One Tiny Tuesday, One giant leap for Brit-kind

This tiny stamp from 1961 represents little links for me between then and today’s events in space. 


It's celebrating the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. Gagarin died in 1968, the year I was given the stamp by my father in a stamp book I still have. 

He had been away in Malaysia and Singapore working as an uncredited technical advisor on the film ‘The Virgin Soldiers’. During the autumn of 1968 I visited the film set near Wokingham where they made the English countryside look like the jungles of Malaysia. I met most of the actors, many now household names.

In 1969, the year the film was released, one of it’s uncredited actors, David Jones, released a song. It was to shoot him into orbit as an international super star. 

Three years later Major Tim Peake was born. If only his parents had called him Tom…


Enjoy the song by David Jones, (AKA Bowie): “Space Oddity”, this version was made the year Major Tim was born.

The countdown makes the hairs on my neck stand up!


I will be awarding my hearts & stars for this week's Mono Monday challenge, do pop by.