I have a confession to make. I have not stuck completely to my raw ve-guns. This is what happened. I went to a friend’s for dinner last night, already hungry from a day’s disastrous eating – a lunch of thai coconut soup went awry when I had the mexico idea of trying to blend raw carrot and ended up with something like a cold curdled curry. The soup actually had potential. Coconut milk, ginger, chilli, lime zest and juice, coriander, grated carrot and cucumber. It tasted good – its texture was not. Later that afternoon, passing a grocer, I scooped up an apple – a bad apple, it turns out. I have always said that the definition of disappointment is biting into a furry apple. On this occasion that crunchless mouthful was less a case of disappointment and more one of abject despair.
So I was famished. But my transgression didn’t come in the shape of food. No, I was tricked, heartlessly, mercilessly, wonderfully, into drinking bourbon, the sweet brown liquor slipped surreptitiously into a simple but delicious cocktail with cranberry and lime (Nic’s invention, so says he). Bourbon is cooked, I was later told, and so I had technically slipped up. Technically. But I was not about to start feeling guilty – 9 days had passed and not a morsel had passed my lips that wasn’t kosher. I was, however, about to start getting horrifically pissed. It transpires that drinking on an empty stomach is not a wise venture, and by the end of cocktail number one I was already feeling oiled. 5 hours later I was playing the piano in Last Days of Decadence on Shoreditch High Street. In my head I sounded like Rachmaninov. I probably sounded more like the submissions for the under 7s piano competition at Ripon Cathedral Choir School (there is some hazy recollection of chopsticks being wheeled out at one point). I certainly had a rip through my piano staple, Neil Young ‘Till the Morning Comes’. Unfortunately when the morning did finally come, I found myself nursing the most almighty hangover since the fall of the Berlin Wall. If you did happen to be in Last Days last night, I apologise for ruining your evening.
While veganism might have stilted my own musicality last night, it certainly worked all right for some. Here is my ultimate vegan playlist, with Spotify to boot:
Meat Is Murder – The Smiths
Close to Me – The Cure
Get Gone – Fiona Apple
Porcelain – Moby
Monty Got A Raw Deal – R.E.M.
Lime in da Coconut – Harry Nilsson
My Sweet Lord – George Harrison
Suzanne – Leonard Cohen
Don’t Get Me Wrong – The Pretenders
Nothing Compares 2 U – Sinead O’Connor
Spotify playlist: Vegan Vibe: http://open.spotify.com/user/jteramsden/playlist/35LZEwuBebIEHaxUbnT5KA