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In Glorious Black & White

Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Monday, 22nd December 2008

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‘CAN I HAVE it brighter? It’s so dim that I can’t see the man on the left.’

‘It’s meant to be! It’s an old black and white war film and they’re making a night attack in a landing craft!’

Both the mums needed new televisions this Christmas but tuning in my mum’s wasn’t quite as straight-forward as I’d expected. On my first attempt I jabbed the OK button too many times and ended up with all the menus in Cyrillic script!

Ironically one of the first programmes we saw once I’d tuned it in successfully was predominantly in black and white - Nigel Marvin’s Penguin Adventure - but the red and yellow crests on the little macaroni penguins showed up so crisply and the colour and texture of boulders and cobbles on the rocky beach was stunning. Wide-screen colour television does a lot for natural history.

These drawings, as you probably guessed, were made with my Parker Reflex fountain pen.

Christmas edition of the Radio Times. As it covers two weeks, at some stage I always find myself looking at the right day but in the wrong week.