As suspected Week 09 ended up being it for me at UKHSA. I could have wrung a couple of extra days out of this week but it just didn’t seem like the right thing to do so I have had a down week as I psych myself up for my trip.

As such not a lot to report. 

I went to Bedminster to get a look at the new street art for Upfest (the event is this weekend but the artists have been hard at work transforming the neighbourhood for a couple of weeks.) Not everything is finished but I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is the best year yet for quality and breadth of styles. Provides a solid baseline for comparison when I get to Miami as Wyndham is a legendary street art neighbourhood itself and the primary reason for my visit.

Wednesday morning I was at the first showing of Top Gun : Maverick. Now I am a shameless fan of the original for all its flaws – the aerial scenes were/are just so thrilling and the death of Goose was the first time I cried in a cinema! This sequel is like injecting uncut nostalgia – they play pretty much every card in the deck – and as you’d expect the storyline is nonsense for the most part (it is basically Star Wars + Iron Eagle + Top Gun = the greatest 80s movie made in the 20s!). The aerial sequences are superb though – I was literally moving in my seat as if I was in the cockpit.

I read Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky – the second book in his Architects trilogy. It was a wonderful bit of space opera / adventure – full of wonderful aliens, AIs and brilliantly imagined characters. It is long though – do editors just no longer edit successful writers? It suffered from Neal Stephenson-itis…too many ideas for one book – not quite enough for two. That said, I really recommend it.

The job hunt continues. I’ve applied for a couple more things and had a few conversations. Trends are emerging. The clearest paths to a new role are clearly in Central Government or a consultancy that does a lot with Central Government. Even with the news of the big Civil Service cuts this seems steady. Beyond that it looks like there may be some opportunities with Local Government which is very interesting. Charities seem like a no-go zone – got quite the cold response from a few forays there and as ever the private sector seems broadly uninterested in me (apart from a glimmer at a well known large British institution.)

I was feeling a bit sorry for myself earlier in the week and shared this in a few places →

Not going to lie, it has been a challenging couple of years and I’d love things to settle down for a while!

The Road to 50 (1980)

Movie: The Blues Brothers (I could lie and say Raging Bull but I’d only be cheating myself)

Album: Kings of the Wild Frontier by Adam and the Ants (this was probably the last music I loved before I discovered hip hop and that was that.)