(…being the sound of my social life exploding.)

I really, really hoped that moving up to San Francisco would provide me with less nights in watching DVDs, and more nights out doing random things. And whadya know? The city answered my hopes and then some.

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.

A quick, simple but very satisfying soup, this.

Surprisingly there are very few recipes for mushroom and stilton soups available online, and most of the ones there are seem… wrong. This one borrowed a few basic ideas from Phil Vickery’s recipe, but dispenses with the “wild mushroom” crap.

I’ve no idea why food writers and celebrity chefs the world over will only touch a mushroom if it’s some fancy-schmancy “wild” variety. Bog standard closed-cap mushrooms aren’t highly exciting, it’s true, but they have a wonderful subtly complex flavour and, to my mind, actually work better in a soup like this where the stronger flavours of mushrooms like shitake can end up fighting with each other, and with the other principal ingredients.

California happened to me at the perfect time in my life.

Like many of the best, most defining moments it was a complete accident of circumstance – the right place at the right time. I was lucky, and I’m thankful that I stumbled across an opportunity that I needed.

London will always have a very special place in my heart. It’s where I turned from a confused teenager into an adult. It’s where I first loved and first had my heart broken. It’s where I went truly, deeply mad; and where I healed and put my demons to rest and became whole again. It’s where I learned the true meaning of friendship, and hatred, and forgiveness. It moulded my habits (bad and good) and my attitudes (bad and good).

After an unexpected delay in London (note to self: never, ever lose your passport, especially after you’ve spent the whole evening repeatedly saying that it would be a stupid thing to do), I’m finally back in the Bay, or “home” as I’ve taken to involuntarily calling it recently.

Hurrah!

London provided ample opportunities to power through the Meat List of the previous post, and although oysters are out of season and I didn’t get around to Peking Duck or manage to get to Nando’s, I’m now into my first day of experimental vegetarianism.

All the leftover meaty cupboard staples have been disposed of via my stomach, so from hereon in I won’t be buying any meat… unless an unbearable desire for steak forces me to concede that, no, I really can’t be without the odd choice bit of animal in my diet. We’ll see how that goes.

In other news, I looked at a lovely apartment which was just vacated by 2 fellow Yahoos today. It’s slightly larger than my current place, in the absolute perfect location (Buena Vista – N Judah to downtown, Haight 10-15 mins away…), has a really nice outside deck area and is, in short, exactly what I want. It’s expensive (60% more than I currently pay), but that’s what you get for wanting to be in the city.

I’m going to sleep on it overnight, but assuming that my subconscious doesn’t throw up any weird nightmares it looks like I’ll be tackling the Rental Application Hurdles from tomorrow onwards.

Wish me luck…

I haven’t felt so apprehensive in quite a while, but as I wheel my case out through the deserted customs lobby and into the arrivals area of Heathrow Terminal 4 it turns out that my fears were unfounded.