Hoping to fill the gaping void in his heart and kitchen, Giles Coren sets out to replenish his empty shelves, but discovers that walking up the aisle brings a lump to his throat.
By throwing out every item of food in the flat, I had taken the first step on the road to my emotional recovery. And now the empty kitchen shelves stared down reproachfully, mocking the emptiness of my loveless life.
Or did they open wide before me like four rows of outstretched arms offering to clasp me to their consoling bosom?
Or were they, as they perched there enjoying their newly unburdened lives, saying, "Chill, man, we don't need no tins weighing us down, like you don't need no woman round your neck"?
Or is it perhaps not good to look for anthropomorphic metaphor in domestic storage facilities?
At any rate, if I was ever going to eat at home again, I was going to have to replenish them. But with what? When we moved in, we were beginning a new life together, so we bought pulses and tins of things that would last forever and might one day prove useful (when, for example, one of us was out taking the kids off to scout camp and the other didn't feel like shopping but fancied a lentil bake). Organic tinned tomatoes for quiet nights in eating pasta. Hundreds of spices for exotic experimentation (with food) on long winter evenings. The wherewithal to make mincemeat for Christmas pies.
But living alone, there is no point planning like that. By Christmas I could be lying on a beach in Zanzibar, peeling grapes for the Puerto Rican stripper I married in Macao.
"In your dreams," said my new girlfriend. "Next Christmas you'll be watching the tv and moaning that there's nothing to eat."
"Then I'll go to the pub."
"Just go and buy some food. How hard can it be?"
Yeah, how hard? My nearest proper supermarket is in Camden. You can walk there, but it's hard getting back without being robbed of your shopping, and taxis won't stop in case some soap-dodger with a pierced cerebellum and dyed-green eyeballs tries to get in. You can go one stop on the tube but, let's face it, would you eat food that had travelled on the Northern Line?
So I drove to the supermarket in Chalk Farm. It is used by people from Primrose Hill, so it must be ok. I started quite well. Up the vegetable aisles sniffing melons and squeezing tomatoes, even thinking of buying some green stuff (new girlfriend is vegetarian and occasionally eats such things). But then I got sentimental.
My ex (I can't write her name because that would be unfair, and I can't give her a fake name because I can't pretend that I lived with someone called Constance or Oresteia when I blatantly didn't) used to make me buy vegetables, and I suddenly remembered a particular afternoon when we had got back from shopping.
Reaching into one of the carrier bags, I had pulled out some carrots, some leeks and a couple of lettuces. "Shall I chuck these now?" I had said, holding them over the kitchen bin and springing its jaw with the pedal, "or are we going to play that game where we put them in the fridge for a week and then throw them away?"
I thought it was funny. But I'm pretty sure that it ended in tears. And now it was me on the verge of weeping in the aisles.
Anyway, this was long-term shopping. Pantry refurbishment to signify same with regard to soul. No need for perishables. So I lined the trolley with the basics: ketchup, mustard, brown sauce, Lea & Perrins, horseradish, mango chutney, pickled onions, pickled gherkins, pickled beetroot, mayonnaise, piccalilli, soy sauce, vinegar, salt, pepper, and headed for home.
"One aisle?" the new girlfriend said when she came round later that afternoon. "You managed the contents of one aisle?"
"Yes, I got sad, so I left. But it's an important aisle. Now whenever we cook something and it doesn't taste right, we can cover up the damage with the perfect condiment for every occasion."
"Oh, for God's sake," she said, dragging me to the car. "Look, I'll help you." So she drove me to Bumble Bee, the local organic mini-chain with greengrocer, dairy, baker and dry-goods store. She was explaining how Green & Black's chocolate was the ideal purchase because it can be excused as a baking essential while doubling as a late-night snack, when my attention wandered.
The shop's radio was playing Elton John's 'The Circle of Life' from The Lion King, a film I had seen with the old girlfriend.
"I'm not hungry any more," I said. "Let's go."
"Not the Lion King thing again?" she said. "You know, you deserve to starve, you really do." And she was probably right.