Say cheese!: a rant.

There are ever such a lot of vegans about.

I don't mind - after all, you don't have to listen to them - but their spelling is painful.

I've come across chease, recently. And cheeze. And even sheeze.

Ah, yes, you will say (for you are always wonderfully forbearing), but if it's vegan then the stuff doesn't contain anything actually, well, cheesy, does it? And the spelling alerts people to this.

Well, there's something in what you say, and I can admire the frankness with which the makers of MozzaRisella admit that their cheese-type stuff has been mostly grown in a paddy field; but there have long been cheeses that haven't emerged from the teat of a mammal. 

There are fruit pastes called cheeses made of sharp-tasting fruits such a rosehips or medlars; there's the revolting-sounding head-cheese, which is a sort of pate made of meat from, yes, the head of a pig.

But even people who are prepared to boil a whole pigs' head complete with reproachful eyes have too much delicacy of soul to call it cheez. 

I mean, it just shows you, doesn't it.

Word To Spell Today: cheese. The Old English called this stuff cēse, and the Romans cāseus. But even that wasn't as bad as the Old Saxons, who called it kāsi.