Vegans, (upper case V, always). Hm. Yes.
And what makes it worse is that those god-like beings act nornal. They don't particularly bother being smug about it. Whereas with us vegetarians (lower case v), let's just say if we get into a conversation with someone new, give it 30 seconds and we should be well into pontificating modestly ahout the subject, in passing, It's a well-known phenomenon.
First of all, I acknowledge someone, HG, for leading by example decades ago. I traipsed behind her skirt-tails and at least made it to the non-meat consuming side of the food intake equation. No fuss, no words, she was just doing her thing. I never even asked why.
More recently, maybe three years ago someone at work, a smiley, overly well-adjusted person (as Vs always are), never declaiming their holy status, mentioned some weekly vegan meet-up thing, a sort of community cafe, a bring you own home made, healthy food sort of event, and suggesting that I might like it. Obviously it sounded revolting so I didn't consider going, ever.
But probably from that kind offer eventually came the thought I could try to convert to the Vs side. Slowly, secretly. Through the mechanism of not recanting forthwith but by reducing, refraining, finding alternatives and I would eventually phase animal-adjacent stuff out over time. Mixing soya drink with semi-skimmed dairy milk on my life-essential bowl of cornflakes à le matin, have less cheese, and acquire only the occasional box of free range eggs. How impossible could it possibly be, really? No, really?
I'm still phasing.
But now, round 2. Phase 2, even.
This new resolve (if it can be called that at this point) came after watching a Finnish movie on Mubi a few days ago. As with all things filmic it had the usual opening warnings about sex scenes, whatever, but, and I checked after and nothing more horrendously shocking than that. What they had failed chosen not to say was there would be animal slaughter. It was set in an abattoir after all (but involving office life), so perhaps I should have played safe and avoided in the first place. But anyway. Half way through. A brief interlude from the forlorn human drama of lonely souls, and here we go. It was less than a minute of documentary style b-roll. A cow staggers forward into a metal rig, a powerful clamp closes noisily around both sides of its neck. Its beautiful eyes spark with fright but only for a moment, then steady to what must have been their default lovely, trusting state. The extinguishing of life is not shown, but the moments after are. A rope is looped round a hoof and the animal smoothly lifted up effortlessly by machine power, pulled steadily forward to be decapitated by hand with a few perfunctory but powerful strokes. A rear leg still twitches a little.
Dairy.
And I've just started having yoghurt to make smoothies bearable. The prospect, also, of cornflakes with 100% soya (rather than 60% added to 40% real milk which at least makes them still edible), so grim. I was in a quandry that night and subsequently, but those eyes, the hoof, the fallen head refused to depart. It might be late in the life game for me to make even a tiny difference but this new resolve-shaped insistence has formed, admittedly with a hint of back-tracking creeping in around the edges, but even so, it's at least gelatinous.
Vegan-enabling liquids and goop have now been acquired. The cornflakes situation has to be resolved with oat or almond, probably a combo with soya which actually has the nerve to have protein in it, and maybe a smoothie can be made with that horrible-looking pot of soya faux yoghurt thing, and if not the smoothies can be dispensed with, out they will go. The rest of it, eggs, cheese, meh. Do-able. The very occasional solecism of dark chocolate, biscuits, a half a cake, (probably not all at once), to remain on the occasional menu of violent death snack list, if the ingredients indicate such. I won't be looking. There's only so far one can go with these things. I'll leave the Vegans to their quiet divinity, I'd only look out of place, a sniffling scruff in a sandalwood scented temple. I cannot really imagine myself worthy to be in the company of gods.
