Thursday 5 January 2017

Planet Earth II and my adventures with Attenborough

I thoroughly enjoyed watching Planet Earth II - I managed to combine viewing this with still keeping abreast of The X Factor shenanigans courtesy of the BBC's wonderful iPlayer.

Sir David Attenborough is one of my heroes.  His father was the Principal of University College Leicester (later the University of Leicester), admittedly a bit before my time studying there, but there is a building on campus named the Attenborough Building complete with a paternoster.

Now, I'd never encountered one of these before - these are basically lifts, but they keep on moving around the building and you have to step on and off them whilst they're in motion.  Not sure how this still exists in the days of health and safety, but to the best of my knowledge (and courtesy of a quick Google search) it appears to be still going strong.

Unfortunately, due to a timing error on my behalf, I managed to fall out of the paternoster - thankfully nothing was injured except my pride, but I can still blush with embarrassment at the memory of it to this day!

Anyway, I digress, back to Planet Earth II - I just marvelled at the amazing wildlife photography, and laughed and cried and oohed and aahed as I watched the various creatures and their lives.

Highlights of the series for me were the swimming sloth, who was thwarted in his quest for love as the object of his desire already had a baby; the baby iguanas literally running for their lives while being chased by snakes.

Then the poor little turtles, just hatched and confused by the bright city lights, so heading the wrong way up the beach to get squashed on the road or to fall down storm drains.  I was so relieved to subsequently read that this story had a happy ending - the Barbados Sea Turtle Project assisted the film crew and then stepped in to rescue the unsquashed baby turtles and take them to the sea.


Truly wonderful TV which makes the licence fee worthwhile.

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