Students are wankers

I'm not sure I need to add anything further to qualify the statement made in the title. I encounter many students from universities in Manchester. These encounters often occur as I try to battle my way the length of Oxford Road to get from the big hospital where I work to the crank veggie healthfood shop a mile or so away. By the time I have repeated the round trip, I am often on the verge of trying to kill somebody by ramming a spinach and chickpea calzone and Greek loaf down their stupid, ignorant throats.

The reason for this? Students. They walk in their groups, dressed way too fashionably, pumps on their shuffling feet that they can't be bothered to pick up off the floor. They walk into me, they block my way, they're too engrossed in their texting, eyes down, to notice that they're about to collide with me. Such self-absorption cannot be healthy, such a lack of awareness must bring with it all sorts of dangers - mainly from people like me who, one day, will snap and go on the rampage with a responsibly-sourced canvas bag filled to the brim with heavy vegetarian delights, Moleskine notebooks and mechanical pencils.

That'll learn 'em!

Only sadly, it won't. But it might get me a few months' rest in a psychiatric hospital while they "do tests".

Veganism
The reason I visit the crank cafe is because it was suggested to me by mental vegan Ruthie when she was trying to assimilate me into the Borg of radical feminist lesbian, rentamob, anarchist vegans. I thought I'd give it a go, as it's something that's intrigued me, however I knew that I'd never seriously consider this is a lifestyle choice. Vegetarianism, a definite possible, but veganism, absolutely not. It's not just a case of making a choice of what you eat or don't eat, or wear, or feed your dog, or clean yourself or your house with..... there also seems an extremist core that turns what people eat into a political argument. And you can kind of see why this is; vegans don't want animals to be abused, in any way. And many feel so strongly that they see that they're not being true to themselves unless they actively try to do something to change humans' view of their relationship with animals that we share the planet with. In fact, the term "speciesism" is used in relation to this and, with my "I hate people, what gives us the right to ride roughshod over the planet, I wish we'd all just die off and give the rest of the world a chance" head on, I can see what they mean. But then things start getting a bit warped; people who use animal products have been likened to child rapists; we're accused of a global holocaust; we basically deserve to rot in hell.

So the dogmatic world view of vegans put me right off them. And the fact that the one I was sort of seeing (well, not seeing: texting mainly, the odd bit of instant messaging, but not seeing) was absolutely fucking mental was a slight turn off too. As was vegan food if truth be known. It's all too processed. You buy meaty sausages from a good butcher, you know you're getting pork from happy pigs with nothing else but seasoning, some herbs and a bit of fat for flavour. Vegan sausages? Processed shite. It's all processed shite and I don't like processed food.

Besides, I like sausages, I like ice cream, I love sardines, butter, the odd bit of cheese. And what's more, if we suddenly stopped eating meat and using animal products, such as dairy (which I acknowledge is cruel), what would happen to all the animals? All these animals that have been domesticated over thousands of years, what would we do with them? And how the hell would they learn to live in the wild?

But anyway my foray into the strange, dark World of the Translucent People, introduced me to a fabulous cafe and veggie health food shop, and to the delights of spinach and chick pea calzone. I won't name them, because if they searched for themselves and found their name associated with "cranks", "extremists", "fucking nutcases", etc, I think they might be offended. While it's OK to use such terms in a very tongue in cheek way (with the exception of when I refer to nutjob Ruthie and her merry band of weirdo extremists), even I concede that it's not fair to risk having a decent business being linked to them.

I wonder how easy it is to start a political movement based on food that you won't eat? I could certainly think of some foods that should be outlawed. Cottage cheese fans everywhere should be quaking in their boots.