CALLING ALL SHIPS

What are the ingredients that make the shipping forecast so great to listen to? Is it the litany of softly-intoned place names, many of which, only half-familiar, conjure up a kind of alternative map of the British Isles? (And which include, for good measure, the light relief of “Scilly automatic”, capable of being translated into a picture of some absurd automaton by thousands of minds on the edge of sleep.)

Like horoscopes or the wheel of the year, the parade of coastal stations is an attempt to create order out of chaos. And always in an impeccable BBC accent from a different era of certainties.

Then there is the hypnotic voice reassuring me that, enveloping our island, the air-pressure – I presume, though it’s never explained - is “rising slowly”, and “falling”. “Good.” On stormy nights, is there a kind of guilty comfort knowing that I'm in my snug berth while someone in a rain-lashed cabin tries to pilot their tiny vessel through the unbelievable force of the weather and the currents?

There's certainly the delicious knowledge that, while I’ll also have to wrestle with the elements today, it’s not quite yet…


Met Office guide to the Shipping Forecast