Hardships for some at the foreign dining table

Jonathan Pagden of Chesham: “I once stayed at a hotel in Munich, Germany and asked for a vegetarian lunch option. The waiter brought a plate of bacon. When I protested, he said, ‘It came from a vegetarian pig.’ I still don’t know if he was joking.”

When my nephew from London visited me in Nairobi one time, I took him for nyama choma, whereupon he confessed he was a vegetarian and did not eat meat.

The waiters did not consider this a sign of madness exactly, but they began to treat him with the sort of cautious solicitousness that people generally display with someone who is not quite well.
The BBC Magazine recently published an article about the woes of vegetarians in meat-eating countries, like, for instance, Italy, where vegetarianism, according to Dany Mitzman, is seen as an exotic illness. There was a huge response from the anti-meat brigade, setting out their experiences around the world.

Jonathan Pagden of Chesham: “I once stayed at a hotel in Munich, Germany and asked for a vegetarian lunch option. The waiter brought a plate of bacon. When I protested, he said, ‘It came from a vegetarian pig.’ I still don’t know if he was joking.”

Travellers to Africa invariably reported that the no-meat concept absolutely did not exist. When Breanna from Canada relocated to West Africa she tried constantly to explain about Buddhism, love of animals, hatred of slaughter. All in vain. Finally, she said her grandfather had forbidden it before he died. Bingo! Everybody agreed that as a young, unmarried woman, she could not possibly defy her grandfather’s dying wish.

Demarest Campbell from San Francisco: “In South Africa, requesting vegetables is akin to swearing at the waiters.”
Damian Brown, London, recounted how his sister went for lunch in northern Italy. She said, “I am a vegetarian, is that a problem?” Replied the waiter, “Only for you, madam, only for you.”

Angus Gafraidh, London: “The French are overwhelmingly in favour of animal rights. Every animal has the right to be eaten by a Frenchman.”
One of the veggies’ complaints is the lack of inventiveness in the no-meat meals they do get: tomato or mushroom pasta, cheese and tomato pizzas or quiches, omelettes, chips, salads, plain rice, vegetable stews (often with bits of chicken).

Not everybody was negative, however. In Tanzania, Georgina Rowbotham from York tried to explain about battery hens, cruel factory farming and other unpleasant aspects of animal rearing in Britain. But then she watched a schoolgirl chase her dinner (a decent-sized chicken) around the schoolyard. “This seemed to me the very definition of free-range farming,” she said, “so I had no problem tucking into it later that evening.”

And a number of countries got high marks from experienced travellers: India, particularly Kerala, Crete, Portland, Oregon in the USA, Costa Rica, even meat-hungry Hungary. It was in Budapest that Lindsey Laing of Glasgow was served a garlic cream soup in a big loaf of bread as a bowl. “It was so beautiful I still think about it,” she said.
By the way, my nephew is no longer vegetarian.

* * * * *
Kate Cooper-Stevens was pushing her six-month-old son, Sam, along the harbour wall at Watchet, Somerset, when a strong gust of wind blew the boy and his buggy into the freezing water. Her screams alerted harbour master George Reeder, who spotted the push-chair upside down, with the baby still strapped inside.

As the buggy floated away, Mr Reeder dived in. “I got to the push-chair and pulled it back over the edge of the quay then somebody put a rope down and tied it on and they lifted it out. The baby was still in the push-chair. It was very cold. The boy must have been in there for a good five minutes under water.”

The child was unconscious and an off-duty psychiatric nurse, Tanya Allen, who was passing by, applied cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, blowing air into the baby’s lungs. “Bubbles appeared at the mouth and nose and the kid came round,” the harbour master said. “It was amazing.”

A helicopter airlifted the boy to a hospital in Taunton and a spokesman said later the child had recovered and would be released soon.

Experts theorised that the extreme cold had prompted the baby’s brain and other organs to shut down temporarily. Young bodies are especially efficient at going into shock. The metabolism is slowed down and vital organs are protected from oxygen starvation.

* * * * *
The lady wanted to know how much the man drank. Three six-packs of beer per day, he admitted. How much per pack? Ten dollars. How long had he been drinking? Fifteen years.
She got out her calculator.
“Your monthly spend at $30 per day is $900 per month, thus $10,800 per year, right?”
He nodded.
“Over 15 years, $162,000.”
Right.
“If, instead of drinking, you had put that money in a step-up interest savings account then, factoring in compound interest over 15 years, you could have bought a Ferrari.”
The man nodded. Then he asked, “Do you drink?”
“I do not.”
“So where’s your Ferrari?”

Mr Loughran is a UK-based correspondent. gerryo69@hotmail.com