One More Epicycle

And so it begins!

Earlier this year I accepted an offer to work with Richard Nelson and Carl Murray as a postdoctoral fellow at Queen Mary. (How that offer came about — and why I have to learn rhyming slang and not Mandarin — is a story for another time.) I’ve never left Canada before, except for brief visits to the US, so my upcoming three-year-long stay in London is somewhat intimidating..

.. and I leave Kingston to fly into Heathrow in less than a week.

Although I’m an Albertan, stereotypically so in fact, and have always considered myself little more than a guest in Ontario (despite my birth on the very western edge), I’ve felt like Kingston is home for several years. I know I’m going to miss it something fierce.

However, I have a sneaking suspicion that my time in England may be an adventure of its own, despite the fact I’m going to be even more out of place in the London academic scene than I was here as a sceptical conservative Catholic-minded sort. I hope to keep this journal as a record of what I was thinking during this crazy period of my life, so that when I’m older and hopefully wiser I can reflect on my many youthful mistakes.

Well, there’s nothing to do now but dare the Sassenach to do their worst, and hope for the best.. Kyrie eleison!

.. “but as for daring, we shall see.”