My career twitches...

I have an interview for a job on promotion next Tuesday afternoon.

If I get it I will be working on the Review and will be able to use all the knowledge I have of the system without having to deal with the humdrum day to day grind. Best of all, the Review work can only last 18 months or so at the outside, but the step up in grade will be permanent.

All I have to do now is get the job!

Wish me luck...

My career twitches...

I have an interview for a job on promotion next Tuesday afternoon.

If I get it I will be working on the Review and will be able to use all the knowledge I have of the system without having to deal with the humdrum day to day grind. Best of all, the Review work can only last 18 months or so at the outside, but the step up in grade will be permanent.

All I have to do now is get the job!

Wish me luck...

bored in the middle of the week

Ah, ‘tis early afternoon Wednesday and I find my enthusiasm for the week has evaporated, leaving me sitting here trying desperately to seem interested in the place. My mind wanders off to the jackpot lottery win I shall never have (not least because I don’t buy lottery tickets) and how I would spend the money. A house to be sure and a small apartment in Town for when I wish to spend time in the capital.

Beyond that a holiday or two, I think. Nothing too drastic, a month for Furtle and me touring the US and a month wherever Furtle fancies going.

It’s nice to dream.

At lunchtime I read a couple of articles in the current Fortean Times which for once I remembered to bring in with me. There is an interesting article called ‘Lost in Space’ about the (supposed) fate of the cosmonauts in the USSR’s secret space programme (as opposed to the one they trumpeted) in the late 50s and early 60s. The Judica Cordiglia brothers from Italy caused quite a stir at the time by tracking them (and the US space program) despite the fact that they were supposed to be secret. Some of their recordings suggest far more deaths in space than was ever announced, including suggestions that in a couple of cases, the Soviet rockets instead of going into orbit, simply carried on going, or the capsules bounced off the atmosphere on re-entry and disappeared into space. This leads to the intriguing possibility that a perfectly preserved body of a human being, frozen solid and preserved in the vacuum of space is even now, fifty years later, edging its way out of the solar system into interstellar space…

More mundane but equally interesting, is the suggestion that Soviet Cosmonauts had to be seen to be perfect or not exist at all. Where they failed to measure up for one reason or another, they were simply airbrushed from history (a well-known Soviet practice). I turned up a website here that shows a couple of examples of the airbrushed pictures.



It seems that people began to notice in the early 1970s when commemorative pictures were issued on the 10th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight. They were somewhat different…

bored in the middle of the week

Ah, ‘tis early afternoon Wednesday and I find my enthusiasm for the week has evaporated, leaving me sitting here trying desperately to seem interested in the place. My mind wanders off to the jackpot lottery win I shall never have (not least because I don’t buy lottery tickets) and how I would spend the money. A house to be sure and a small apartment in Town for when I wish to spend time in the capital.

Beyond that a holiday or two, I think. Nothing too drastic, a month for Furtle and me touring the US and a month wherever Furtle fancies going.

It’s nice to dream.

At lunchtime I read a couple of articles in the current Fortean Times which for once I remembered to bring in with me. There is an interesting article called ‘Lost in Space’ about the (supposed) fate of the cosmonauts in the USSR’s secret space programme (as opposed to the one they trumpeted) in the late 50s and early 60s. The Judica Cordiglia brothers from Italy caused quite a stir at the time by tracking them (and the US space program) despite the fact that they were supposed to be secret. Some of their recordings suggest far more deaths in space than was ever announced, including suggestions that in a couple of cases, the Soviet rockets instead of going into orbit, simply carried on going, or the capsules bounced off the atmosphere on re-entry and disappeared into space. This leads to the intriguing possibility that a perfectly preserved body of a human being, frozen solid and preserved in the vacuum of space is even now, fifty years later, edging its way out of the solar system into interstellar space…

More mundane but equally interesting, is the suggestion that Soviet Cosmonauts had to be seen to be perfect or not exist at all. Where they failed to measure up for one reason or another, they were simply airbrushed from history (a well-known Soviet practice). I turned up a website here that shows a couple of examples of the airbrushed pictures.



It seems that people began to notice in the early 1970s when commemorative pictures were issued on the 10th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight. They were somewhat different…