John Seymour’s books on self-sufficiency convinced a post-war generation to drop out and grow cabbages. The movement even spawned a sitcom, The Good Life, the tale of Tom and Barbara Good played by Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal. Ask any gardener of a certain age what got them gardening, they will have a fondness not for Seymour but for the Goods. The romance of self-sufficiency overwhelms the reality of it, because even Tom and Barbara got old, and that is the pressure that self-sufficiency brings to the romance.
I had a full-time job when I first took on an allotment with my wife, Carol. We struggled to make it work and felt guilty, and were made to feel guilty, when we had to hand back the keys after my spinal accident.
