PERHAPS I should write to the Times. The other day, as we lay- in later than usual (thank goodness for half-term) both my wife and I thought we heard a cuckoo.

BERNARD Noble's description of the impact of global communications on societies - commercialised subversion and fragment-

A parliamentary committee will investigate the plight of allotment gardeners this month as their plots are eaten up in the rush to build new housing. Enthusiasts hope MPs can persuade ministers to act but, writes Fran Abrams, there has been little sign that this will happen.

MADONNA AND CHILD: Towards a New Politics of Motherhood by Melissa Benn, Cape pounds 12.99

One would think that sliding down a mountain on a couple of slats of wood was one of the least environmentally damaging things a fun-loving tourist could do. Unfortunately, when there are thousands of us doing it all at the same time our need for chalets, roads, ski-lifts, water and fuel puts a heavy burden on the environment and on the local villages. We even often need snow made for us by gas-guzzling snow cannons.

Consumer pressure has forced suppliers to offer environmentally- sound house products. Gareth Lloyd tells you where to find them

After Miss Smilla came a storm of icy chillers. Now the genre's gone green, says Jane Jakeman

Neal Ascherson calls for writers and thinkers "to answer the question: Who are we, and what are we like?" (2 November). While the question of our identity and the problem of finding a way forward are linked, they are not the same question. While England needs a platform from which people "with passionate imaginations can survey their nation and report what they see", it also needs a forum in which "the way forward" can be sensibly discussed.

Two American pest control researchers received this year's World Food Prize for work on cutting the use of insecticides on crops while maintaining or increasing yields.

Bath 27 Borders 23

BUILDINGS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: CENTRE FOR UNDERSTANDING THE ENVIRONMEN T, SOUTH-EAST LONDON; In the first of a series on new architecture, Rachel Barnes discovers an ecological wonder that's got the aesthetics right too

Sue Wheat looks at a housing project designed with a difference