Call me a pescatarian again!

Dear everyone,

I resign.

I resign from being a label.

You try to pin one on me, from now on, I’ll take it right off and give it back to you. I might even invite you to eat it, pin and all. Not "eat my shorts", as Bart Simpson might say, but "eat my label". Or just keep it to yourself, or pin it to someone less able to stand up for themselves than I am.

I don’t need you to label me

What do I mean by a label? Well, prime example: that ‘V ’ word... Y’know… ’vegetarian.’ Now, I used to call myself a vegetarian, long time ago, in the 1980s and 199os. I grew up eating meat in the 60s and 70s. With, as the French used to say of the English, two veg and just one sauce. In 1983 I stopped eating meat. Why? This is the question you started asking as soon as I stopped eating putrefying flesh. Did I ask you why you continued to eat pieces cut from rotting corpses? Did I try to convert you to the vegetarian cause? Hell no. I kept quiet, I said nothing against your eating habits, your ‘dietary requirements’ as you liked to put it in your questionnaires.

When you asked why I didn’t eat meat and I said “I’m a vegetarian,” you used to ask things like “If you're a vegetarian, why are you wearing leather shoes?” I’m wearing the goddam shoes, not eating them.

Not everyone asks stupid questions of course. Questions like are you allowed to eat chicken? Or do you miss bacon sandwiches? When I visited a business in Tel Aviv and explained, they said that’s alright, we understand. They showed me their two staff restaurants, one meat and one dairy, in accordance with kosher rules. It seems my difference was accepted in Israel, when I was among my mostly Jewish hosts.

Later, when I spent that Christmas Day in prison (you know I was a prison officer some years ago) my friend the kitchens manager made a special vegetarian Christmas meal for me. Having cooked 1,300 Christmas dinners for the men, he and his team then cooked a special Christmas meal for all the staff who turned up that day, kindly funded by the prison Governor. Not only did they provide Turkey and all trimmings for most staff, they also provided an equally splendid meal for us difficult vegetarians. And nobody asked any questions, they just offered the vegetarian meal to anyone who wanted it.

So, here's the thing. Nobody in prison, or in the factory I visited in Israel, interrogated me about what I choose to eat or not to eat. And of course my family are completely understanding and never ask me to explain my eating habits. If I cook a meal for the family, I often cook meat. I have just cooked my daughter a roast chicken for when she came home from work.

Likewise I am looked after when other family members do the cooking, which is more often than not. And that Christmas dinner in prison, which was hard to beat, was certainly topped by the Christmas dinner our son cooked for the first time last year. Not only did he cook a highly acclaimed Turkey dinner, a ham roasted to his special recipe (involving par-boiling in cider, among other refinements), along with other delicacies. He also cooked delightful no-meat alternatives. He even found time to make some special no-meat 'sausage' rolls just for me and his other sister, who is also a vegetarian. The flavour he carefully added to them was absolutely out of this world.

I don't, of course, expect other people to feed me all the time. I am more than capable of looking after myself. But why should I put up with being called names all the time?

I'm not even a vegetarian, it seems, because I sometimes eat fish. This is fine by me as I have no particular desire to live to the vegetarian label. So, if I am not a 'proper' vegetarian, what am I?

Jules Winnfield: Mmmmm that is a tasty burger. Me, I can't usually get 'em because my girlfriend's a vegetarian, which, pretty much makes me a vegetarian. But I do love the taste of a good burger.

Oh... there's a word you have invented just to label people like me who don't fit exactly your idea of what a vegetarian should and shouldn't be, should or shouldn't eat, like fish. What they should or shouldn't do. Like wearing leather shoes. There would be a word for it, wouldn't there. Another label...

Pescetarian... PES-CA-FUCK-IN-TEAR-I-AN ???!!!***

Okay, that's it. I resign. I refuse to wear this or any other label, just because of what I eat or what I don't eat. I don't eat meat, okay? Is that alright with you, pal? I do eat... well lots of things, including lots of things that you eat too, and they are too many to mention.

And it's not just the 'V' word, or now the fucking 'P' word. It's all those other labels too. More about that in my next letter.

Until then, please accept this, my resignation letter. I am no longer a label, I am a free man. Free to choose what I do and don't do, within the bounds set by law, common courtesy and decency. If you try to pin a label on me from now on, be prepared to receive it back, with the pin still attached and expect to feel the point inserted deep within a soft, warm place about your person.

Your sincerely

Jules