As she turns 30, the activist and writer discusses social media, vegan pub food and her on-off love for Labour
I imagine any time you meet Jack Monroe it always feels a bit like you have interrupted her mid-story. There is a brilliant indiscretion about her, as if her life is not entirely contained and you have turned up in the nick of time to try to help her keep a handle on it. On a Monday lunchtime last month she was in the big downstairs bar of the Railway Hotel in Southend-on-Sea, her local since she was in her teens, bunged up with a heavy cold, sniffing and apologising for sniffing.
The Railway is designed to welcome strong characters. There is a pulpit at one end of the pub housing a DJ deck, as well as a drum kit and piano waiting for a band; upstairs rooms promise art classes and poetry readings. “They put on a music class for people with learning difficulties, which is bonkers and fantastic, all tambourines and trumpets,” Monroe explains. The pub has been run for a decade by Dave and Fi Dulake, who are something of a Southend institution. “When they got married,” Monroe recalls, “they rode a tandem through town and people were coming out and cheering, running along behind, playing instruments. It was like our equivalent of a royal wedding.”
I left Labour for a bit, like a teenager, stomping about and slamming doors
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