I shall probably be sleeping peacefully in front of the television when next week's column should have appeared.

This year has been interesting to say the least! Viewed from the rural perspective it will always be remembered as the year of the foot and mouth outbreak. That event alone has accelerated trends already evident in the countryside.

We have seen a lurch towards larger and larger farming businesses. We seem to be seeing the beginnings of a trend towards more local sourcing of food, with benefits to local businesses, the freshness and traceability of food, and reducing food miles. More people are working on activities which, though rurally based, are not directly involved in agriculture. I would also like to believe that, because of technological advances in computing, fewer people will have to commute to work, which will reduce traffic and improve everyone's quality of life.

The Christmas period is a time when a significant minority of the population, especially the rural population, engage in one sort of field sport or another. Some are involved all the time. They are part of the considerable number who earn their living from that particular part of the leisure industry, whether as gamekeepers, huntsmen or people who work in factories, producing wax jackets.

The Boxing Day Meet has been a traditional part of many lives, as well as many Christmas cards, for generations. There will be no meets this year, because of the foot and mouth restrictions. The moves, by Parliament, to ban hunting with dogs could well mean that the last opportunity for this Christmas activity is gone.

Hare coursing is also caught up in the legislation, despite the fact that the proponents could not, when questioned, tell the difference between hares and rabbits.

I have always believed fox hunting is a pretty ineffective way of controlling this particular vermin. If people choose to spend their time and money that way, however, it is up to them. I find it difficult to avoid the observation that, as Macaulay said of the Puritans and bear baiting, most of the opposition to fox hunting comes, not from sympathy with the fox, but from a dislike of the pleasure the human participants get from the activity.

If they happen to come from a certain social class who don't vote Labour, then the grey MPs we have these days will be even keener to see it stopped.

That is where the fox hunters have lost the battle. They are seen as being moneyed and from a particular strata of society, and despite the vast earnings of footballers and popstars, which is somehow acceptable, people who are wealthy from other sources, especially from inherited wealth, are regarded with various degrees of suspicion and dislike.

There are only two justifiable reasons for taking an animal's life. One is for food and the other is if the animal is vermin. In both cases the method becomes a matter for debate.

There is no doubt that, theoretically, the odds are stacked against the fox. However, the pathetically small number of foxes actually caught by hunts indicates that, as a method of vermin control, they are about as effective as the Americans bombing Afghanistan and expecting bin Laden to come out with his hands up. It just doesn't happen unless a huge stroke of luck assists the hunter.

Whether banning hunting with dogs is high enough up the list of Government priorities to justify the amount of time it is taking is another matter. I suppose it's easier than tackling homelessness, poverty or crime.

Merry Christmas one and all.