Shipping Forecast at 100
BBC Radio 4, BBC Sounds
Yes, New Year’s Day seems like a distant memory now, but what better way to lull yourself to sleep in the gloom of a grey January than to listen to this celebration of the shipping forecast.
This was a theme for one day on Radio 4.
What is it that draws so many people to it?
Rockall, Finisterre and Malin Head; Dogger and Cromarty – the forecast has enchanted poets and musicians..
It’s a lullaby – in the twilight hours, safe in our beds, as the winds whip and the waves beat down on faraway shores.
Read more: Gavin And Stacey’s Nessa to read shipping forecast to mark its centenary on BBC
One of the announcers says the magic is in the final forecast – at the 1am bulletin – that’s special.
“You’re there on your own in the studio with a microphone, dimmed lights, and it’s an atmosphere you create.”
There are beautiful poems inspired by it - Seamus Heaney, John O’Donnell and Carol Ann Duffy - and there’s music too.
Jarvis Cocker picked the forecast signature tune, Sailing By, in his Desert Island Discs.
The best of the magic came later on New Year’s Day, but you can pick it up on BBC Sounds.
Sea like A Mirror is a beautiful sound poem about the Beaufort Scale.
We clamber up to the top of a lighthouse in the Outer Hebrides labelled the windiest place in Britain by the Guinness Book of Records.
The Scottish lighthouse keeper Ruairidh Macrae, keeps us right.
“There’s many a lighthouse keeper has stepped over these steps… if you were here at night in a gale, it roars”.
This is a beautiful sound poem… hear the wind batter; feel it on your face.
He points out a church spire. He got married in that church in 1989.
It was the day that Hurricane Gabrielle blew in. All the women were holding on to their hats going into and out of the church.
“It really was wild and wet and everything you wouldn’t want on a wedding day... but hey, we’re still married.”
The Butt of Lewis; the Eilean Glas lighthouses; the Outer Hebrides – the power of this documentary lies in how it transports you to high up on a lighthouse, to storms beating in your ears.
The music for Sea Like A Mirror is composed by Jeremy Warmsley with additional music by Eleanor McDowall.
It’s a Falling Tree production; of course it is - always the best of creative audio.
