If you want to gauge the affect of the foot and mouth crisis, watch the falling UK sales of fridge magnets made in Monks Cross.

There is nothing obtuse about this connection. Among the big customer list for hundreds of thousands of hand-made animal-shaped fridge adornments honed at Lark Rise Designs in Julia Avenue are gift shops at zoos, country attractions and rural craft events.

The dip in business for Lark Rise's cutesy kittens and puppies, cows and cockatoos, foxes and frogs, hippos and hares happened the moment rural movement stopped in the battle against the bovine disease. For instance Crufts, the pedigree dog show - usually an amazingly good outlet for Lark Rise's magnetically beautiful cut-out thoroughbreds and other animals - simply didn't happen this year

Predictably, there are now encouraging signs that the epidemic is on the wane as sales slowly begin to pick up again.

Meanwhile, ironically, Alan Pratt, managing director, has ensured that time is literally on his side, He has diversified his way out of this crisis by scaling up his wooden designs - and turning them into clocks.

It demonstrates the kind of versatility which has built this pioneer of Monks Cross into a £100,000 turnover business and is likely to keep it there. No one is bigger in manufacturing and marketing fridge magnets of this kind, they claim

Of course many fridge magnet outlets, like the National Railway Museum at York, the Tower of London and the Imperial War Museum plus shopping malls throughout the UK remain solid, but by concentrating harder on exports and a growing demand for these new animal tick-tocks the epidemic failed to stop Mr Pratt and his seven staff in their stride.

They are now working hard to meet growing orders for the fur-or-feather clocks in Japan, France and Holland as well as for an expanding foreign market for these magnetised beasts which owe their attraction to shiploads of powerful isotropic ferrite imported from China.

That is just one side of Mr Pratt's two family businesses in one labyrinthine building. The other is Jetscreen screenprinters and signmakers.

Mr Pratt, a screenprinter, aged 48, arrived in York from Maidenhead, Berkshire, to set up the Jetscreen and between the two organisations now employs 15 people. His wife, Maureen is in charge of administration; one of his sons, Nicholas, works on screen printing production while his other son, Simon is involved in the graphic design side of the business..

He says: "I started Lark Rise in 1987. I was doing work for someone who made hand-painted badges and fridge magnets. It was very countrified and low key and I saw an opportunity to push it further."

He brought some of his own designs to Harrogate gift fair and he was swamped with orders.

He started the enterprise in Stockton on Forest, then moved to Monks Cross 11 years ago.

The foot and mouth crisis was one of few big challenges on the way, but he has met it with skill and dexterity. "We rightly hear a lot about the suffering of hotels and guest houses, but what about us guys? Few people see the connection. But we had ridden out the storm, the weather is improving and country business is slowly picking up again."