A Jubilee vegan feast

If you're in England at the moment, you'll be unable to escape the bindweed-like appearance of union jack bunting and flags everywhere - yes, should the UK economy be judged on its ability to shift red, white and blue tat, we'd be laughing. It's the Jubilee - Queen Elizabeth's 60 years on the throne - and pro-monarchy sentiment is unavoidable.

It's a difficult time to be a republican*, avoiding all the yay-Elizabeth-II backslapping and biting my tongue at the never-ending flag-waving nonsense.

Still, there's been one notable compensation for the Jubilee in the form of an extra bank holiday. Whoop!

Rather than battle with all the Jubilee crowds thronging the banks of the Thames in the pouring rain, and with our street showing no interest in a street party, we opted for a picnic indoors, free of Queenly mentions.

Having not been born when it was the Silver Jubilee, and with only the vaguest memories of Charles and Di's wedding, I asked my mum to fill in the blanks food-wise so I could knock up something appropriate. In typical Cockney plain-speaking fashion, she said: "I remember the food. It was shit."

Thanks mum.

So here, somewhere between retro and please-no-more-divine-right is what we had.

We've got champagne (well, champagne-esque fizzy wine), red cabbage coleslaw, cheesy twists, sausages on sticks, vegan Wotsits (yes, they do exist - get down to Vx to buy them), broccoli with peanut and sesame dressing, Crowell Tart (like Bakewell Tart only more anti-monarchy) and, in a rebuff to the typical Coronation Chicken, some Abdication Chick peas in vol-au-vents.

I'll be posting the picnic recipes as and when I can. I still have no love for the monarchy, but I'm a big fan of picnics. And days off.

*Note to my US readers - that's republican in the sense I'd like to see the UK with an elected head of state, rather than Republican in the sense of not a Democrat.