Unplugged Logging off is so hard to do
THE first holiday Mrs Latimer and I managed to get this year was in September, in the middle of absolute nowhere in Mid-Wales. Me, myself, I was really looking forward to it after six months of working entirely from home.
I was a total prat about it beforehand, mind, swanking to everyone that we were going to a place in the middle of nowhere, with no phone signal and no wifi.
Oooh! Get me and my fancy digital detox!
That’s very 2020 isn’t it? Normally the middle classes would be showing off about holidays in Italy or France, but this year they’ve been going on about banana bread and going “wild camping” (or “camping” as we used to call it).
I’m sure I’m not the only one quacking on about the joys of being cut off from my phone and Facebook. Next spring, expect to see articles in the Daily Mail and the Guardian alike about the best places in Britain to holiday “offgrid”.
Now fair do’s. If you’ve been working from home for six months, chained to your computer, laptop, phone and/or tablet, getting away from all the wretched devices for a while is something to really, really look forward to, no?
Well I certainly, believed so until …
… So we’re in this cottage in a remote corner of Powys. Beautiful scenery, lots of interesting wildlife, plenty of lovely walks, the weather’s fine and the butcher’s shop many miles away in Rhayader sells the best pies IN THE WORLD, and we have a stack of books to read.
Oh, but what if I get an important e-mail about work? They’ve not sent me a proof of that big magazine article yet! What if someone needs me urgently for a big, lucrative job? Have I been libelled on Twitter again?
Has Latimer Junior burned down the house whilst making chips? Has he invited any of his Covid-ridden chums into the house to cough on all of our things?
There’s a telly, but the service is your basic package and the screen is small. And you can’t record programmes, pause them or fast-forpassionately ward through the adverts. It is SO ANNOYING!!! Seriously, the technological breakthrough which enabled mankind to pause, rewind and fast-forward live TV has to be up there with antibiotics and the flush toilet.
So it turns out you can’t escape from needing to be connected, and you can’t escape from the convenience and entertainment it offers.
In the evenings I was re-reading John Latimer’s Annals of Bristol in the Seventeenth Century, a time when few people owned any books or even chairs. I mean, aside from the few years of truly hideous Civil War during which our forebears were simply trying to survive, what the blithering heck did they do with themselves of an evening? If the Annals are to be believed, there were three basic options:
1. Becoming a Puritan so you could pray a lot, and talk endlessly about religion and banning other people’s pleasures
2. Plotting the overthrow of the government
3. Plotting the overthrow of the government whilst also getting stinking drunk
So 2020 was the year in which many of us found that we were as addicted to digital technology as our ancestors were addicted to drink. If there is any status snobbery to be had in showing off about having off-grid holidays, it’s not in the fact you’re doing without Facebook, WhatsApp and Netflix. It’s in the fact that you have the strength of character and intellectual resources to do without all that stuff.
Museums back in business
Bristol Museum & Gallery, M Shed and Bristol Archives are now open to visitors once more, though subject to various Covid safety measures. Like everywhere else they need our support and money, so visit if you are confident.
If not, they’ve all got plenty of online offerings. If for instance your interest in Black History Month has been aroused by our article about Black Bristolians (see pages 4-5) you’ll find a wealth of information at www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/ stories/
For everything else, including
events and visits, see www.bristolmuseums.org.uk
Important anniversary
Things you never knew that you never knew department … It’s not really local, but I don’t think we should pass up the anniversary as it’s unlikely to be marked by many TV programmes, books, newspaper articles or movies.
The eraser is 250 years old this year. That lump of stuff you used to use for getting rid of the mistakes in your maths homework or in the drawing office, the little thing that still comes attached to the top of a lot of pencils, can trace its origins to a bloke named Edward Nairne, a London engineer.
The estimable Mr Nairne made an accidental discovery when intending to rub out something he had written or drawn. He reached for the breadcrumbs but picked up a piece of what was then called “gum elastic” instead, and found it was jolly good for erasing. Wait, what? Breadcrumbs!?
Yes indeed. Before Mr Nairne
came along, the commonest method for erasing your pencil or charcoal errors on paper was to use breadcrumbs. (If we’re talking about parchment or vellum, a knife or pumice stone were your best bet.)
But now he had found something even better, and was soon selling little lumps of gum elastic for an exorbitant three shillings a time. The scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestley remarked in 1770: “I have seen a substance excellently adapted to the purpose of wiping from paper the mark of black-leadpencil. ... It is sold by Mr. Nairne, Mathematical Instrument-Maker, opposite the Royal-Exchange.”
And because this stuff was so good at rubbing out mistakes, it became known as … rubber!
One of the defining materials of the modern world got its name (in English anyhow) because it was better at rubbing out that breadcrumbs were.
See? I’m not just a pretty face, I am educational too.
Cheers then!