Vegetarian

The Very Model of a Modern Vegetarian

It was all my mother’s idea. In the austere post-war period of 1947 she decided that her newly born only child should be brought up as a vegetarian. My father knew that to put up any sort of resistance would be futile so wearily he acquiesced. It was a health thing, I think. Dietary fads came and went: one month the consumption of wine was much to be encouraged and the next another expert would come forward to scotch that theory and to present an alternative. But it seems that generally speaking the eating of too much meat has stood the test of time as being regarded as undesirable and my mother, never one to do things by half, insisted that her son would not have his digestive tract fouled with carrion at all. Not that she applied this rule to herself or to my father: they carried on eating as normal, or as normally as rationing at that time would allow. Perhaps she salved her conscience by regarding herself as an associate vegetarian, one who spurned meat but somehow removed chicken from the list of banned food. And of course fish wasn’t meat, was it? Father didn’t bother with these niceties and just carried on exactly as before. I, however, was brought up to be not an entirely strict vegetarian but one whose diet was supplemented with dairy products such as milk, butter and eggs. Nothing that had lived or was part of a once living creature would be offered to me.

This ensured that as I grew up I never had a longing for meat or fish; in fact the smell of meat and fish cooking was and is extremely repugnant to me. All went well until I was old enough to be dispatched to boarding school. I was unaware that I was unusual in my eating habits and it came as a shock to be sitting at a table with other children who were voraciously consuming large quantities of what to me appeared to be vile looking and worse smelling piles of nastiness. My mother had warned me that this would happen, but she believed that she had prepared the ground by having satisfied herself after consultation with the headmaster at an early stage that my dietary needs would be catered for. As indeed the school imagined they were. I was served a standard school meal minus the meat, just a plate upon which over-steamed vegetables languished in a colourless and dispirited way. I came to be a connoisseur of school mashed potatoes in all their perversions. Lumps of varying consistency, size and colour lurked within the tepid pile and would be left until last after initial rejection. Cabbage and other greens too were fit to be eschewed but hunger drove me to desperation and usually I would clear the plate. Anyway the pudding would soon come along and this made up for the shortcomings of the earlier stages of the meal. At least it did until some smart Alec pointed out to me that suet pudding contained suet. My ignorance of suet’s origins was soon remedied and I was in a spot. I liked the taste of the pudding and eating it stopped me feeling hungry. At that point I abandoned – for a little while – what few and superficial principles I had adopted to justify my vegetarianism, such as health, animal welfare and so on. I tucked into the suet pud and oddly enough I got less ribbing from the other children when I explained why I didn’t eat most meat products in the terms: “I don’t like it”. After leaving school I found that the knowledge of suet pudding’s origins was now enough to put me off it, and so it has remained to this day.

Quite often self appointed experts would tell me that my diet was not healthy and I did not get enough nutrition. I refer these people to my present state after a lifetime of vegetarianism at sixty six years of age, over six feet in height and all my clothes in Big Fat Bastard size.

Today I find that vegetarians are catered for nearly everywhere in this country. Abroad things are rather different and I receive scant toleration in France, no surprise there. I was working for a few days in Turkey in the 1970s and found that where I was staying my only options were bread and wine – quite acceptable actually if enough of the latter is taken. Until relatively recently a vegetarian dining with friends at their house would find that nine times out of ten they would be catered for with a portion of macaroni cheese. Very kind of the host to make the effort and much appreciated but it was very predictable and eaten with weary gratitude: this was part of the deal. I found out when I was researching the early days of the electric telegraph that when it came to insulating the cables for underwater use, a machine identical with the apparatus used for making pasta into macaroni was used to coat the cable with gutta percha, an early form of insulation. Sometimes as I regarded the leathery tubes of macaroni that jeered at me from the plate I could readily understand how the inventors of submarine cable insulation came to their idea.

Although vegetarians will sometimes find themselves disadvantaged, they come out on top when it comes to air travel. I have always booked vegetarian meals when travelling on an aeroplane and invariably I have done better than those sitting next to me with the regular options. More than once my travelling companions have remarked that in future they will become temporary veggies when travelling by air.

Vegetarianism now seems to be more popular than ever it was and having been a veggie all my life it is very good seeing it spread. The divisions within the broad church are many and varied ranging from the ascetic and much to be praised vegans to the showbiz airheads who are veggies until they next feel hungry. I am glad to find myself tolerated and accepted so much more now and it is a very pleasant meeting of minds when I come across another veggie. To anyone contemplating giving up meat and fish I say go for it: it’s good for you and even better for the animals. But be very very careful how you tell other people of what you like to eat as you could be regarded as a crackpot or an evangelist. My advice is to keep your principles to yourself, as I have, and publicly to say that you just don’t like the taste.