Vegan

Tuesday

Chas Newkey-Burden

Even vegans can’t stomach vegan cheese

I’m one of those gobby vegans who will happily tell anyone why they should stop consuming animal products. But I can still admit what’s obviously true: most vegan cheese isn’t particularly good. I was once ardently devoted to cheese. In my vegetarian years, paneer, mozzarella and halloumi were less foods than companions. I loved how paneer would soak up the spice of a curry like a sponge. Mozzarella was like a spectacle of tensile, elastic theatre and halloumi provided evocative, salty squeaks. I also took delight in the standard toasted cheddar sandwich. Yes, I did get quite fat. But when I learned about what goes on at dairy farms, everything changed.

Thursday

Melissa Kite

I demand my right to night

The LED streetlamp outside my house was fitted with a ‘compromise’ shield acceptable to a vegan that looked as if it had been made on Blue Peter using sticky-back plastic, and that was bad enough. But a few weeks later, we were sitting in our living room and the light from this streetlamp seemed almost back to full strength, despite the makeshift strip of black gaffer tape. We had been forced to accept this most rubbish of solutions – which wasn’t a solution at all really, and which I’m sure totally breached our human rights if I wanted to be that sort of whinger – because our neighbour, the vegan, had the proper shield removed. She claims she likes the LED bulb at full blast, although how can she?