Those of us who don’t enjoy shopping have to reconcile ourselves to the sight of cardboard. Mind you, it’s not unsightly; quite the opposite. The advertisers who think it all up can beat the entertainment programmes. And why shouldn’t SpecSavers see off competitors and turn itself into a TV commercial winner.
It’s an updated Father Christmas. The reindeer must be tired by now and the sledge must be showing its cracks. We don’t have ponies drawing milk-carts or horses lugging half-hundred weights sacks of goal up-hill with sparks flying from their hooves. We don’t any longer have serpents or sackbuts in our church bands. Things have moved on.
Soon we shall be having drones looking in with deliveries. They have made a start by bringing medication to us. There are people alive today who amuse themselves by listing all the benefits that modern methods can bring – including drone delivery but also including tankers full of oil, jets full of people and freight planes with a quota of bloodstock. And it can outdo human error. An HGV driver may find himself at Gibraltar Point near Skegness when he had told his GPS quite clearly that his destination was Gibraltar.
Then there are of course the knock-on effects. A drone can keep its eye on us. It can report back to its masters what is going on in its territory. It can, presumably, frighten the pigeons and other homing birds.
Hard-pressed vicars, with three services on a Sunday morning, may welcome the intervention of a drone. Vicars have already, after all, welcomed canned music.
ELECTRIC FLIGHT
MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) is going electric. Well, not today or tomorrow but it is up there with the innovators. In March MAF hosted the fourth Ecological and Electric Aviation conference in Finland. The invention of a crystal battery is something that MAF is keeping its eye on.
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