When I was younger I tried being a veggie....

This has been one crazy week in the Bisett household. Thank FRIG it's Friday again! Time to kick back and relax and finally get some sleep... but not until I've gotten in on the Friday Finish the Sentence link up action, hosted by Can I Get Another Glass of Whine with My Morning Quiet Time? and Janine's Confessions of a Mommyaholic. Go check them out and while you're at it, make sure to have a gander at all the other bloggers linking-up!


When I was younger I tried being a...... veggie.

It all started - my valiant crusade to lay off meat - when I was really young, probably about 10. It was a Sunday and for some reason we were out and about visiting a local farm.

I think I was with an aunt. I sort of remember my two brothers being there, but I'm not seeing my Mum and Dad there with me in the memory. (This is sort of sounding like a dream, but it's not. This really happened. True story.)

Anyway, there we were me and (let's just say for arguments sake) my aunt, and my brothers inside this humongous cow barn, along with some other people, who are totally irrelevant to this story except to say we were on a guided group tour.

And we were all carrying a pack of food pellets to feed the cows, only the cows on the left, mind you -the lucky cows..... (or were they...?)

At first I didn't really differentiate between the cows on the right and the left. A cow is just a cow, right?

WRONG!

There are pretty cows and ugly cows. Just like with people.

So there we all were, feeding the cows on the left, when the guide points to this one brown cow far off in the center of this gorging herd and tells us all very glibly that she's the lucky one - because she's pretty.

And she was. I'd never seen such a pretty cow before. She had long lashes and brown silky fur and......

I was so distracted admiring the pretty cow, I almost missed the next part of his grizzly revelation. She was SOOOO pretty, that she was the only one being saved from the slaughter house that afternoon. The entire rest of this herd on the left, i.e the ones we'd all been fattening up on food pellets were destined for the chopping board.

I could have thrown up right there and then.

Feeling a bit like the witch off Hansel & Gretel, I decided those poor cows weren't getting another pellet from me. I wanted no part of this atrocity.

I'm not sure which was more disturbing, the fact that they were all in line for the slaughter house that afternoon (which made everything so much more real than Ronald McDonald had ever done) or that the prettiest cow was getting a free pass....

With the vanity of a 10 year old girl I found myself thinking; What if I were a cow? Would I be beautiful enough to make it over to the 'right' side of the barn?

I decided that my chances would not be great, so I needed to make a stand now for my plain Jane sister cows. I wasn't eating another cow again.

I was going veggie!

"Don't be daft!" My Dad said on the way over to Granny's later that day. "What are you going to eat if you don't eat meat?"

I hadn't any intelligent answers yet. I'd only just come up with my plan. And I'd probably been a little premature in announcing it. I was already under attack with valid counter arguments.

"But they only kill ugly cows Dad!" Didn't seem to go very far in edging the debate in my favor.

An hour or so later we were all sitting at Granny's watching the TV, when she stuck her head around the door hole and shouted "Your dinner's on the table!"

Our family didn't need telling twice. I dawdled after them all into the dining room and watched mournfully as Granny carved the succulent juicy roast beef. The Yorkshire puds and gravy were already waiting on our plates.

"Our Josie's not having any dinner today. She's a vegetarian." My dad told my Granny.

"A What!!!?" yelled my Granny, like she'd never heard the word before.

She and Dad exchanged glances. Dad's expression didn't give anything away, but the look of sheer ludicrousy on Granny's face said it all.

"Don't be so soft, and eat your dinner!" She scolded.

Without another word I got tucked in to my Granny's scrummy Sunday dinner. Ugly cow or no, that beef was bloody gorgeous!