There’s a beautiful moment when you very first fall in love. The object of your desire is suffused with the glow of perfection, angels descend clutching harps and singing songs to your beautiful new love, and all is right with the world.

But pretty soon reality catches up with you, and no matter how sweet your sweetheart you realise there are a few quirks of theirs that you just never expected.

My friends who are well versed in gay porn tell me that there’s  a certain appeal (even a subculture devoted to) burly men lifting and carrying things.

The fact that the preceding sentence requires the plural of “friend”, and that I’m now living in the same zipcode as most of the Castro district suggests that Fate is trying to tell me something. Unfortunately, my sexual orientation stopped returning Fate’s calls and took out a restraining order against her long ago, so her efforts are all in vain, and I remain very much in the dark about the mysteries and appeal of gay porn.

But I digress.

I still remember the day back in 2001 when Tom, Gareth, Paul and I first stepped through the front door of 37 Barnsbury Grove in Islington and pretty much exclaimed “wow!” in unison.

Sunlight was falling through the little conservatory at the back of the house and the wooden floor of the enormous lounge just glowed with it. We all looked at each other, mentally calculating whether we could afford the rent. “One way or another, we will” was the conclusion.

And when we moved in a few weeks later the place was even nicer than I remembered from that first viewing. From the very first day, it was more than just a place to live. It was home.

Everything’s started happening a little too fast now – because of the way the scheduling works out I’m picking up the keys to the new place on Saturday, and some nice people in a big truck are coming to Sunnyvale on Sunday to move all my stuff up to SF.

I was originally planning on picking up the keys on the 11th, and moving my stuff a week later on the 18th – more breathing room, chance to smooth out problems etc. But oh no.

So I realised with something of a shock today that I’m coming up on three weeks since I last partook of beast or fish.

I was worried that a serious steak-craving would set in around ten days, but the whole thing has been so painless that I didn’t even notice how long it had been.

There are still adjustments to be made, for sure. I’ve invested in a vegetarian cookbook, simply because my entire frame of reference for meal preparation over the past 8 years (ever since I had a kitchen of my own and the curiosity to experiment in it) has been based around meat dishes; more often than not some kind of “standard” meat-and-two-veg combination.