Over the last year or so, I have been striving to find healthier snacks. The original plan was to stick to main meals and not snack at all, but that is apparently impossible for someone with the willpower of Donald Trump trying not to blame Barack Obama for something. We were recently invited to our friends’ home for dinner. This is a high-pressure situation for a number of reasons. There are issues with me making inappropriate jokes; with me rising to the bait of the inevitable vegan-bashing that happens at every meal with omnivores; and with my impatience at the fact that the time between my wife announcing that we should leave and actually walking out the door is never less than an hour. Paramount on my list of concerns when we go to someone’s house is my fear of looking like a greedy bastard. I used to turn up ravenous, but then my wife pointed out that it makes her feel as if she has come to dinner with a street urchin she’s just taken in. As a result, I have started eating a snack beforehand, so that I don’t make a show of myself. Snack selection is tricky. Too small and you have merely stimulated your appetite, ensuring that you arrive at your host’s dinner party willing to eat one of their children. Too big a snack and you arrive full up, eating only a tiny part of your dinner, at which point your friends will make some passive-aggressive comments about how difficult it is to cater for vegans alongside “normal” eaters and it’s a shame I didn’t enjoy the quinoa-stuffed peppers more. It would seem rude to explain that the reason you didn’t eat more is because you ate six veggie sausage rolls before you arrived, and actually it’s not your fault because they come in boxes of six and if they did them in boxes of three, this would never have happened. On this particular occasion I had found a new snack, which I was enjoying as my wife came downstairs after getting ready. On our way to the door, she asked what I had chosen for my pre-food food. I told her I’d found some dried apricots in the cupboard. Her face dropped. She said they had a strong laxative effect and asked how many I had eaten. I told her I had only had a couple. She looked relieved. I wondered when I should break it to her that I had eaten the entire bag. It turns out that wasn’t a problem. By the time we were in the car, my body started to convulse, as the effects of 20 dried apricots kicked in. At first I contemplated not telling my wife that I was in some discomfort, but she figured out what was going on when my stomach made a noise as if a cat was trying to escape it. What the hell were we going to do? We thought about telling our friends that I had suddenly been taken ill, but immediately felt horribly guilty about all the effort they would have gone to with the stuffed peppers again. We ended up texting that we were going to be late, before returning home for a bit so I could attempt to “recover”. (Read: lock myself in the bathroom for 45 minutes.) Eventually we arrived at our friends’ house, and after a couple of comments about how sweaty I looked, sat down to enjoy dinner, and by “enjoy dinner” I mean “tried to eat without crying”. I did learn one thing: possibly the best way to moderate your behaviour with company at dinner is to spend the evening in excruciating discomfort.