Confessions of a Carrot Cruncher

All that effort, all that angst, ruined in just ten days’ of hedonistic revelry. And I’d been doing so well, damn it, conscientiously tidying up my life in expectation of a gold star on my enviro homework.

‘Vegan (n): one of a sect of vegetarians using no animal produce at all.’ That’s how Chambers Dictionary describes me and my ilk. The definition isn’t precise enough for my liking, but more on that later. What gets my goat (sorry, gets my aubergine) is the ‘sect’ word. It sounds so …. Jonestown, you know? So Moonies.

Eight weeks into my vegan way of life and I find myself addicted to a new form of exercise – well, new to me. Yoga.

An invitation to send “letters with balls” closes each of these columns, as you may have noticed. So why am I surprised when our readers send them? Letters I mean — although I suspect it’s going to take a fine pair of cojones to answer this particular challenge.

THE PLACE: Central Kalahari Game Reserve, Botswana
THE PLAN: To find out which, if any, Bushman/San communities have taken the opportunity of going back to their homelands after several years’ exile, now that they’ve won the right to do so in a lengthy legal battle with the Botswana government.

I am a vegetarian. I am also an atheist and a feminist. But of the three philosophies which largely inform my thinking and determine my conduct, it is my decision not to eat wobbly-kneed calves and squint-eyed pigs which has got me into the most trouble.