KATRIONA WILSON IS A CRAP VEGETARIAN

So I am aware that my last blog post was perhaps a little smug and self congratulatory, so tonight I thought I would share with you something that I have utterly failed at. And that, my friends, is being a vegetarian. Those of you who knew me circa 2001 will remember the demise of my morals and I shall lay them out for you below, to remind you all that I am not actually perfect... I was a compassionate child and always loved animals. I had very intense relationships with pet hamsters, to the extent where they wrote me letters and bought me Christmas presents (I think they were actually from my mum but you don't really know do you? Maybe hamsters are nocturnal so that they can stay up all night and buy stuff on Amazon and write on nice note-paper). So around age 10 I decided that I did not want to eat the animals any more. I was making a moral choice, and I was determined that I would become a one woman animal saviour. I memorised statistics of how many animals I would save if I became a vegetarian and bought 'Meat is Murder' stickers to put on my school jotters. Yes, I was one of those vegetarians, the kind you want to avoid at BBQs, restaurants and general every day eating situations. Or any situations. Now, my mum actually refused to allow me to become a vegetarian until I was 14, which at the time I thought was INCREDIBLY HARSH but actually gave me a few more years of normal iron levels. Remember those? Nope... me neither... I counted down the birthdays until I could finally become a proper vegetarian who didnt eat meat (instead of one who did solo talks on factory farming at school and then went home to a plate of mince and tatties). On my 14th birthday, 2 great dreams came true. I got my first mobile phone, and I became a vegetarian. My family took me to lunch at a vegetarian restaurant and I felt like this was a life-changing moment where I would forever more bask in the glory of my own moral choice.But then I discovered drinking. And I dont know about any other vegetarians out there, but 14 bottles of smirnoff ice and a few shots of apple sours REALLY MAKE YOU WANT TO EAT MEAT. I started dabbling in the dark side of meat eating after crazy nights out and although I secretly loved it, I was also terribly ashamed of myself. That battered sausage- even though it was probably only 12% actual pig- was tainting the moral choice of years gone by and, in honesty, kind of making me look like a bit of a twat. The lowest point in my meat experimentation came at a house party hosted by a friend who I shall not name as his mum and dad might one day read this and find out he had a party. Anyway, the friend's parents had gone on holiday for a few weeks and very kindly left him a good couple of weeks supply of frozen meals. After excessive booze consumption, I found myself starving and craving meat in the middle of a nice estate with no nearby food shops. There was only one thing for it- I turned on friend's parent's oven and cooked every bit of frozen meat in the house. This included chicken nuggets, burgers and a frozen roast beef Sunday dinner. My friend was obviously rather distraught that I had cooked his entire 2 weeks worth of meals left by his parents but I felt no remorse. I needed meat. So I ate a shit load of meat. And oh how we laughed. But of course, the next day, I was hit with the intense vegetarian guilt. Even thought it was MY moral choice, and really it wasnt actually affecting anyone else whether I ate meat or not (well, except my starving friend), I still felt terrible and decided to get back into vegetarianism.But along the way there were some spectacular slip ups. There was a walk home down Leith Walk with a friend. Me- ramming a sausage supper down my face, weeping and asking my friend if she hated me. My friend- looking on in bafflement and, let's face it, yes, probably hating me for being such a psychopath. Then there was the now infamous 'battered fish in handbag' incident. This involved me getting drunk (sorry, almost all of these stories involve me being drunk... maybe I will do my next blog about driving lessons. Amusing anecdotes, NONE involving drinking) and sneaking to a chip shop and buying a single fish. However, I was obviously not as drunk as usual as I wanted to hide this one from my flatmates. So I shoved the fish in my handbag, jumped in a taxi and got home with the fish festering in my bag. I got inside, said a quick hello, then locked myself in my bedroom and ate the fish. The bag was effectively ruined- it's very hard to get the smell of fish out of a handbag is one of the many lessons I learned that night. It was a slippery slope from here on in. The meat eating just kept on coming.So now, I am no longer drunk on a daily basis (the above stories were from the student days, I hope that was obvious!) but I do eat something that once lived on an almost daily basis. I am now officially what they call a 'pescetarian' which means I only have morals about creatures that did not live in the sea. But in all honesty, I had a bite of a cheeseburger a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. So how does that fit into pescetarianism? Did this particular cow enjoy swimming? Or am I actually just a total veggie failure living in denial that I actually quite like a nice bit of meat? I am planning a little experiment- I am going to Paris in a couple of weeks and, from what I gather, the French don't know what vegetarians are so I might abandon all of my morals and just eat whatever I want. I think I have a fear that if I suddenly start eating meat I will have an instant heart attack and die, or my body will forget how to process it and I will vomit and possibly also die but actually, when I think of all my meat eating secrecy over the years, I am still very much alive and at the most have just suffered a little bit of heartburn.It's sad that I am no longer as good a person as I was age 14. Yes, meat is murder... but it tastes quite nice too... **Kat runs to chemist and stocks up on Gaviscon**Tweet me @misskatriona