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"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.

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Date: 2010-03-17 12:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] papersky.livejournal.com
Actually, when I lived in Lancaster the shipping forecast was the only reliable weather forecast -- whatever it said for Irish Sea, we'd get tomorrow, whereas whatever they said for "the North West" was sheer fantasy.

But you're absolutely right. I can't think how many nights with dying relatives, small babies, crises, insomnia, I have heard that liturgy and felt reassured that Rockall, Hebrides and German Bight are still out there somewhere, westerly, moderate.

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