Oliver Q. Brackenbury is finally off to the launch pad

Well, it's a quarter to one now and it won't be long before I enter the final heat of preparation and have no more time to post an entry. So, with still perhaps too much wine and beer waging a turf war over my liver, here I go!

Some of you may be thinking "Hasn't he left yet"? Well, the short of it is that old man money came around to pull my pants down and it took a few weeks to pull them back up. But the flight is booked, with extra leg room and in flight drinks (note the pluralization, I know I have!). At 7:30pm tonight I shall be rocketing across the Atlantic towards Gatwick airport for the prescribed arrival time of 7:00am, Sunday morning. There I shall meet my cousin Dan and be escorted to the preciously named area of London known as "Tottingham", my cousin Suzanne's house in particular.

From there I shall treat myself to a couple of days of being a tourist. Aside from exploring my own new neighborhood, I plan to try and hit the heart of London which I fell in love with on my last trip - a sort of golden triangle between Soho, Blackfriars and the Embankment area. This is because I seem to be about to recreate the process I've worked my way through in Ottawa - starting off on the furthest edge from the downtown core and then steadily tunneling my way to the meaty, trendy center. It seems wise to grab a recent mental snapshot of that center, for inspiration's sake.

Yesterday I picked up a fitted suit along with some proper shirts, ties and pants. Let's hope that the first or second job I grab is one where I'll get to wear them! In the initial period I imagine that anything will go, just to get some money - but I certainly am not about to move 3000 miles so I can settle. Before the end of the year I'd like to have moved out of my cousin Suzanne's, be earning an adult's wages at a job where I actually feel my mind being engaged and have made some early inroads to the local film and/or television industry.

Let's see how close to that bullseye I can make it!