Seeing Things

Still thinking about television sets. It occurs to me that I didn't see a colour tv until I was around sixteen years old for the simple reason they hadn't been invented (or made it as far as the shores of the United Kingdom, if they had.) I caught a glimpse of some ultra-expensive models in a shop showing a game of football. I wasn't terribly impressed. Since life itself was in colour the new-fangled sets seemed a bit superfluous.

In fact, now I come to think of it, we saw black and white in colour anyway. The imagination served to provide what was missing on the screen. Case in point: I saw the red of England's shirts in the 1966 World Cup Final even though we watched in black and white. A further example: I recall watching the movie Alien at university, circa 1976, on a tiny black and white set knowing perfectly well how it would have looked on the big screen. And the clincher: I never watched a single episode of Dr Who on anything other than a black and white set and all my memories of it are in colour.

I suppose that's why I don't really care for the idea of a high definition plasma whotsit. It would be far too good for the likes of me - sort of visual overkill.