We’re Famous!

Recently Top Sante health magazine got in touch with Breathe about the possibility of an interview for their September ‘Money Saving Issue’ (out now!).  It was actually a privilege to talk to one of their reporters about the Breathe agenda and our slow, clumsy progress towards a less consumerist life (see Ten Experiments).

The final article ‘Downsizing Made Us Richer’ is really encouraging.  There are one or two slight inaccuracies.  If they’d got the dates of our relationship much more wrong, we’d have met after our first child was born (we met nearly 15 years ago, not 8).  Our journey isn’t quite the Road to Damascus transformation the interview perhaps suggests.  Ailsa has also pleaded with me to correct the impression that she was ever addicted to ready meals!!

Still, it’s a good step.  I hope, too, in a magazine devoted to helping us feel ‘positive, empowered and upbeat’ (as the editor’s letter says on page 3), Breathe’s input sounds a missing note.  Life is not just about our positivity and wellbeing but the empowerment of the poor.  It was great to be able to give a plug for the work of Tearfund as reason to live on less and give away more.

We picked up a copy of Top Sante at a newsagents and showed it to our boys with a sense of self-righteous, simple-living pride.  Jonah, our eldest, saw it and immediately said, ’We’re famous!’

All our good work obviously counts for nothing.