The adventure begins

Flash back to summer 2006 and you'll find me couch-surfing, fidgeting, and alternating between lengthy heart-to-hearts with dear friends and even lengthier road trips with only myself for company. I managed to be both an insomniac and a nauseatingly chipper morning person, and would probably have begun to question my sanity if I'd bothered to sit still long enough to think about it. If I was a little more focused, or if my friends were a little more uncouth, someone might have observed that in the summer of 2006 I was "not quite myself."

I'm glad, though, that no one pointed this out to last year's me; in part because it's a remark both idiotic and trite, and in part because having to pay it heed would have spoiled all my fun.

In the summer of 2006 the me that was not-quite-me stayed up all night with a friend, watching "The Princess Bride" and discussing the nature of evil and the difficulty of avoiding compulsive,conspicuous, consumerism in a capitalist culture (note: we'd drunk an entire bottle of Goldschlager in pursuit of the gold flakes and so this conversation was nowhere near as cerebral as one might think). "The Princess Bride" is a brilliant, magical tale, and B is a brilliant, marvellous man. I'd like to credit them rather than lack of sleep and too much drink with the conclusions I reached that night; perhaps it was the confluence of all four. In any case, here's what I'd decided by the time the sun poked through the smog:

1) If I found life plain, boring, and unsatisfying, it wasn't life's fault (I think I stole this from a greeting card).
2) I'd be a lot happier accumulating experiences than possessions (my nomadic lifestyle that summer bore this out).
3) Despite point 2, it was imperative that I one day live in a castle adorned with gargoyles (chalk this one up to the Goldschlager).

Gargoyles and castles may seem somewhat suspect as factors supporting a 'MAJOR LIFE DECISION,' but I should point out that I've previously made said decisions by tossing a coin. It's not as daft as it sounds: you call it whilst the coin is in the air and then gauge your first feeling when it lands; if you're happy you stick with the coin's verdict; if you're disappointed you decide the coin was wrong and go for the other option. (If you decide you want to make it a 'best two out of three' contest instead, you need to appeal to some other authority--in my experience Magic 8 Balls provide a good second opinion. If you're still stuck, you might need to revert to more traditional means of making a decision: talk to friends? draw up a pros-and-cons list? whatever works.)

So what was I going to do? Take a break from my boredom and dissatisfaction with life in plain old Southern Ontario, pack all of the things I couldn't part with into a couple of suitcases (parents' basement provided a ready-made storage locker for the rest), and go to a place where I'd at least be in proximity to gargoyle-guarded castles: England!

A coin supported my decision; details such as money were easily solved by selling my car; a working holiday visa was surprisingly simple to obtain; I'd accumulated enough pieces of paper (aka diplomas) that finding work wouldn't be a problem; the Internet made it possible to 'know' England without ever having set foot there (note: not really, but I was naive enough to believe so); language wouldn't be a barrier and I might even pick up a charming British accent. What else was there to consider?

In a few short weeks I had everything sorted, and on 7 August, 2007 I headed off to Pearson International with passport and one-way ticket in hand, bound for London Heathrow and a year of tea with scones, football, gossip about royalty and (of course) castles and gargoyles. My visa said I was going on a working HOLIDAY--how complicated could it be?