9/9/2022 0 Comments Victorious Festival - New Allies, Slinging Fries and Cutting Ties (With Normality)
Nestled right at the heart of the city of Portsmouth, Victorious Festival is a new kid on the block having only been in action for 10 years as of writing. Starting as Victorious Vintage Festival, it's grown in size and stature into the beast that it is today. Initially, the festival was host to a mere 35,000 people. In 2022, it has grown to over double that, with nearly 80,000 in attendance.
This all started on a (albeit too) sunny day at Boomtown Festival in Winchester. It was 34 degrees Celsius, one of the hottest in history, and I was dancing my ass off at the front of one of the main stages to an artist named Dub FX, one of my favourites, and was having the time of my life. Next to me I spotted a wacky looking group of individuals having the time of their lives also, and so I joined them. We larked around, dancing erratically in the hot sun and soaking in the blissful vibes found at music festivals. After the set had finished, I spent a day with Leo, a shockingly fun individual without a care in the world - apart from building sound systems having a good time. I discovered quickly that he was a part of the festival food scene, and spent his summer hopping from festival to festival with a vegan food stand, serving up grub and partying the nights away. I enquired about the chances of getting involved, and as simple as that, I was in. The following week they were headed to a festival in Portsmouth, on the South-Coast of England, which boasted one of the best line-ups I've ever seen. I was determined to go, and following Boomtown I bounced back and forth, trying to find ways in which I could attend the festival proper, albeit unsuccessfully.
In rule #3 of my post 5 More Rules For Solo Success, I talk about how you should always stick to your first plan (mostly). I could have worked out how to get in with minimal amounts of funding or work, but I decided to practice what I preach and commit to idea Numero Uno - serving vegan food to the intoxicated masses at one of the UK's premier music festivals - Victorious.
I've attended many big festivals in my time, but never as a food geek, let alone a vegan one. I have nothing against veganism in the slightest. Quite frankly I admire those that convert and stick to it. I've enjoyed some excellent vegan food over the years; my sister in law Maria is a wonderchef to say the least. However, I do have one beef (no pun intended) with the whole thing. I personally don't understand why it is that you would want to compare a meat free meal to meat. For example, vegan bacon. Bacon, inherently, is meat. Would you not prefer to call it something like vegan strips, or better yet, create a new word altogether (such as bacon, but different)? Vegan chicken is another one. I'm sure that this is in an effort to convert the masses over to a sustainable, meat free solution, but it's an interesting notion for sure. I imagine that in future I'll have a pop at veganism - hell, the next 5 days will be my venture into it all.
As I'm bound for Portsmouth on a train from London, cocked and ready to go, anticipating what is likely to be a wild weekend, I have this question on my mind.
Alongside it I have thoughts of the line-up. An excellent mix of 90s and nowties artists that would make a 2000's Manchester crowd cream their Y-Fronts. James, Ocean colour Scene, Suede. All excellent acts from the Britpop/Indie-pop era, with a sprinkle of spice thrown in in the form of Paolo Nutini and Sam Fender. I was keen to see all of the above on my breaks, but failing that, I was excited to spend the weekend with a bunch of excellently fun and absolutely bonkers individuals, and serve up some great grub to the drunk and stoned of Portsmouth. The day before, feelings of anxiety and nervousness. I've only had one brief stint in the catering industry - I was a griller at Nando's for a few months before I was quickly sacked. Something to do with their unrelenting discovery of half eaten bits of chicken stashed around the joint. My protests about the terrible rat problem they must be facing were only met with a "What rat has a mouth that big?". I guess I could have been more creative with my cover-up. Have you toured the festivals as a food geek? Have you worked in the food industry in general? Hell, have you ever eaten food!? Let me know in the comments below!
Anyway, my history with the gastronomically inclined has not been, let's say, productive, and so the worry crept in. As quick as it came in, I boot it right to the back of my mind. No use dilly-dallying and stressing about what may be. I was determined to head in there and make it be. There's no room for apprehension in this business.
In preparation for the festival I had packed far too many clothes, not nearly enough booze and just the right amount of lip balm - a festival essential for sure. We can't be having Plant Patty burgers with a side of fries (would you like some crusty lip flakes on that) now can we? I spent the night before at my Uncle Kevin's in Portsmouth, a true Rockstar from the 1970's London Punk scene. We drank and smoked and traded stories and poetry, him being a writer also. Stories of squat houses and Adam Ant and the drummer from The Damned and breaking into festivals and staying in the spike (as referenced in Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell - an excellent read for any solo traveller). I was out of my depth here; my Uncle could talk for England, however I traded back some of my own brand of wacky stories and unscrupulous hijinks. Stories of squat raves and nights out in Budapest and getting drunk with the Oompa Loompa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and spending A Night In The Cells. I'm not many years into this world but I'd like to say I've lived a little, and I think from the various nods and cackles emanating from the smoky corner where Kevin was perched, I've so far done alright for myself.
Kev lent me a copy of his favourite book - Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut. A quirky little yellow book, aged to just the right degree so that you know it carried more stories than just the one written on its pages. It was about a man who's father had come from a rich family who had sent him away to art school in Vienna, despite his ferocious lack of talent. He managed to buddy up with a fellow outcast, and they were both chucked out for not meeting the schools standard of quality (who said art was subjective?). They dossed about for a bit, cursed the establishment and all in all had a bit of a jolly. He returned home to Ohio and spoke far and wide about his art school friend from Vienna. It turned out that the friend was in fact Adolf Hitler, so at the outbreak of WWII, Kurt Vonnegut Sr. lost all credibility and everything went to shit. A wickedly funny little book, at the time of writing I'm working my way through it.
So far, it's alright. Come the next day (Thursday), I awake to my alarm that signals the start of my working day. Now this is for my real, day job, however today was not a day for real, day work. It was a day for festival work, which is an entirely different strain of employment altogether. Now I hadn't explicitly notified my boss that I would be spending the next two days living it up as opposed to working, but I reasoned that what they don't know couldn't hurt them. First of all, there is absolutely no organisation to be found for miles around when it comes to a music festival. Quite frankly, at any particular moment, it's near impossible to find anyone who knows just exactly what the fuck is going on. It's a romantic way of working and it's a notion I stand firmly behind. I do believe there should be some level of regimentation in any workforce, to move firmly away from total anarchy, but too much is stifling and takes the fun out of it all. There is something absolutely charming about getting wasted on shift and trying to sling fries in and out of a vat of burning hot oil without ending up engulfed in flames. Induction was pretty easy - I was due to arrive at an unknown time, which then became 3, and then 4, and then 5. By the time I rocked up I was feeling fresh as a daisy (having started the day feeling as rough as an Afghani goat-herders left flip-flop). Something that struck me on my way into Victorious Festival was how open it all was. It was the day before the music started, Thursday - a day for traders to put up their stalls - and there was not a security guard in sight. If I was a regular punter with the hopes of a free gig, I could've very easily walked in, pitched a tent hidden behind a stall and went on my merry way. By the time they put the gates up I would already be in! I might even give that a shot next year and report back. We waited around for some time as our neighbour had parked over the line into our spot, did a booze run and eventually began the setup. It was a pretty simple process, consisting mainly of yelling over to the boss man to give me another job. Once we had set everything up and completed prep - hours of cutting tomatoes, shredding cabbage and making huge tubs of coleslaw, mixing sauces and larking about - we called it an evening. Of course, we headed straight to the pub for a few pre-emptive beers, to usher in the weekend of course. We were joined by some of the other traders, and we all made the necessary introductions, chatting away excitedly about what we expected of the festival.
A few beers down, we meandered back to the festival site, with absolutely no clue as to the sleeping arrangements.
Of course, being the organisational dream team that we were, no one had booked the camping - so we found ourselves in a bit of a predicament. Common practice at festivals is to pitch a tent behind the stall and sleep there, however Victorious sent out a very angry and very red letter beforehand, stating how utterly opposed they were to that idea. With no camping booked and no other option, we did it anyway. One tent was pitched, containing 3 of my teammates, boss man and boss lady slept in the back of the van and I slapped my blow up bed in the middle of the food stall itself and crashed on that with my other teammate. Once the big Velcro walls were up it was like a big tent anyway, and I slept pretty cosily. All we had to do was pack it all away by the morning. What followed my entry into Victorious was a whirlwind of fries, shouting of ticket numbers and excessive drinking, all thrown into a badly pitched tent and shaken with a heavy dose of good music. I made the fries station my home, developing a system that would allow me to remember what my next four orders were. We served regular fries, spicy loaded fries and truffle loaded fries - all of which were pretty damn good. There was absolutely no consistency when it came to aesthetics or the loading of fries. One portion would contain the healthiest portion of chips, doused in truffle mayonnaise and generously sprinkled with a garlic-herb mix. The food of the gods if you will. A plate of fries so handsome you couldn’t help but marvel at its beauty. The next portion, however, would consist of about 3 burnt chips, a watery dollop of mayo and a few grains of sadness, topped with a good dip from my festival thumb. More than once I was laughed back to the fryer for the pathetic excuse of a meal I had attempted to serve. About midway through the second day, we ran out of some key ingredients. The most upsetting to the crowds was the peanut butter barbecue sauce, which was a hit. It was actually pretty damn good, and so I understand the looks of sadness I was greeted with when I had to tell the people there was no more. We also ran out of cheese, which is interesting considering we were still selling cheeseburgers. It was a free for all at this point and no one had any idea what we did or didn't have so it was a case of winging it and hoping for the best. The first observation was that it was nowhere near as difficult as I thought it would be. It’s a pretty straightforward endeavour, albeit constant and unrelenting. The difficulty here doesn’t lie within the task itself, only within the sheer pace of chucking 5 boxes of loaded fries every 2 minutes at a bunch of ravenous festival-goers. Add that on top of 15 hour shifts and a hangover, and it can become quite tedious. However, in my case, it was not tedious in the slightest. Surrounded by good people and just the right tempo of music (techno or trance is best, we didn’t quite get to gabber thankfully), the days fly by and are filled with laughter and high spirits. Speaking of spirits, the 2 litres of rum I smuggled in (walked, unperturbed. through the open gate) definitely served its purpose, softening the edges and, when mixed with 5% cider, removing the edges altogether. Boozing on the job is a necessity, by midday absolute latest you're a cold beer deep with another ready and waiting. That's another perk of working a festival as opposed to paying the money and going purely for enjoyment. Power! There are lights on the stand that need electricity to function, which means Phone Charging. There is perishable food that needs to be kept cool, which means a fridge van that can be filled with drink! Its wholeheartedly a different experience and one that I prefer for sure. I was able to consume copious amounts of alcohol (assuming I was still functional), dance erratically to anything from psy trance to reggae, techno to drum and bass, flirt and canoodle at the till and go off to see any band I pleased. There is, of course, some etiquette involved in this kind of thing - don't get too hammered and don't take the piss with your breaks. One headline set per evening seemed to be about fair. This is something you pick up pretty quickly as you go along, and the friendly folks around you are more than happy to help.
As the day turned into night time, the rushes of people came and went. If a big name was on the stage, the crowd would wane and we'd get some breathing space. The team would come together at the back, someone would do a beer run and the cool summer night would wash over us. Jokes and jibes were traded, funny little anecdotes about certain customers were exchanged and everything felt warm and comfortable. Homely almost. Each of these moments is tinged with the underlying understanding that as soon as the current act finishes their set, we'll be hit with another wave of pissed up maniacs looking for their next meal. There were the usual rushes to be expected - lunch and dinner, with the midday rush being the most significant.
In fact I jest, it seems to me that vegan folk tend to be perfectly lovely customers. There was the odd bellend (a certain number 93 in particular) that would pay for their food and then wander off into the abyss, only to show up 2 hours later after your voice has gone hoarse from screaming, with a look of "where's my fucking food" on their face. It was number 93 in fact that caused myself and a fellow team member to lose our voices completely. On their return, a number of insults were hurled 93's way before we offered him a shitty portion of chips and told him where to go. I have since sounded like I have a penchant for chewing on sand for breakfast and washing it down with a hearty glass of pisswater. Now aside from those (very few) pain in the ass customers, the folk I served were usually pretty damn nice. Every now and then, when it got crazy busy, I would jump on the till with my teammate and we would become a whirlwind of order taking, ticket writing and outfit complimenting. We created a system (what can I say, I'm a guy for systems) that allowed us to bosh through a hefty queue in no time at all. A side note: There is something incredibly liberating about complimenting as many people as you physically can in the shortest amount of time possible. Working on a till is excellent for this, and it allows you to experience a plethora of beautiful smiles and flushed faces. I challenge you, kind and considerate reader, the very day that you read this post, go out and find someone to compliment. Jump on the tube or subway and tell that woman you love her boots. Grabbing a coffee in your local responsibly sourced coffee house? Share with that snazzy looking dude in the corner how much you like his shirt. Walking down the street on your way to work? Compliment as many of your fellow commuters as you can - Hair, glasses, shoes, fucking nail polish. Whatever it is, do it, and be genuine. If you see a guy wearing a piece of shit pair of skinny jeans with more holes than jeans - do him a favour and don't make up a compliment for the sake of it. This in an exercise in sharing genuine love to your fellow human, so make sure you mean it. You can see their faces light up and you can tell when it makes their day. Allow the good moods of others to affect your emotional state. Have you ever been meandering along, feeling sorry for yourself, when you pass a colourful person with a wide grin bopping away to their headphones? It cheers you up, doesn't it? Happy energy radiates, create that energy! I tell you, if you complimented one random stranger per day (i.e. say out loud something you're thinking anyway), you will all in all be a much happier person. Lets do some maths. Now imagine this feeling, amplified to somewhere around 2 customers per minute back at the festival food stand (at full power, with one on the till and one writing the tickets and grabbing drinks) - that's 120 orders taken (not served) per hour. Minus 20 who are grumpy bastards regardless, leaving you with 100 punters whose day you've made. Multiply that by 8 hours (12 hours from open till close, minus 4 hours lull times), that's 800 people per day who's day you can make. Now there had to be at least 100 food stands at victorious, probably more. 800 days made, times 100 food stands serving, equals 80,000 days made - (equation below).
The attendance at Victorious Festival this year was around 80k. This means that if every food vendor took it on themselves to compliment each person they take orders from, and maintained a pace of 2 customers per minute for most of the day (pretty realistic, on the Sunday especially), then collectively they could make the day of every single person at the festival. With nothing more than a 'I love your bucket hat mate'.
Think about that for a bit. I put this system into practice every time I was on the till at Victorious, and it was massively rewarding. Nothing like putting people in a good mood to put you in a good mood. The performers of the weekend deserve a hurrah here also - I saw three acts, one on each of my daily breaks. To start us off was James, with hits such as 'Sit Down' and 'Born of Frustration'. This could very easily be one of the very best live sets that I have ever witnessed. Tim Booth was like a sexy Jesus with an epic goatee and the erotic prowess of an Egyptian God. Crowd surfing was most definitely a part of his repertoire, and the vibes in the crowd were excellent.
Headlining the Saturday was one Paolo Nutini. This was an odd one, as I was expecting some kind of happy folky jumpy music such as his tracks 'Pencil Full Of Lead' and 'New Shoes' (my two favourites). However, in the 8 years since his last album was released (a fact I didn't know beforehand), old Paolo had backpacked Mexico and engaged in all manner of psychedelia, be it straight up acid or the venom of a poisonous tree frog. What this led to was frankly one of the most intense psychedelic performances I have ever seen, with crazy visuals and the tunes to match. I've got to say, I wish I had brought my Mexican tree frog with me in order to make it a bit more interesting. He didn't play my two favourite songs, unfortunately, however I now have a bunch of new tracks in the playlist and it was an unbelievable set.
Finally on Sunday I saw Suede. A wicked, poppy band from the 90's that didn't disappoint with Brett Anderson's swinging of the microphone in circles and their endless list of sing-along classics. I had a great time, although Brett's lead guitarist was not best pleased to have to keep dodging the microphone as it swung aggressively past his head.
There were of course no showers at the festival (not true - there was a gym nearby, I just didn't have the patience to find it) and so on one of the days we took a dip in the sea. Portsmouth has lovely blue water that in my opinion is far nicer than the water at Bournemouth. My bunkmate and I pinched our teammates lovely lavender scented bar of soap so that we could wash in the cool sea and went on the hunt. I noticed that we were being observed by a couple of hotties on the bank, whom we asked to take a photo of us. Much to our dismay, they asked if we were a gay couple, and we sulked back to work.
Once the music had finished and the punters had cleared off it was time for the party to start. All of the traders knew each other, as they had done the whole festival season together. This meant that like clockwork every night, the guys from the burrito stand (particular allies of ours) would rock up and wreak havoc while the rest of us made an attempt at clearing up the carnage left from a day's business. What ensued can only be described as total madness. There are of course dangers to be aware of when rocking up to a festival on your own, familiar with only a couple of rogue burger flippers and carrying 2 litres of white rum. You do worry about getting blasted and making a tit of yourself, which is something I would usually end up doing. However, festivals are a different breed altogether. Anything goes, and making a tit of yourself seems to be the main prerogative. Frankly speaking, the weirder the shit you're willing to do or say, the better received you are. As I mention in 5 More Rules For Solo Success, I'm a pretty weird bloke, and so I gelled quite nicely. By this point I'm already bollocksed, having consumed enough beers to kill a small elephant. Any notion of work had been lost and the organisation descended even further into chaos. This led to an incredible feat of outsourcing - our guests became our workforce and almost immediately we launched the sopping wet dish cloths in their general direction and ordered them to get involved.
They were good guys, and so somehow we actually pulled this off, employing them to wash and dry and sweep and wipe surfaces, which they graciously accepted. It was an excellent little community we had going on, in which nothing was off the table and everyone pitched in. Even in those 3 short days, it felt like a family. We were all comrades in our pursuit to do as little work as possible, while getting as fucked up as we could. Our group made a habit of growing increasingly louder and more outrageous as the days went on, much to the dismay of our neighbours. As I mentioned previously, we weren't actually meant to be camping there at all.
I actually started the weekend in my own natural brunette, however one of my team had decided to bring bleach along, and I was the target. I debated at first, but thought to myself "when in Rome" and went along with it.
Once the clean-up was done (read: we gave up halfway and banished the rest until morning), the music was cranked up and bums were placed on seats, or on the floor if you were unlucky enough to lose out on a chair. The drink was dished out and the night hit full swing. The Boss Man had brought with him an imported Coca Leaf (yes, as in cocaine) spirit, sort of like tequila. It was absolutely divine and was passed around the group until empty not long after. I don't think he had expected it to be such a hit, and seemed to have missed out on most of the drinking of it.
It seemed that everyone there had an interesting story - a qualified yoga teacher just back from South East Asia, a young gent who builds sound systems for free parties, another who was moving to Romania to build a house with his friends the week after, another who lives in Thailand year round and comes back purely for the festival season. A brilliant vibe rocked its way through our illegal little campsite and turned everything it touched into magic. One absolute maverick in particular was probably the craziest person I have met, or will ever meet. Resident in another stall, he was like the 5th member of Motley Crüe, and equally as crazy. I tell you, if he had been invited to parties in the heyday of rock and roll in LA, he would've been a hit. This man was a true Rockstar, and this was evident in the way he dressed, his crazy eyes, and the fact that his party trick was to perform oral sex on himself. I can safely say I had never seen anything like it.
Now all of us men have tried a similar feat at some stage in our lives, and any bloke that tells you otherwise is lying to your face. I was yet to meet someone who had managed to pull it off (pulling it off being the only way I previously managed you being able to do it), and so this was incredible to me. What was even more incredible was the fact that no one batted an eye. Festival people are a new breed of animal. Maybe not a new breed (look at Woodstock '99), but definitely a breed apart from the rest of the general population.
In fact, our man introduced me to some of the oddest and most epic mashups of rock and funk music, mixed by a DJ named Bill McClintock. They are excellent tracks (such as Slipknot X Loveshack) and you can find my two favourites below. I highly recommend checking them out.
All around me were the oddest conversations and funniest little chats, and then some guy sucking his own dick. One night, we all clambered onto the top of the fridge truck in order to watch the fireworks at Stereophonics. It was precarious to say the least, but brilliant. We were a sight to behold, and they were all incredibly lovely people, Fellatio Frank included.
I bet you have some crazy stories don't you, ya little devil. I wanna hear all about it! Let me know in the comments below!
On the last night, following a pretty disappointing set from Sam Fender, we were instructed to bin any food that had been left over. Of course it would go off soon, and so needed to be disposed of. I got creative with this, and began to offer free upgrades from normal to loaded fries in exchange for the punters hats. This way, I secured a lovely pineapple bucket hat and a stunning sun hat, as modelled above by Leo.
All in all, it was an excellent experience. That was until the neighbours walked around our plot banging on pans to wake us up at 7AM the next day. Clearly we had kept them up the night before, and they were not best pleased about it. This was taken as an act of war, and so the next night was an even louder party, mixed nicely with a few 'fuck you's' hurled their way. Usually of course I would be more understanding, however this was a music festival and we were determined to have a good time. Hell, they fuelled the determination tenfold. This all came to a head when we attempted to take our bins to the communal skip on the Sunday night, the end of the festival. Papa Fish n' Chips stormed over to us and started telling about something or other. It was impossible to understand what he was saying through the volume of his shouting and his thick Welsh accent. One thing I can tell you is that it wasn't friendly. I asked him to stop his jabbering and use his words to tell us what the problem was, to which he replied it was his bin and we weren't to use it. This was of course not true and so we laughed in his face and continued on our way to tip it out. Out comes Fish n' Chips junior, a stocky lad of maybe 19, who began immediately bellowing at the top of his lungs about the bins. I thought to myself, these Fish n' Chip folk are extremely passionate about waste disposal, I'm sure their carbon footprint is excellent - what with the vats and vats of oil, excessively large motorhomes and the irresponsibly sourced fish of course! Big daddy held his son back in a move that I'm sure was meant to come off as intimidating, however my colleague and I laughed in their faces again and I remarked that the son clearly takes after his pop. Bullies mate, there's no space for them at festivals. We caved as we couldn’t be arsed with the hassle, and so we dragged the bucket of muck along to the next skip. I had the sharp idea of heading around the corner, only to sneak back around and dump the bin clean over his head. At least then he could hear how damned loud he was. Unfortunately, my much more controlled colleague talked me out of it. Tell a lie, I dared him to do it, he refused and dared me to do it, and I didn't fancy ending up in a ditch before sunrise. Anyway, the idea alone was enough to keep us cackling away for the rest of the evening and it was all good fun in the end. For this particular indiscretion, on the last morning (Monday, after the heaviest night of them all), I awoke to the most confusing sound that has ever entered my sensory network. It was like my brain was split in two, with one half taken to a year 6 disco and the other to a squat rave, with my ears still connected to both. I was met by the rest of my team sticking their heads out of their respective sleeping arrangements with an equally bewildered look on their faces. The neighbours had parked a big lorry right next to us, and out of the cab radio was blasting Katy Perry - Hot 'n Cold. Out of the back of the lorry on some kind of speaker was blasting the worst Drum and Bass I have ever witnessed in my 23 years on this earth. In combination, it was the kind of racket that made you want to rip your ears out and have them for breakfast. Regardless, we were not to be defeated. Simultaneously, we all rocketed out of our tents and began an almighty dance party, singing at the top of our lungs and jumping around like a bunch of crazed baboons. The neighbours stared on in utter disbelief, and after a while shut the music off; they must have been driving themselves mad. At that, they were met with a chant of "ONE MORE SONG, ONE MORE SONG!" and we were safe in the knowledge that we had won. It was actually an excellent start to the day - laughter being the most wholesome of breakfasts.
The last day of pack up was a travesty. What can only be described as abject laziness does not pair well with hard work, and that showed in the length of time it took for me to gather my wits and make sense of what to do next. The rest were the same, and so what could have easily taken us a couple of hours turned into more like 5 or 6. Johnny Cash blared from the speakers, and with a bit of a sing-song, we got the job done.
The next stop was, of course, the pub. It's always good after a period of chaos to sit and have a cold, quiet pint. A debrief if you will. We drank and we ate, reminiscing on stories from the weekend, and eventually we bid our farewells.
Something that I admire a great deal about the festival scene is that there is no illusion of outside friendships. Herein lies a group of people that will very unlikely hang out as true friends in the real world. On the scene however, they are your compadres. Your brothers in arms and your team. When saying goodbyes, there is no "let's meet up soon!". Only "I'll see you next year mate". There is something quite romantic about leaving it all at the festival, with a promise of more to come the next season around.
I can't help but think, where will we all be in a years' time? Who will show up? What will they be up to? Who will the new faces be? All questions I ponder on the train journey home, after a quick debrief with my Uncle Kev as I picked up some stuff. Following this experience, I find myself considering vegan options, and even looking out for vegan restaurants. I'm not sure what it was holding me back before, maybe the fact that some vegans, as with any ideology, try to ram it down your throat at every opportunity. I think it's a clear example of how others can rub off on you. There's no doubt about it, veganism is massively positive for the environment, due to extreme number of battery farms and all round infrastructure built around the handling and ferrying of animals and their meat. There truly are some awful establishments out there doing horrible things to an ungodly number of innocent creatures, and once you realise this at a human level (i.e. spend time with good people who are really upset by this kind of thing), it puts it all into perspective. I didn't even like the burgers, they were awful. However, not one of my lovely team tried to convert me or question me on my beliefs or diet at any point, which surprised me. Vegans get a bad name for sure, which is inaccurate and unfair. And with that, it seems that I could now very easily lean towards a vegan way of life. Funny that. All the best, The Lonesome Wanderer P.S. Well done for making it to the end! Thank you for taking the time to read the above post, below you can find 3 quotes that I thought matched the theme of this post nicely. I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below! Quotes:
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AboutThe Lonesome Wanderer is a blog dedicated to all things solo travel, including the philosophical and introspective aspects involved with being on the road alone. More Posts
September 2022
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