I was quite surprised to see this wall sign up in a local shop as I'd never actually viewed these words written down as such before. Before this, I'd only ever heard them. This is because they will forever live on the radio. Yes, cue that familiar signature piece of music in the background alongside the crashing of midnight airwaves. Once, they used to be long waves, now alas, digital. It was like seeing a piece of music represented as words and having to take a step or two back, which is a strange concept even for me. I feel I may have to explain further as I can sense the certain scratching of heads already.
It will no doubt mean nothing to anyone who lives outside the UK (unless that is you've sailed over here, then well done you and what they heck were you doing? It's rough out there with Vikings, German Bight and the Forties - you don't want to go past there), but to anyone here that's ever listened to the dulcet tones of BBC Radio 4 last thing at night it's a very familiar set of words. They are the well known names of the sea areas around the British Isles contained within the nightly broadcast shipping forecast. This list of names could almost be a maritime poem for some, that is how deeply embedded they are within the returning tides of the collective late night consciousness.
For those who've never had the opportunity of listening to it, you definitely won't quite understand the appeal. It's just a shipping forecast to aid sailors and fishermen, right? Wrong. it's somehow one of the most soothing things to listen to as you lie there in bed, just before sleeping. Soothing may be a strange word to associate with storm force gales, winds becoming northerly and high seas, yet it has this strangely comforting effect while you're tucked up in bed. It's the feeling that all is as it should be, that all is still well with the world because any dangers are being warned about in advance delivered in very proper BBC announcer tones. Although It's hard to explain, that may be the crux of it. Also, the introductory piece of music that has been played with it for the last 40 years is beautiful. 'Sailing by' is by all accounts a British institution as its musical strains are so well known. There was a huge outcry when it was temporarily taken off the air during the 1990's.
A map of the areas -
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/05/24/article-1390239-0C3B798000000578-235_468x721.jpg
"For 40 years, Peter Jefferson was the voice of the Shipping Forecast on Radio 2 and Radio 4 — as warm and soothing a presence to freezing fishermen battling storm-tossed waves as he was to the rest of us, tucked up in bed and listening to the broadcast at 12.48 in the morning.
And yet — for all Jefferson’s calm, knowledgeable reports of force nine gales from Trafalgar, off the Spanish coast, to the islands of North and South Utsire, off Norway — you could hardly call him a seafaring man.
‘I don’t sail; I don’t even swim,’ he says, in those assured, gentle tones, stitched into the aural memory of half the nation. ‘When I first started doing the forecast in 1969, I had no particular interest in the weather. Reading the forecast was just one of the things I had to do as part of my announcing duties.’
But, as the years passed, what began as an incidental part of his job as an announcer and newsreader became the thing he is now forever associated with; and he’s just published a book about it.
His association with the forecast is so close that at his wedding six years ago — he remarried his wife at the age of 60; they have a 35-year-old daughter — the vicar composed his own Wedding Forecast: ‘Knuckles WIGHT, palms sweaty, hands joining to form new partnership, moderate, becoming good, FORTIES — you wish . . .’ to gales of laughter from the congregation."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390239/BBC-Shipping-forecast-The-man-eye-storm-vital-slip.html#axzz2JqDSGlri
There's even been a spoof written about it by poet Les Barker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ywku0lQYNc
To be honest do not really listen to the radio.... but my late Mum and Dad always did.... and you have brought back so many happy memories to me..... ♥♥
And the Les Barker link - hadn't heard that one! Have I encountered another Les Barker fan?