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there are certain types of people who just annoy. they don’t mean to annoy, they just do. if you try to explain to them why they are annoying they will just look at you with a questioning look and with hurt in their eyes.
mostly it is people who spend time trying to justify their lifestyle choices. though there are others who are equally annoying and spend their time trying to pick holes in your lifestyle choices (parents are, of course, exempt from this as it is their job to pick holes in their children’s choices).

a sure sign of who is likely to annoy is if they are a “born again” something or another.
at school i used to play rugby. on the one hand there was a chap who was in the salvation army, and while he wasn’t keen on swearing or foul play, he was decent and never went on about being part of the sally army or his faith. on the other hand there was a bloke who became a born again christian and almost overnight he became an insufferable bore as he just went on and on about his faith.

most of the people i know who have quit smoking never shut up about it, especially around other smokers. they replace their addiction to the fags with a need to tell you that they have kicked the habit.

if i had to choose a category of people who are most likely to annoy it is going to be vegetarians.
now that is a large generalisation and i know it.
i am not saying all veggies are annoying, but there are a lot of them who are.
i have been vegetarian several times in my life. the first time i did it was back in school when one of my mates said we should give up meat because of the culling of seals (i suspect it was due to the fact that both of us were fans of the group yes and the members of it were veggie). within a couple of days of this pact i had to get a new pair of rugby boots and i was confronted with the contradiction of my position: leather. ooops. so i dropped the idea of being veggie for a moral reason and just to see if i could do it.
i stayed veggie for several years. my mate lasted a week.
i went back on meat after a year at college. then i became veggie again because of love (and peace) and that lasted for many years.
in my veggie years (a great title for a book) it never struck me that i needed to pick on meat eaters (pot noodle eaters are a different matter).
yet i knew veggies who couldn’t shut up about how much better they were for not eating meat, how they cared more because nothing that was once alive now passed their lips. if someone sat near them eating a meat pie they would complain about the smell and then launch into a long (dull) tirade about being a vegetarian: it is healthier and it is animal friendly being the two main points.
one veggie who often commented on meat eaters was constantly popping vitamin pills and taking time off work for being ill.
another veggie would go on about how terrible it was to eat dead animals, how it was an inhumane practice. yet he was always having to sidestep the question of weather leather.

which brings me to the quote of lauren laverne.
quite why i ended up reading an interview about food with a person i have no idea what they did is beyond me, but i did.

“i couldn't have an animal die just so i could eat it. the way i think about it is if i was to be killed i would rather be worn than eaten. i think eating something is such an impermanent way to express a life. to be minced up and put in a burger is a bit of an inglorious ending, but to wind up as a pair of louis vuitton shoes, well, then your death has meant something. that's how i see it.” (from the observer food magazine)

i can’t help wondering if a pair of clark’s shoes are as meaningful? or if that leather belt from primark is a much more permanent way to express the life of a dead animal.
not to mention that if all of the animal that is used is the skin then there is an awful lot of it that has gone to waste. still worry not those louis vuitton shoes will last a while, so it was probably worth it. perhaps the animals used to make expensive clothes carry special donor cards: “when i die a nice peaceful death of old age please turn me into a luxury pair of shoes or a bag”.
perhaps not.

to be fair ms laverne did not say she wore louis vuitton shoes and so my criticism is unjust.

but it isn’t the wearing of the shoes that annoys; it is just the self-seeking justification of it that gets my (dead) goat. if you want to be a vegetarian fine, be one and enjoy the grub. if you want to wear fine elegant leather shoes, wear them with pride and show them off. live with that contradiction. just don’t try to justify it.