you -- because you're my friends and I know it'll go no further -- that Christmas makes me feel as paranoid as a full-grown turkey on Christmas Eve.

It may well be the season to be jolly for most -- but lonely and miserable if, like me, you're a vegetarian. For the jingle bells and the goodwill stop dead unless you're a dedicated meat muncher. I mean, look at the Christmas rhymes -- "Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat.... Not -- you notice -- "Christmas is coming and the soya beans are reaching plump perfection.'' And I'd be prepared to bet my standard-issue Christmas tie the goose isn't getting fat in preparation for a long old age surrounded by its doting grandchildren, either. No indeedy. For us vegetarians -- sensitive as we are -- Christmas is a 12-day orgy of bloodlust starting with the ritual slaughter of millions of turkeys and ending with a severe case of stomach cramps and malnutrition. Even most restaurauteurs throw themselves headfirst into the Christmas spirit and spend the entire holiday season with their hands shoved up the less attractive -- foul even -- parts of birdies' anatomies. And most, while preparing what they fondly think are tempting menus, forget that the average office party will have at least one veggie in there. You can always recognise them, naturally -- eyes averted upwards as the poor bird gets chopped to bits, a wan smile and a perpetually lean and hungry look. I mean -- I don't want to get involved in the row over standards of service in Bermuda's restaurants. But it must be said, for my money, the friendliest service I've ever had in Bermuda is at the Esso City gas station in Hamilton, so I have to concede there may be something to the complaints. I've even had to suffer slights on my masculinity from my learned but less enlightened colleagues -- you know who you are -- with less than subtle suggestions that real men eat raw meat. All that just because I once declined shrimp in the grounds they're my little brothers and sisters. Mind you, some of the learned colleagues would have no qualms about tearing chunks off Rudolf, Prancer, Dancer, Donner and Blitzen after a few festive Dark and Stormy's. Just to prove they're hard, you understand. Bermuda, however, true to the quirky individuality of these small islands I have grown to love despite myself, manages to add a new twist to the abbatoir agony we non-meat eaters suffer over the so-called festive season.

I've a good mind to get in touch with these nice chaps at Greenpeace (remember them, asbestos, whales and so on?) and persuade them to start a campaign to save the cassava -- whatever that might be. Imagine it -- hordes of hairy Greenpeace protestors in wooly sweaters and sensible shoes waving giant inflatable cassavas and demanding an immediate end to cassava hunting as statistics show they are an endangered species -- but vital to the fragile ecostructure of Bermuda. You have been warned. Which is all the Christmas greeting you'll be getting from me. Oh, and by the way -- pass the mistletoe -- it's about all I'll get to eat this Christmas.