Happy Pear Inspiration

The quality I like most in people is enthusiasm. I think it’s such a wonderful trait and it always comes in different concentrations and forms. Sometimes, people can be incredibly enthusiastic all the time. When this is the case, their enthusiasm is accompanied almost always by a positive outlook, often by kindness, and rarely by arrogance. The other type of enthusiasm I’ve encountered in my time is the type which lies dormant in a person, only to be triggered now and then by random things. A person can appear listless and uninterested, only to all of a sudden erupt into activity when a particular topic is raised in conversation, or when they see something which mashes their plates in just the right way. All of a sudden, their faces light up and their eyes flash with the light of God. 

The Happy Pear, Irish twins who are leading ‘a vegan revolution’ in Ireland, are definitely the former type of enthusiastic. I first came across them in 2018, I remember the moment clearly. In my first year at university, I had taken to getting up early in the morning - usually at 4 or 5 AM and heading to the Iffley Road Sports Centre to go for a morning swim. In the first term, I did this alone, but in the summer term I was joined by friends now and then, such as Cyrile and Guy. That was always nice because after we’d finished, we’d walk back up to Trinity and get some breakfast together. I was listening to a podcast on one of these winter mornings, as I trekked down through a deserted and cold Oxford. I was feeling slightly low, work was building up and I was fixing my groove into the flow of things. I remember distinctly feeling sad as I cut off from The High Street onto the Iffley Road. I pressed play on my phone - it was the Russell Brand podcast (I was young!!) - and immediately my spirits lifted and a huge billow of positivity swept into my soul and carried away the sadness as if it were a toddler standing on the promenade of the Sillon during a stormy Saint-Malo spring tide. Russell Brand was interviewing these two Irish chaps, The Happy Pear, and all of a sudden, I was taken and to this day I still am. Happy Pear prima suis miserum me cepit vocibus. It was a mixture of their voices and the message they were getting across about living sustainably and authentically. It greatly inspired me, and I doubt I would be eating vegetarian today and (mostly) for the past 3 years if it weren’t for them.

One particular part of the podcast which interested me was the story of their year apart from each other. All throughout their youth, they had been best friends, partners in crime, they wore the same clothes, had the same friends, even tricked each other’s girlfriends. But when they were 18, they went on a year abroad apart from each other - to discover who they were as individuals instead of being always identified as a double-act. What they went on to say, is that after their separate journeys, having not seen the other for over a year, they both came back as vegans and wanted to open a vegetable shop. The inevitability of genetics, I guess.

To this day, I still think back to what one of the twins said he did during his gap year. He talked about how he moved to a remote French town, got a job, and just tried to see if he could become part of the greater community. He said that he wanted to do this because if he could integrate himself into a small French town, he could integrate himself anywhere. It was a test of his personal character to transcend over difference and for him to gain confidence to exist as a novus homo wherever he wished in the world.

I’ve thought back to this over the years: when I went to Reims on my year abroad, Nogent-Sur-Marne last spring for the film internship, and now here in Saint-Malo. I’m far off being a Ciceronian figure in the community, and I don’t particularly aspire to that. Instead, I’d prefer to be seen as a cheery traveller, a vagrant of sorts who is kind and gets to know people. I’m spending a lot of time on the weekends alone, as well as on my lunch breaks. I’m doing this mostly by choice. Today, I sat in a park with warm sunshine spilling from above. It was in a little borough of Saint-Malo, called Saint-Servan (how many saints can they have already?). It is on an elevated stretch of land, and the park sits near the top of it. The high street is very well-done and neat, with chic clothes shops and brunch spots. I first visited the park with my girlfriend and we sat and read on a bench near a field covered with Snow White daisies. Like a mourning dog who continuously retraces the route he used to take with his master, so too do I constantly come back to read in this park, in honour of those happy, love-filled memories I created there.

I spent a glorious two hours on either side of a solitary brunch, sat reading in the park. There was a man with a ferocious cough, drinking from a bottle of beer at 10 am: dressed pretty sharp though. I also lost count of the strolling families and grandparents who passed by me as I sat on a raised slab of concrete exposed to the sun.

I felt so happy in those two hours, like in a trance, and I cycled and explored the outer parts of Saint-Malo, with wide pavements and ultra-posh houses. I didn’t mind being alone all day. I knew I’d bump into chums back at the accommodation. It was funny to be just alone with myself all day. I discovered a park I had never seen before, and I noticed myself reacting to people who passed me by, saying idiotic, not mean, but football-hooligan-ish sounds to myself in my head.

I sat and wrote on a bench which overlooked the park’s grass with wildflowers extending beyond, and past that, the view of a cruise ship anchored on the estuary of The Rance. I thought back to that Happy Pear quote, and how grateful I am to be living in Saint-Malo, meeting people, and establishing myself, just for a little while before I pass on again - like a true vagrant.