I was 18 when I sat in the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre at what was then called the University of Natal watching a film that was being screened as part of the Durban International Film Festival., had been made by Victor Schonfeld and Myriam Alaux in 1981 and was narrated by Julie Christie, who later described it as the one film that she had been in that “really changed people’s lives”.
When I moved out of home in my third year of university and was living on the money I made working at a restaurant and a chemist , I lived off a lot of macaroni cheese, butternut soup and cooked vegetables. On the rare occasions I went out for dinner, I would scan the menu before settling for the sole item for people like me: the boldly named vegetarian platter which unfailingly consisted of a baked potato with mushroom sauce, creamed spinach and mashed pumpkin on an oblong plate.