Since leaving university Andy and his friends have met up once or twice a year in a gathering that has come to be known as "Harcourt" (named after the house/street they shared). Each year they take it in turns to organise the weekend, and this year it was Andy's turn, which meant I had the task of feeding this gruesome looking crew. Originally a strictly lads only affair the arrival of various small people has led to the invite being extended to wives, girlfriends and children. I'm pretty happy about this as although I've only known them for about 2 years rather than the 10 or more years they've known each other, it's a brilliant get together, always loads of fun, really nice to see how much of an effort they've made to stay in touch for all this time. Harcourt has become a definite highlight of the year for me. As we've not been working over the summer we've had a lot of time on our hands to organise things and after a brainstorming session at the pub we got a little over excited (drunk) and decided it should be a Hallowe'en themed fancy dress weekend, hired a clown and set ...

It's now almost two years since I stopped eating meat, and even now when people ask me why I sometimes find it difficult to answer. Not because I just don't know, but because there are so many reasons and which one is bothering me most at the time changes regularly, and there seem to be more and more reasons all the time. It seems too complicated to give a simple answer, so rather than starting an hour long lecture/debate with whoever is asking making them wish they never spoke to me in the first place, I thought I might write this so I can just direct them to it. You can ask any questions at the end. When I first stopped eating meat it was mostly for health and because of problems with intensive farming. Everyone will probably now have seen something about the terrible way many animals are kept. Chickens seem to be on the TV all the time now. And if you care to look the internet is full of information about the ways our animals for food are kept which some viewers might find disturbing. There are so many problems, and this post would be more like a book ...