IT was the village fete day that did for me. Not in York, you understand, but on the telly, in Morocco.

Yes, if this travel programme was anything to go by, the feast added up to a good day for donkeys and humans, and a catastrophically bad day for goats.

The asses and mules, their loads cast aside for the day, stood idle everywhere in the fields, munching at the parched grass and flinching from flies on a hot summer afternoon.

The humans were composing mad songs and dances in the village streets and buying ill-advised bits of silver jewellery from visiting traders.

The goats, by contrast, were roasting on spits, and their heads were stacked neatly on wayside stalls, waiting to become the delicacies of the forthcoming night.

Vegetarianism. I've been toying with it for about 18 months, since my Other Half decided he'd had enough of red meat for one lifetime.

It's a lot easier to forego meat than to devise tandem menus with and without it on a permanent basis.

So pulses and other non-meat proteins have already got a firm hold on our household, and in all honesty, I couldn't really say I missed meat.

In fact, learning to use other foods has given our diet a welcome bit of variety, and the OH does still consent to eat fish occasionally.

And yet, and yet... it's a hard thing to do to say you will never again eat a fillet steak, a roast chicken and all the trimmings, or even a humble spag bol.

But stacked goat heads, all wearing a suitably resigned expression, had me thinking.

I have a friend who was veggie for more than a decade on the grounds that she would never eat what she couldn't bring herself to kill.

She now eats meat again, but I happen to know she put her money where her mouth was when she returned to meat-eating. She has been known to wring a neck or fill a creature full of lead in her time.

I asked her what she thought of vegetarianism now, and tentatively aired my thoughts about renouncing the pleasures of red meat and poultry.

Bam! I learned more in a 15-minute conversation than I would ever think possible about the evils of the international soya market, the nasties said to be found in factory-farmed fish, the calves that apparently must die to keep the dairy industry going.

Namby-pamby fish and vegetable eating - turning semi-veggie - was not an acceptable option, it seemed. It was either accept my carnivorous nature or go for full-on militant veganism. Oh, and my cats would have to go. Where did I think their food came from?

My well-informed mate left me with an expression which I imagine was almost as glum as that worn by the unfortunate goats on the Moroccan butcher's stall.

So, in a curious way, it has been heartening to learn that not all those who call themselves veggies may be able to hack it like the purists say they should.

In a British survey, almost six out of ten people who called themselves vegetarians ate meat or fish at least once during a fortnight of monitoring.

And one in five of them even succumbed to the charms of the chicken breast.

Now I know it's not good to embark on something like vegetarianism with less than the highest of ideals.

But it's nice to know that if I went for it and faltered, not everyone would be able to hug the moral high ground and act veggier-than-thou.

Updated: 10:34 Wednesday, June 09, 2004