What's my motivation?

Many years ago I had a bet on with my boyfriend; he was supposed to give up eating meat for a month, I was meant to stop smoking.  I think I managed about 5 hours off the fags (don’t worry, I’ve subsequently quit), whereas he didn’t eat meat for 18 years!

[Reader, I married him (sorry, I’ve already done that one…)] But the point is that, usually, he’s better at giving things up than I am. I don’t have his resolve. I think that the reason I was able to give up drinking for a month was that people had sponsored me, so I owed it to them and to the charity to stick to my guns. There’s no similar motivation for giving up dairy...

I met a friend for brunch the other day in a trendy, expensive cafe where the hype is actually well founded because the food is really good. I eyed up the vegetarian breakfasts with their eggs and pan-fried halloumi and wanted my friend to talk me into giving up on Veganuary (because I’m a spineless automaton who needs dispensation from others). My friend is a good influence though and a thoroughly good egg (excuse the pun) because, even though she’s not doing Veganuary, she joined me in some avocado on toast. (We eschewed the egg-based dishes completely and had some vegan, gluten-free cake for good measure!)

The other half (He of the supposedly cast iron will) gave up on Veganuary after a week. He had really thrown down the gauntlet to me, when he’d said, on the 2nd of January - “It doesn’t matter how long I stick to it, as long as I beat you!” That had strengthened my resolve - I had to win (just as I have to beat him when it comes to our weekly step count). Because he’s given up on it already though, what is there to motivate me? (Aside from a smug sense of satisfaction)

So the thing is, I have a confession to make, I lapsed today!

I did not eat a massive piece of cheese. I didn’t have a cow’s milk latte, and I did not eat a raspberry pavlova. No, this blunder came in the form of a sweet - a little mint humbug I found in my handbag. And I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it, on this Monday in January - purportedly the most depressing day of the year.

It could have been a truly depressing day. The rain came down in a deluge, it was cold and there was sewage spurting out from the sink in the staff-room at work. Yes, you read that last part correctly (I shit you not) raw sewage was coming up through the kitchen sink, spewing onto the counters and oozing onto the floor. It was like something out of a horror film. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it but I’m something of a germophobe, so to have this happen in the place where people are supposed to prepare and eat food is extremely distressing to me. Indeed it would be distressing to anybody, right? My husband has called me Howard Hughes in the past, probably because I don’t like touching bins, but anybody would be upset by the health and hygiene implications of what had happened at my place of work today.

[And yet no one told us to go home. No One said - “leave this place of effluence and depravity” and I feared that the bad stuff would come under the door and encroach, insinuate itself under the office door (which is perilously close to the staff-room) and contaminate me. This is not the first time that this sort of thing has happened either, but, I digress.]

Solace came in the form of the Agatha Christie novel I read at lunchtime. I had treated myself to this book with the book token I’d got for my birthday (a delightfully retro present, so it seemed very fitting to buy a retro book with it) The book was a bit of a find, one I’d never read before which didn’t feature any of her well known detectives; Miss Marple, Poirot, Tommy and Tuppence, Parker Pine, and I became thoroughly immersed in it. It was wonderful to read about sunny Morocco and escape from cold, wet (sewage-y) Britain. I rummaged around in my satchel for a tissue and it was then that discovered the little, golden-brown sweet nestling there. A delightfully retro sweet to go with my retro book. I suspected that the humbug wasn’t vegan but I ate it anyway. My instincts proved correct; I looked it up afterwards and one of the ingredients in a humbug is condensed milk! Milk!
So, forgive me reader, for I have sinned, I don’t know whether I can go back on the wagon now, I don’t know whether it’s worth it...