Have you ever met a happy vegetarian? Whether it is jealousy that they cannot eat anything that moves like the rest of us, hunger because they have been living on green stalks and assorted beans, or worry that they look as haggard as a bunch of well-weathered celery but whatever the reason they generally look as though the end of the vegetarian world is nigh.
What they give up in terms of happiness however, it is my experience that they make up for in terms of self-righteousness. The more miserable they look the more they feel they are superior to the rest of us murderous crew and if one is around you can't think about ordering beef, lamb or pig without a disdainful glance and, if they are feeling really veggie brave, a tut-tut of disapproval.
As a rule I don't particularly eat copious amounts of meat but I try to make an exception if a vegetarian is in the party. It adds a bit of bite to the meal if you can look purposely at a skinny veggie just as you are shoving a fine piece of cooked carcass into your gob. My real ambition would be to eat it so rare that the poor animal would not know it had even been caught let alone cooked, but alas this is a bloody feast too far for me.
And you can always tell which kind of vegetarian diet Mr or Mrs Holier Than Thou has been on by their size. Those who have been feasting on green leaves and raw carrots with the odd vitamin tablet thrown in to prevent collapse tend to weigh in this side of a pipe cleaner. They may be healthy inside but not being able to leave the house on a windy day for fear of ending up as a kite without a cord is no advert for a veggie lifestyle. Conversely those vegetarians who are comfortable with dairy products, as in the odd kilogram of cheese to add a bit of bulk, or four boiled eggs just to get the necessary protein tend to end up on the wrong side of Colonel Blimp. Generally they will excuse this by informing whoever wants to listen that they have a slow metabolism. The answer to this claim, incidentally, is always, "No, you eat too much and are in dire need of a beef/chicken or pork burger!' I have been pondering the plight of the vegetarian because the government's Tsar for food, a Dr Stewart, has chosen to inform us that we need to become vegetarians if we want to save the planet. I have no doubt his comment was taken out of vegetarian context but in his attempts to establish this he explained that the number of animals we rear for eating create excessive amounts of methane gas which is in danger of wiping us all out. For the lay-person like me this simply means that the animals fart too much, a gaseous outpouring which apparently threatens the planet more than a silo full of undeclared nuclear weapons.
Has it not occurred to this boffin that if we all became vegetarians then this would not solve the wind problem merely move it to another assortment of rear ends as the world became overrun by parsnip nibbling ex-carnivores belching human methane like there was to be no tomorrow, although we have already established I suppose that while methane is emitted there is indeed to be no tomorrow.
And I recently also found out that many vegetarians are in fact closet animal eaters in that they are content to eat fish. These so-called flexitarians – who comes up with this nonsense? – are happy to eat something with a face on it if it has no legs and isn't cuddly although. I wonder if they would eat a sea-horse? So clearly rather than flexitarian a more suitable name might simply be hypocrite.
And to finish the vegetarian lifestyle entirely it seems that you can't even buy two lemons in ASDA. A man was told at a store last week that lemons are offensive weapons and can only be sold singly. A spokesperson for ASDA explained this was not true and someone at the store in question must have been having a bad day. This, I assure you, is true and not even I could make that one up. I reckon this was a vegan/vegetarian/flexitarian having a bad day so just for the heck of it, get down to the supermarket, stock up on steak and if you are lucky they might even have some pink champagne on offer so you can toast the sad vegetarians with a drink that has more than a hint of blood about it.
In fact buy two bottles and do your bit for the ozone layer while you're at it!
