Sleepwalking Sheep

 

I don’t like admitting that I’m a vegetarian.

It’s lovely when you can order something from a menu at the same time as everyone else and when nobody realised that the dish you’ve ordered is meat/chicken/fish free. You can enjoy the evening and discuss so many different things.

But once your companions know you are a vegetarian then the inevitable onslaught is merciless.

The hapless vegetarian is subjected to dissertation as to why their companions could never give up meat. How they tried once, or how succulent different meat dishes are.

After a while, they look at the vegetarian’s blanched face and then sometimes ask outright, “Why are you a vegetarian?”

My reply of “I don’t want to kill animals,” is then usually met with a discourse regarding the different methods of slaughtering animals. No detail is spared.

After this, by the time the food arrives I have very little appetite and feel even more self-conscious about my food.

I’d hoped that by ordering one meal in advance, on my recent trip to Poland that I would avoid this situation. (See the menu listed in an earlier blog.)

However, in this restaurant, to my horror, I discovered that no one else had ordered a starter.

Then as the dishes were laid before me I realised that no one else had order a dessert either.

For set before me on the table was a bowl of soup I had ordered, next to the Greek salad, the potatoes with a pipe and the ice-cream pancakes. (The latter in the superheated atmosphere were already melting.)

This arrangement, as good as a neon sign, instantly signalled to the others, who were tucking into great troughs of food, that I was eating something slightly different to the rest of them. That I was a vegetarian!

Mortified, I managed to grab an opportunity to leave earlier than the rest and was spared the more pointed comments.

I was not so fortunate some few days later.

Polish weddings go on into the early hours. We had been invited to the bride and groom’s home for a meal the following day. This meal was goulash cooked by the bride’s mother who had also had very little sleep.

Dishes of steaming goulash were past down the table.

And inevitably a dish was set before me.

Then someone in a sleep exhausted panic told our hosts that I was a vegetarian. Mortified that this now meant the exhausted cook was now put into a quandary as to what on earth she could possibly serve this rather picky guest I piped up hurriedly, “Tell her not to worry. I’ll eat this.”

I did.

It took an awful lot of courage.

All those around me were ladling spoonfuls of soup into their mouths and eyeing my stillness as I readied the spoon and steadied my nerve.

Not a word was said as I emptied the bowl. I was one of them.

“It was delicious,” they declared , but I was unable to echo this sentiment.

For me, it was the first beef I’d tasted for over forty years. I hadn’t forgotten the taste. It was familiar but perfectly horrid. Not because of sentiment but simply because of its taste.

For me it tasted of what it was: dead animal. It tasted like cardboard, and I felt thoroughly unclean having eaten it, and still do.

It made me realise what a collective delusion meat eaters maintain when they tuck into their cuts of meat and proclaim how tasty they are. Of how such flesh does not compare in terms of deliciousness with say a freshly picked strawberry or a juicy apple. Of how the dull brown-grey colour of meat is a far better advertisement of its taste than anything else. Of how farmers have portrayed meat as being the food for virulent strong men and salads more suitable for sissies. And of how so many are fooled, go along with this delusion and try to brainwash others into this meat eating cult.

A week or so later I read how words in The Bible had to be altered in order to placate Constantine the Great who was about to convert to Christianity. Constantine like his meat and so omissions and changes were made to the Biblical text to accommodate his preferences. It is likely that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” had been interpreted by the early Christians to mean “Thou shalt not kill humans or animals” rather like Buddhism’s ideal. The early Christians were therefore likely to have been vegetarians, but had then had to forgo this ideal in order to secure Constantine to their ranks. And so Biblical accommodations were made, which later generations would regard as being set in stone the meat marketing board was the resultant winner. All that is left to do then is a little brain washing and bullying and the meat eating cult rules supreme.

For me the teasing continued at every meal until when asked what I was eating as I lifted a leaf of lettuce to my lips I replied it was mammoth steaks in dipped in lamb sauce. An answer that placated my more determined tormentor or perhaps he noticed the whites of my eyes.

Vegetarians live eight years longer than meat eaters… I told them.

The amount of land it takes to feed one meat eater could be better used to feed twenty vegetarians… I told them.

But their ears were closed and their eyes were drawn to the meaty chef’s specials twice as expensive as my humble dishes.

(~Sigh) I do however wish I had not eaten the goulash though eating it gave me the certain understanding that meat eaters are sheep.