To celebrate Veganuary, for this month’s Pick Six we reached out to Adrian Bhagat who looks after Sherwood vegan emporium The V Spot, and runs the successful Sherwood Vegan Market.
Book: Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy
Hardy’s novels depict rural communities at a time when traditional ways of life were threatened by modern developments such as industrialisation and the railways. His characters are brought down by their own flaws and by the restrictions of rigid Victorian morality. In Return of the Native, the beautiful Eustacia roams a gloomy heathland longing for a more exciting life, but her plan to escape her marriage and travel to Paris leads to her doom.
Song: Mine by Orla Gartland
Sometimes a song just grabs you by the ears, the heart, the guts, everything. Mine is a short and stripped-back song about a woman finally able to enjoy intimacy after a history of sexual abuse. Gartland’s voice is beautifully expressive as she tells her lover about the profound joy of sex that is felt more powerfully because it is tinged with guilt and melancholy. Whenever it comes up on my playlist I just have to stop and listen.
Personal hero: Patrick Smith from the Veggies Catering Campaign.
This was an easy choice. Running a vegan business in 2025 is a challenge, but Veggies was started in Nottingham in the 1980s, catering at demonstrations and green gatherings. Pat is a workaholic who held the whole business together, a man of infinite patience, kindness, and optimism who has inspired so many people to put their ethics into practice. Although he has officially retired, he is still running stalls and flipping burgers from time to time.
Notts spot: Mill Lakes
Mill Lakes is a kind of offshoot of Bestwood Country Park. As the name suggests, it’s a lake that was created to power a water mill, but it’s now a haven for waterfowl and a tranquil little patch of countryside on the edge of the city. When I was training for my first marathon I used to trudge along the path that circles the lake, time after time. Nowadays, I run after my daughter as she squelches into the muddy puddles.
Pub: Kean’s Head
I love my ales and I love sitting in pubs. On a rare night off from work and childcare responsibilities you will find me here playing backgammon with my friend David. Kean’s Head has a huge range of interesting beers for such a small place – a lively variety of people come and go through the doors in an evening. The tables are so close together that you often find yourself chatting to strangers.
Computer game: Age of Empires II
I lost so many evenings to this game around the millennium, and then quite a bit more in 2019 when they re-released it as the Definitive Edition. Buy me a pint and I will bore you with the time I dispatched a small army as a diversion, secretly blasted a path through the Black Forest with a siege catapult, and emerged in my opponent’s village with dozens of trebuchets that finally destroyed his Wonder at the very moment the game ended.
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