Whether you’re a brand new vegan (welcome!) or a seasoned veteran enjoying regaling newbies with stories about how hard it was back in 2011, I suspect you’ll be familiar with that mounting feeling of dread when you meet someone new. For me, I’m always praying that the subject of my veganism won’t come up within the first five minutes, so that whoever I have just made the acquaintance of can’t gleefully trot out the weary old joke of vegans being unable to wait to tell you they’re vegan.
The truth is quite the opposite. Vegans in general, I find, studiously avoid mentioning their veganism. I recently met a man I was doing some dealings with (that sounds weird. Ok, fine, I was buying something off him… ok, that sounds even weirder. Look, I’m just trying to protect some identities here. Trust me, it wasn’t anything bizarre, alright?).