A Fortnightly Column

Saying 'adieu' to a Yorkshire slice of the good life
THIS IS the last of the fortnightly Lifestyle columns although there will be occasional contributions in the future, so this is a good opportunity to thank the many people who have written in about some of the subjects covered.
In addition to the letters published in the Catholic Herald I would like to thank those of you who have written to me personally. While some of them have been highly critical I have never had a single abusive letter, although there is still time!
Some offers of advice and help have been very kind indeed. The occasional columns about our own very smallholding have been particularly welcome and 1 remember one occasion when we were even offered a kid by a lady in Kent when our goat, Thea, sadly produced still-born kids.
Unfortunately the distance from Kent to Yorkshire made it difficult to arrange the transfer but the offer was greatly appreciated.
As you will gather, this particular bit of the Catholic Herald is not produced in a crowded office just off Bunhill Row in the City of London but from a quiet and occasionally chilly slice of "the good life" somewhere in Yorkshire. hence the occasional references to things domestic.
Talking of which, I am pleased to say that our self-sufficiency successes are at last starting to outweigh the failures. We no longer expect success from every packet of seeds and have given up threatening the poultry with chicken soup whenever they lay off the egg production.
For several years we have set ourselves the target of having the vegetable garden dug over before the end of the year, but this year, for the first time. we have actually succeeded.
The combination of some extra holiday and a few days of dry weather just after Christmas meant that by lunchtime on December 30 we could rest on our spades and forks and contemplate a tidy garden. We look forward to a fruitful summer and perhaps I'll let you know if we succeed. Silence will imply failure!
The Lifestyle column started exactly four years ago this week at a time when people still believed that our economic worries were merely temporary difficulties in an otherwise uncluttered pathway of economic growth.
Now we have become much more sanguine about the future and while there is still plenty of evidence of a refusal to face facts, there are also hints of a change in attitudes.
Three recent developments support this notion. One was obviously the nature of the discussions at last May's National Pastoral Congress, with clear statements on many aspects of social justice.
At a wider and more secular level there is the rapid increase in interest in matters such as nuclear disarmament, an interest which is anything but insular. Finally there is the growing concern over Third World problems.
At a time of recession you might expect people to be concerned solely with their own problems. While this might be true of the present government, the public interest generated by the report of the Brandt Commission on problems of international development, with packed public meetings all over the country, suggests an opposite trend.
I must confess that this is against my expectations and is, at the same time. one of the most hopeful signs for the future.
Paul Rogers