Oxford Vegetarians Web
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Vegetarian Union. My God life can be so hard. This morning the nanny phoned to say that her father was in hospital after a heart attack. How can people be so selfish? Why couldn't he have just dropped dead? I would have happily given her a half day off (unpaid of course) to attend the funeral. Then my hair stylist was late and the manicurist didn't turn up. My aromatherapist is having a nervous breakdown and I feel like joining her. Then the au pair allowed the children to burst into my bedroom while my aura was being cleansed. To top it all off my local greengrocer has sold out of organic okra. My planned menu for a casual midweek supper for 35 of my closest and most intimate friends has had to be abandoned. Stuffed swan's eggs with slivers of stir fried ostrich brains and oven roasted exotic vegetables. But without the okra I've no option but to have a total rethink.
My latest TV series Tossing with Jocastta starts this week and it's been an endless grind of interviews, TV appearances and media parties. The producer had wanted to call the series Stuffing Your Gob, insisting that the latest trend was cockney yob culture. We compromised by agreeing that I would utter the expression "really pukka" at least once every five minutes. Of course I've no idea what it actually means. My previous bestseller - How to Eat Your Way to Your First Heart Attack - has just come out in paperback. The first 5000 copies come with a free DIY colonic irrigation kit. I was deeply hurt by some snidey remarks that the recipes were over complicated and required expensive equipment. I really didn't know that most people don't have wood burning cooking ovens to produce your own smoked kippers. I mean all my friends have got them!
I've just looked in the mirror and I am such a mess. Wait till I get my hands on that hair stylist. And now the children have arrived back from their skiing lessons and are screaming that Mummy gives them something to eat. Well I certainly haven't got time to cook them anything, so I send them off with the au pair to McDonalds.
Paul Freestone, December 2000
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Oxford Vegetarians Web
site is hosted by the International
Vegetarian Union.
This page created 24 December 2000 by Paul Appleby.