Peter Jefferson read the Shipping Forecast on the BBC for more than forty years so it’s likely that he has lulled you to sleep a few times.
It is broadcast four times daily: at 05.20, 1201, 17.54 and 00.48. The reports are restricted to 350 words to fit the broadcasting schedule. This uniformity of length can pose a problem for the Met Office in winter when there is a lot of weather to report. Today there are thirty-one shipping areas but this has evolved from originally fewer.
The names are as evocative as the language in the Book of Common Prayer.
Forties, Cromarty, Forth and Tyne,
How about a glass of wine?
Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea
Is there honey still for tea?
Now I’m really on a roll
So for dinner, Dover, Sole.
But they do change. The most recent was in 2002 when Finisterre was replaced by FitzRoy. It is the only area to be called after a person, Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, who founded the British Meteorological Department in 1854.
If you are finding all this very exciting and want to know more, you should read And Now The Shipping Forecast by Peter Jefferson, published in paperback by UIT Cambridge in 2011. I have met him and have a copy.
The weather will play a part in next month’s referendum about the EU. On a sunny June day people will feel that the lark’s on the thorn and the snail’s on the wing, or vice versa, and vote to remain in the EU. On a cold, wet day in February undecided voters would obviously vote to leave. That’s just about the only original thought I have about the blasted referendum.
https://youtu.be/zKDfOQCo5tM
On a cold wet day in February the undecided will stay at home I am afraid
You can just imagine the excitement in my office when my PA, Penny JEFFERSON, who is of course married to Peter J, read this blog aloud and I was able to say that I had already read it at home because I follow you each and every morning!