steepholm: (Default)
steepholm ([personal profile] steepholm) wrote2010-03-16 02:24 pm
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The Shipping Forecast

"Who NEEDS the shipping forecast?" asks today's PM newsletter. I do hope this is only because it's a slow news day, and the thing isn't really under threat - because the answer is, of course, "Reason not the need!"

Don't they recognize a liturgy when they hear one? Don't they know that the shipping forecast is Auntie's way of tucking the nation in safely at night, coast by neatly-folded coast? That it's an apotropaic, a nightly beating of the parish bounds? Don't they hear the watchman's cry, "It's 23.00 hours GMT and all's well!", and see his lonely lantern bobbing out upon the deeps?

I believe some sailors listen to it as well, for purposes of their own, but that's hardly the point. You don't need to work on a trawler to derive comfort from a Fisherman's Friend, O Powers that Be.

[identity profile] ladyofastolat.livejournal.com 2010-03-16 09:07 pm (UTC)(link)
You know, I don't think I've ever heard the shipping forecast live. This lack of knowledge will probably be pivotal in my being unmasked as a foreign spy.

I have, though, heard Les Barker perform his version. This probably doesn't count.

[identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com 2010-03-17 10:43 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, I think it counts! Thanks for the link.

[identity profile] shark-hat.livejournal.com 2010-03-17 11:48 am (UTC)(link)
I love the Church of the Wholely Undecided!