If there was a single feeling that defined my 20s, it was a generalised allergy to the very concept of home: I learned it’s a myth that you only run away from it once. If you have the skills, you can spend a lot of your life dodging comfort, security and a place to return to. Which I did because I was an alcoholic, and alcoholics are always suspicious of safety. The only true way to be safe is to not drink, after all, and you do not want to stop drinking above all else.

This in turn informed my relationship to food. It goes that way for all of us: food is home. You’re not really staying in a place unless you’ve cooked in it. Otherwise you’re just a visitor. And because I had always wanted to be a visitor, I’d long been almost deliberately malnourished. I often boasted about my profoundly undistinguished palate, because everybody wants to ensure the worst decisions they make sound like some sort of quirky character trait.

But then an odd thing happened: I quit drinking. I tried a few times, sometimes making it stick for a few months, once for over a year. And then finally, definitively, I just … stopped. I don’t want to make it sound easy. I mean more that........

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