Fried Gold - Worth Its Weight

Last Sunday night I took Jason on a date to the Royal Festival Hall. We went to see Simon Pegg interviewing Nick Frost about his book: A Slice of Fried Gold.

I got the tickets as Jason’s anniversary present. We have been married for sixteen years. The traditional gift is wax, but given that he hates scented candles and a trip to have his ears syringed didn’t seem sexy, I had to get creative. I was inordinately pleased with myself because he is a nightmare to buy presents for even if you don’t stick to the anniversary rules. He has two settings for presents: either Poundstretcher or Harrods. Sometimes he just refuses to have any presents at all. He hates what my friend calls ‘tut’. The last time I saw him get excited by a purchase it was 40 metres of poo pipe, so you don’t often get any clues.

There have been many years where I have not been able to buy him anything at all. This feels catastrophic to me. I feel like I have gone in search of the holy grail and come home with a tramp’s shoe. Or sometimes just a drawing of the tramp’s shoe. Or worse, a great story about how I didn’t even manage to get him a tramp’s shoe. I have extreme gift guilt, but mostly he doesn’t care. Forcing him to have a present, or bursting into tears at my failure to buy him a gift is entirely selfish. What started out as a genuine desire to please him shifts into scratching my own itch. I NEED to be a person who completes the buying a gift task. It’s altogether an unsavoury affair that often ends in me staring into the dark abyss of my own flawed psyche. But Happy Anniversary to YOOUUUUUUU all the same.

There are times, rare and beautiful moments, when all the stars align and a gifting opportunity occurs at a time when a perfect gift pops into view. This is when I drop everything and adopt the laser eyed focus of a sniper with the target in their sights. Hence snapping up the tickets for the Nick Frost/Simon Pegg event. Much of our early courting was done through a shared love for Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. It is canon law in our house that the answer to ‘Where will mum go in the zombie apocalypse?’ is ‘The Winchester’. The joy of this gift was that it was equally pleasing to both me and him. A rare occurrence indeed.

The whole event was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. Wandering along the South Bank in the twilight, watching the city twinkling its best, reflecting in the dark ribbon of the river is never a bad thing. There are some tourist hotspots in London which I fail to understand completely. Piccadilly Circus for example, is just a nightmare of crowds and noise where any pleasure you may have had is instantly eroded by the need to avoid being run over by a tour group or a taxi. It is a place to be endured rather than enjoyed. The South Bank though, is one of my places. One of the places where I can stand and think: ‘I can’t believe I live here. In this city. This is my place now.’ It blows my mind, every time.

The Royal Festival Hall is part of the larger, Southbank Centre complex. It is the largest arts centre in the UK and there is always a wild and varied selection of events happening there. When the children were small every trip would involve going to Jeppe Hein’s, Appearing Rooms water sculpture, where they would play for hours, emerging blue and shivering with eyes red with chlorine, overjoyed to be suffering so.

We have always loved the skate park and its ever changing dynamics and graffiti. In recent years, the emergence of the artisan food market at the back of the building adds more value to an always worthwhile visit. You can always find a little bit of what you fancy there. That’s before you get to the exhibitions, talks, classes and demonstrations. It’s a wonderful, wonderful place. Over the years we have heard poets, walked through labyrinths made of books, done salsa classes and found all manner of things to amuse, educate and entertain ourselves with. Many of the things you can do there are free, so if you’re heading that way, it’s always worth looking at what’s on. It’s a treasure trove. Ironically, given that the Festival Hall was built for concerts, the only thing I haven’t done there is seen live music being played.

The Royal Festival Hall was conceived as part of the post war Festival of Britain exhibition and is one of the few things that survived from that time. The entire Southbank Centre complex is a masterpiece of brutalist design, along with the BFI and the National Theatre further up the river. If you’re interested in architecture, the spaces are worth visiting because of what they are, let alone what you can do there. I used to hate their aesthetic, but over time I have fallen in love with them, mainly because these are buildings that hold so much joy and are dedicated to spreading and sharing it.

The Nick Frost/Simon Pegg event was exactly that. An exercise in spreading joy. It was absolutely delightful to see two men who love each other dearly be so open about their friendship and the pleasure they take in each other’s company. It was a bit like a swearier version of Gone Fishing, with more allusions to drugs.

Frost’s book is about the therapeutic nature of cooking. In amongst the recipes he talks about how it helped him connect to a dysfunctional childhood and find good memories that he has learned to pass on to his own family through food. If you think it sounds a bit twee and self-helpish you could not be further from the truth. An entire segment about a fantasy Nigel Slater who has rhubarb stalks for hands and jizzes meringue all over the kitchen should help you dispel any preconceived notions you might have about a book like this.

It was funny and charming and warm. We laughed till we cried. We cried until we laughed. Afterwards we strolled along the river towards the station, hearts full and Jason said: ‘isn’t it amazing that we live here?’

My heart was full, because I thought I had just gifted him tickets to a gig. Turns out I’d given him something bigger. This is our place now.