I’m not writing anything this week – I’m on strike*. Instead I thought I’d share this passage from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I read it once, many years ago. Saw the film. But never did I notice how wonderfully Douglas Adams promotes veganism, in such a non-offensive, humorous way. Offensive, humourless idiots like me could learn a lot from him about the right way to go about changing the world.
*aka lazy.
One problem with being vegan is you’re trying to sail the same boat as some crew who want to head on the same course as you do (that is to say, into the sunset, smugly saving the world) but they want to get there on port tack, while you’re very much a starboard kind of skipper.
When I first wrote about going vegan, I could hardly say the word. Nine months later and I’m as vegan as a rhino. Your children’s children can thank me later – as can all the animals. And my own digestive system. Continue reading
Fijian? Or just a cavalier attitude to sunscreen?
We build a brand. The minutiae of personality that has our friends say ‘Oh, typical Fred!’ and ‘Classic Sally!’ My brand was built on the story I’d been telling myself since I was a child, based loosely on a story my parents told me, with the necessary exaggerations and fabrications to create the unique human being I liked to think I was. Continue reading
This is what microcephaly looks like. Absolutely beautiful if you ask me.
Driving to the gym after a hard day at the office, Radio 4’s evening news bulletin drifted out of the stereo. I usually half-listen to the news and half-listen to the thoughts in my head while I half-concentrate on driving. But then I heard a familiar word and my ears pricked. ‘Microcephaly.’ A word my family know so well, but not a word I’d expect to hear on prime time news.
‘Oh hello microcephaly,’ I thought, turning up the volume. ‘What are you doing on the radio?’
It was the first of many times I’d hear about microcephaly in the coming weeks. Until then, it wasn’t a word known to many, but it is now. Continue reading
It is a hard task to change the fundamental aspects of our character. They say the first seven years are most important, for those years are the foundation upon which the rest of our lives are built. In my early days, I learned that it was a sin of such mammoth proportions it would bring great shame upon our household, if I were to be a foodie fuss-pot. Asking for seconds was a compliment to the host, making room for pudding was a masterclass in etiquette, plates were to be scraped clean. Wolf it all down, child. Continue reading
From the Isle of Wight? Then no, it’s not coming to a cinema near you.
There are some childhood rites of passage that never made it to the Isle of Wight in the ’80s. Although we did have a Wimpy restaurant, it speaks volumes about the beautiful (ish) island I once called home, that the Wimpy is still there. Is your childhood Wimpy still there? Thought not.
I went to the cinema once as a child, to see Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I remember announcing I didn’t want to go, being told I had to, then falling in love with Michael Jackson. By the time I was a teenager I’d ditched MJ in favour of Keanu Reeves, who after a few years muddling along with a pot belly, is hot again, so I win the long game. #NeverForgetKeanu Continue reading
