Choices.

We are all victims of the choices and decisions we make in life.

Some decisions are easy to make – no-brainers with an obviously correct and righteous outcome. Some take a little more time to think about in order to ascertain exactly the right choice to make.

But what if that decision is cut right down the middle?

There isn’t a right or a wrong; a left and a right; a yin and yang?

Some decisions are like that; 50/50, half and half. 

An issue that has been with me ever since I first met an animal rights activist back in my formative adolescence – vegetarianism is one of them 

From a devout carnivore’s point of view, there is no argument for eating animals. Put quite simply, we are animals and according to Darwinism, life is about the survival of the fittest and as the human race has developed tools and methods to catch and slay our prey, it seems only natural to do so. Thus we have a fresh leg of lamb on the table every Sunday dripping in garlic and rosemary served up with new potatoes and steamed broccoli. 

Most people reading this will be salivating at the thought and why not?

What got me thinking otherwise for most of my teens and twenties was the notion that perhaps we oughtn’t eat our furry and feathered friends. 

It started off like that for me and for 12 years I went veggie - or as my sister liked to call it, I was a vegetable. 

I went the whole hog too – sorry – I didn’t eat any animal products at all. Even Polo mints were off the menu as they contained gelatine which, as we all know somehow comes from the extraction of collagen from the skin, bones and connective tissue of cows, chickens, fish and pigs primarily. 

I even managed to find a dead snazzy pair of NIKE Air veggie trainers and a fabric belt to hold up my 501s that completed the full tree-hugger look. I did attempt to grow dreadlocks but my Surrey upbringing wouldn’t allow it; something in the water, daddy told me… 

So for many years, I was proud to be the awkward one at dinner parties who had to pre-order a nut roast or insist the roast potatoes were cooked in ethically sourced, animal-free oils and that the sunflower whence it came had had a pleasant life before its inevitable demise to cater for the crisp edges I like on my Maris Pipers.

For years my poor mother struggled to understand this “phase” and on numerous occasions, it would slip her mind that her difficult son was due for lunch and she’d dig out a boil-in-the-bag curry or microwave vegetarian lasagne to go with the roast dinner the rest of the family were tucking in to. 

I didn’t mind though. In my mind, I  was being righteous and sticking to my principles. I wasn’t one for ramming my ideals down the throats of my fellow carnivores (much) and didn’t scorn or tut when I saw them chewing on the flesh of a recently alive beast. I just sat at the end of the table in my oxygen tank sheltering under the shade of my halo contemplating what an amazing human I was and how awful they were.

This mantra continued for years and over that time many hours were spent discussing the rights and wrongs of vegetarianism over a slow-roasted pork belly and a Linda McCartney pasta bake. In a world where we’re all looking for a window of opportunity to be different or individual, it gave me a moment or two with the pane ajar. 

Now, I wasn’t a vegetarian for narcissistic reasons or deluded about my own megalomania, I did actually love animals and would often go round to my mother’s house solely to see our ageing Spaniel, Megan and therefore didn’t fancy eating or indeed wearing her. 

My friends had selected the same diet at a similar time but interestingly we all had chosen different extremes. I had decided that dairy products and eggs were ok. I even chose not to research too heavily into the production and possibly inhumane farming of such goods in case it meant that I would have to rule them out as well. A life of sitting under a tree with coffin-dodging fruitarians waiting for the seasons to change to allow an apple to fall into my bony hands didn’t seem like a life for me, opting instead for a life of lactose and foetal ignorance in order to satisfy my hunger. 

We all draw lines in life and this was just a small one. I had friends who ate chicken and fish but still called themselves vegetarian. Some thought leather jackets didn’t count. Others thought dairy and eggs were just as bad as the flesh itself. In the middle, there were guys who ate vegetarian cheese made from cow’s milk. Never got that one. If you're gonna eat cheese made from cow's milk, you might as well eat the stuff that’s hardened in the animal’s stomach eh?

Ten years on we were all still alive, still healthy with all necessary limbs and faculties accounted for. The myth that a low protein diet would affect natural growth seemed to pass us by and my 6’+ friends laughed the theory off. Gradually over time, however, the passion we all had for vegetarianism waned and one by one we all struggled to maintain the strict discipline required. Especially once we all started meeting girls with differing backgrounds.

One day, as a rebellious twenty-something with my long hair and Surrey accent I returned from playing golf after a particularly poor 18holes. I can’t recall the exact score or reason for such turmoil but either way, I returned to my bed-sit in Addlestone absolutely fuming. 

I was an angry golfer.  Perhaps because I felt at one point in my teenage years I had the potential to be rather good and that possibly a career in the sport had once beckoned. Cars, motorbikes, girls, drugs and booze aren’t the ideal accompaniments to a career in golf and my focus and, as a result, game had suffered somewhat. The disappointment I felt that I hadn’t pursued a love of mine in favour of smashing the state and getting trollied every day was still ripe and often returned on the back nine.

So I booted open my bedroom door around lunchtime one Saturday and contemplated a swim that wouldn't require a towel. I figured a bite to eat might help. It being 1993 there was a Safeway over the road so I picked up a few quid and stomped in to buy something to make me feel better. With anger pulsing through my veins I returned home and blended up a tin of Skipjack tuna with mayo, lemon juice, paprika, Worcestershire Sauce, Tabasco, pepper, and chopped celery and wedged it in between two chunky slices of warm, fresh granary bread. 

And so began the gentle demise of my radical vegetarian adolescence.  

A month or so later with guilt even a counsellor couldn't have shifted, I poured my heart out to the boys to which they all admitted to having fallen from the righteous wagon too in recent times. We shared tales of woe ranging from “I had a Polo mint and couldn’t sleep for a week afterwards…” to “I thought, fuck it and had a sirloin… never slept so well…” Such was the variety in commitment to our seemingly worthy but disappointingly temporary cause. 

One by one the fellowship of the veg fell apart and now, many years on we have all become experts in the culinary arts. Dinner parties have moved on a bit since the days of frying up mushrooms and peppers in butter and garlic, pouring over a jar of Ragu and tossing it in Rigatoni and red Leicester cheese. Nowadays it’s all slow-roasted belly of organic acorn-fed Gloucestershire Old Spot pig served with trendy marinated veg you’ve never heard of with gravy that has been simmering for nine months outside in the homemade clay oven.

But twenty years on from when I decided that vegetarianism wasn’t for me any more, I am veering back towards it. I recently got custody of a Griffon/Golden Retriever doggy thing and spend pretty much every waking moment with him. Chewy is cute as you like and I adore him. That, coupled with the endless videos I am sent through social media of the appalling treatment of pigs and cows and chickens in abattoirs and farms, has really affected me of late and I don’t feel right or indeed necessary to eat meat right now. I am not dismissing it as I have had many years now of enjoying eating meat in all its forms and all of its seemingly endless methods of cooking and preparation. But with the variety of meat-free food available on the market now (especially living in Brighton) there is an alternative. 

I had Christmas dinner at my sister’s last week and thoroughly enjoyed some turkey and the odd pig in blanket but now when I have the option of something else I’ll take it. I can’t see myself digging out the oxygen tank and halo again at dinner parties but age and wisdom have taught me that I have a choice. I don’t have to be all revolutionary and self-righteous about it. I can pick and choose my beliefs and draw my own line. 

I am, therefore still very much 50/50 about whether or not humans should eat meat. Morally, nutritionally or obligatorily I really don’t know.

A wise man once told me that life is all about finding our own peace of mind and perhaps this is a step along my path to finding it.