LATIMER RETURNS
Latimer ponders a new way to rid the warmer seasons of insects
BEEN to the Vanguard street art exhibition at M Shed yet? It’s just my opinion, but I reckon that it gets the history just right, and of course it’s also a massive nostalgic wallow for any Bristolian who fancied themselves as young ‘n’ hip in the 1980s and 1990s.
One of the best things about it is that it’s not just about Banksy. The mysterious global mega-star is mentioned, of course, and one of his most famous works is on show there (but you’re not allowed to photograph it, and even if you try to it’s behind glass and so won’t come out too well …)
This is as it should be. At the time, he was just one of many accomplished artists adorning the walls of the city.
What it also does very well is that it shows the way in which street art and music were closely integrated with one another. Some artists were also musicians and DJs, and you can’t imagine the creation of Bristol’s modern brand without these things being all mixed up together.
There was a common culture which emerged, independent of things happening in London at the time. This fusion of art and music across racial and class barriers is what made Bristol what it is today, and it’s why the exhibition is important.
There was something else which struck me about it, though; women and the lack thereof.
Just to be clear, there are some women’s artworks in the show, including one very startling piece at the end. But female street artists working in Bristol in the 1980s and 90s? There really weren’t many. For all our city’s radical and progressive credentials, this is curious, isn’t it?
Vanguard Bristol Street Art: The Evolution of a Global Movementis at M Shed until October 31. Tickets £8 adult/£7 concessions/ half price for ages 16-24 and under 16s free and should be booked in advance – see tinyurl. com/tw6v6yh8
Summertime, and the living is … bug-infested
So you’re sitting at home, happily reading your copy of Bristol Times and a fly buzzes into the room. It performs various random aerobatics around the place and eventually becomes so annoying that you eventually get up from your armchair, armed with your rolled-up copy of the Post, determined to despatch the annoying little bleeder to Varmint Valhalla ...
…But it’s impossible to swat. Even at the stage where it bounces off the window-pane wondering why the air has suddenly turned hard, it manages to evade any killer blows in the nick of time.
This has started me to thinking of the next great chapter in Bristol’s proud history of engineering and innovation, bringing together our longstanding aerospace expertise and our more recent status as one of the UK’s leading centres of emerging digital technologies.
The Pest Location and Elimination Defence Ground Environment, or PLEDGE, to use its full NATO acronym, will identify and track insect intruders and control the weapons system to destroy them.
Bristol has long been a leader in advanced technology, with expertise with deep roots going back to research at the universities, to the aerospace industry and other early enterprises, such as INMOS - not to mention a lot of important but technically complex work on mobile phone technology and, in more recent times, animation and computer games.
Just as Bristol developed air defence systems, including the famous Bristol Bloodhound missiles, during the Cold War, I am now laying down this challenge to a new generation: Make PLEDGE happen - build a system to shoot down flies. Also wasps. But not bees. Definitely not bees.
So in the living room you have a motion sensor to pick up the fly and a mini radar to track it, feeding this information to a computer programmed to anticipate the complex movement patterns of the intruder, and which will then guide some or other weapon onto the target.
This is where things get even more complicated. While it would be possible to manufacture miniature missiles to be locked onto the bandits, they would probably be quite expensive.
Besides, they could damage the furniture. To penetrate the tough exoskeleton of a housefly would probably require enough explosives to leave a mark on the window. Or possibly even break it. The same applies if your missile throws out shrapnel or tungsten rods or whatever.
Miniature anti-aircraft guns might be cheaper, but again, you have to consider the possible collateral damage, especially if your fly tries to hide among the nick-nacks on the mantelpiece. Perhaps it can be done with lasers.
Drones might be the best solution. You could have a squadron of small aircraft, one or two of which could be scrambled and vectored onto the intruder. In a perfect world these would be equipped with miniature chain-guns delivering a thousand tiny armour-piercing bullets in a two-second burst, but again we have to consider the wedding photos, the carriage clock and the Souvenir of Bridlington snow-globe.
Also, depleted uranium is expensive...and a radiation hazard.
So instead it may be that the drones deliver a small puff of lethal (but harmless to humans) fly-spray or perhaps shoot some sort of biodegradable sticky substance that gums up the fly’s wings and breathing.
This is all ridiculous, you say. I’m going to stick with my old-school rolled-up newspaper, you say.
Ah yes, but … How would it be if killing flies was a real-life computer game? How would it be that you were actually using a joystick and head-up display to control the fly-killing drone?
How would it be if you could have your mates over, have beer and pizza and have a competition to see who could shoot down the most flies in the house?
Beats Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty any day, don’t it? And if it proves a big hit on the global market, someone’s going to make a lot of money.
I give this idea to all the world for free and waive all rights in perpetuity, but only on condition that it’s made in Bristol.
Pioneering teacher’s plaque
The latest Bristol Civic Society blue plaque was unveiled by the Lord Lieutenant of Bristol, Peaches Golding, at Clifton High School at the end of June.
It honours Eleanor Addison Phillips (1874-1952), who was the school’s headmistress from 1908 to 1933. At a time when many still frowned on the idea of teaching girls anything other than a bit of reading, writing and drawing, and when many more were horrified at the idea of girls playing strenuous sports, she devoted herself to female education (and sport).
Just as significantly, she was the founding president of the Bristol Venture Club in 1920, an organisation for professional women in the city to engage on social and charitable work. It was the direct female equivalent of the Rotarians (who did not admit women at the time) and was the first organisation of its kind in the world. The Venture Club lives on nowadays as the Bristol branch of Soroptimist International (see sigbi.org/bristol for more – see also BT’s May 12 2020 edition).
The plaque was to have been installed last year on the centenary of the Venture Club’s founding, but this had to be delayed because of you-know-what.
Cheers then!