I've been in London for all of a week. Manor House, further north than I'm used to, but back where the action is. I'm back gigging at places where it was previously impossible- trying to hock it back to Kent after the hour of 11pm is only a course of action advised to the very brave, willing for risk a night in the cold if your train leaves only slightly late.
The interesting thing about my moving back to London is the house I'm living in; it's a slightly ramshackle affair, but full of...vegan activists (with the exception of one person who isn't vegan, but who is equally interesting to debate with.) It's also terrifyingly cheap, £240 a month. I was looking at the entirely cumbersome figure of £400, so this was a pleasant surprise.
So nowadays I'm feeling distinctly less like a fraud, especially in light of the fact that I turned vegan yesterday, on what for everyone else was a day of either gloomily contemplating singledom, or unabashedly being disgustingly romantic. Suffice to say I wanted to avoid the former and am distinctly cynical of the latter, so being all for reclaiming space, my 14th February became; Vegan Day!
It started very well; vegan porridge with unrefined sugar (maybe it's a rumour I have since taken to heart, but I'm sure I heard somewhere that sugar is often refined with animal bone for extra whiteness.), a cup of fruit tea and soy yoghurt for breakfast; all manners of falafel and hummous capery with fruit and stuff for lunch, followed by a dinner my lovely housemate had cooked. And vegan banana cake.
This was followed by an excursion to an extremely local benefit. Now I'm all for benefit shows, as long as it's benefiting something I am 100% behind, no doubts or moral conflictions. Perhaps in this case I am entirely ignorant past experience in my younger years.
The benefit was for the A.L.F. For those of you not seasoned in the way of animal rights, this stands for Animal Liberation Front. I am not quite sure what it all means now, but I know when I was last on the cusp of involvement I was about 12, and sneakily involved in the hunt saboteur movement in Norfolk. We were a wiley bunch of mostly kids and older teenagers, galavanting after hunts and bothering posh folk with very simple methods, often consisting of lemon juice and various other amusingly cheap and easy ways. It's amazing how the juice of a small citrus fruit can really confuse an animal trained exclusively to pick up on another animal's scent, but it can.
Anyway to cut a long story short (and I for one am full of long stories) we were approached by people under the guise of the A.L.F about something or other, with the end result effectively being assault. Now, I've had my fair share of fights, and a fair share of the world's population have had unfortunate meetings with my fists. Violence was a part of my life, sadly; I used it to defend myself from vicious and malicious bullying, and from the results of my own Very Large Mouth. But I actually hate it. I really, really do. "Aggressive" action is one thing (aka throwing fake blood or paint on people wearing fur, or on clothes in a GAP store in protest at their use of sweatshops) because although it may inconvenience, piss off, humilate and cause damage, no-one is actually being physically hurt. And you can imagine what was going through my head when I was 12. We said no. Well, we did; another member of our tiny clique agreed. I have no idea what happened to him because we fell out over it, but there we go.
For years I have only heard negative things. Either violence against people who partake in animal cruelty (an irony so acute it would be funny if it wasn't so tragic) or just stupid, stupid things like releasing a fuckload of mink from a fur farm into the British countryside, fucking up the very carefully balanced ecology of the area, causing enormous food-chain problems. (If you're going to release mink, at least do it somewhere where they have similar cousins, perhaps in the Scottish Highlands which does not involve trying to smuggle a North-European animal back to its native country.)
So I was apprehensive, quite uncomfortable and to be honest, the first band was utter, utter wank. There, I said it, I sound like a tosser but they were fucking terrible. The second band was alright but by that point it was about half midnight and I'd been up for hours (the glory of the very un-punk Day Job) so I made my excuses and left.
I confessed to my housemate, who had also disappeared off shortly after our arrival, about my discomfort. He told me that the ALF were (perhaps now) more of a collective of ideals and people than an actual militant group. He said officially that they do not believe in physically hurting any sentient beings. I would dearly love to believe him but I have my doubts.
Needless to say with my mind I began to wonder if I was not some kind of sell-out. Perhaps sell-out is a little strong, maybe the entirely wrong word altogether. Fraudulent, perhaps. I know in the last year my political awareness has waned, which for someone like me is very troublesome. I find myself ignorant on subjects I should know about thoroughly, finding that I know little if anything. Many things I still know about vehemently, inside out and upside down and back to front and every which way, which sounds more like the Kama Sutra than anything strictly political.
I am beginning to realise that this move back and my arrival headfirst into the world of veganism is only the first of many steps I am going to have to take to reclaim myself completely.
That is basically the premise behind this journal- to depict my voyage back into the heartland of everything I truly care about.
I ramble. I warn you.
This will, I forewarn you, contain a lot of passion, anger, confusion, rebuttal, rethinking, confirming, questioning, self-reflection, outer reflection, recipes, occasionally photos and a whole buttload of epiphanies.
I want debate on this. If you feel I am wrong or ignorant, please educate me. I may, perhaps, bake you cookies as thanks. Without people, I am shouting into a void. I would like my echo to be replied to please. :)
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