I’d grown up as a people-pleaser, finding self-worth in others’ approval. But the bafflement and hostility I faced in the 1980s taught me to live on my own terms
I became a pescatarian when I was 16. At the time, I wasn’t aware of any other vegetarians or pescatarians in my family or peer group, but it seemed like an obvious choice for me.
It was the 1980s and BSE – the spread of which would soon result in a national crisis – had recently appeared in the UK. Emerging evidence and research indicated that eating meat could be detrimental to a person’s health. That, added to the horrific smell that wafted from the nearby tannery in Yarm and an abattoir just up the road in Stockton-on-Tees, was enough to convince me that eschewing meat was the right call.
It seems hard to imagine now, but my decision was regarded as extremely strange by my loved ones, a definite sign of audacious insurrection. Nonconformity wasn’t something that was especially valued in a lower-middle-class family in the north-east of England at that time. People would have generally preferred it if I did as I was told. As a result of my unfathomable dietary preferences, mealtimes garnered a groundhog-day quality, peppered with endless, slightly hostile questions about what I would or wouldn’t eat.
