The terrible tragedy that struck the USA and the Western World, in the form of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, may well have radically altered the way we live our lives for years to come.

No one who witnessed the live coverage on the various television networks on that fateful Tuesday will ever forget that day.

Neither will they forget it when they are about to board a flight. We have become used to more or less unlimited and cheap travel all around the world. We are used to arriving at airports and being able to get on and off aeroplanes in very little time. We have used up vast amounts of the world's limited resources in such travel and we have caused considerable environmental damage along the way.

Clearly, the levels of security demanded by countries and airlines need, with hindsight, to be dramat-ically stepped up. Flying is likely to become both less convenient and, because of the extra security, more expensive.

We may feel that we, as individuals, wish to be in more control of our own destinies. Because trends are actually only movements of quite small numbers of people altering from one view to another, relatively few people changing their minds on which course of action to follow can have an entirely disproportionate effect. When under threat people tend to retire into their shells and to make sure of the things with which they are familiar. They make secure their homes, families, jobs and friends and they do not undertake risk or enter into long-term commitments.

We may be entering into a period when the local areas, the villages, towns and cities in which we live become more important to us. A period when we wish to see local democracy becoming more important to the individual than national and international democracy.

We feel ourselves unable to influence the larger picture. But we can fight elections for parish councils. There does seem to be the first stirring of a revival of interest in local businesses and in locally-produced food. Perhaps this trend will be accelerated. The recent very successful Food And Drink Festival in the centre of York was an opportunity for people to find out more about the food they eat and where it comes from. The numerous television programmes on our screens tell us that there is a great deal of curiosity about the subject.

We are all familiar with the huge trucks which haul goods all over the country. They, too, use vast amounts of resources.

Approximately half of the road miles which they accumulate are food miles. So we use resources to carry ingredients of one sort or another from place to place.

Then the ingredients are processed, sometimes in a number of different locations, brought together and the finished product is manufactured.

It is then transported, once more, to be bought by the ultimate consumer, either in a retail outlet or, increasingly, in a catering outlet.

The retailers and caterers say that the consumers want, and must be allowed to have, the bewildering array of choice presently available to them.

To paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies, they would say that, wouldn't they?

I, for one, do not believe that my life would be measurably poorer if I could not have bought strawberries flown in from California in the first week of July as I inadvertently did last year.

Local ones would have been just as good.

They would also have had the advantage of supporting local producers, their staff and families.

It was not charity, but I would have preferred it to have begun at home.