These light mornings, I am often drifting in and out of sleep - or, sometimes, annoyingly wide awake - in the early hours, so I frequently catch that glorious incantation, the Shipping Forecast, on Radio 4 at 5.20am. Or at least the start of it, for this recitation of sea areas and meteorological formulas ('falling slowly', 'fair becoming poor', 'backing westerly', 'losing its identity') is notoriously soporific. This morning I must have been sound asleep, so I missed a national calamity - at 5.20am Radio 4 listeners heard not the Shipping Forecast but the continuing World Service, which carried on until 5.40am before the BBC was able to repair matters - too late, too late. There was the inevitable Twitter mini-storm, some listeners inquiring if this was a sign of imminent nuclear armageddon (there's a vague urban myth to the effect that not broadcasting the Shipping Forecast will be a secret signal to our nuclear submarines to fire their missiles). Well, it is all a sign of how deeply entrenched the Shipping Forecast is in our national culture. For most of us, of course, it serves no useful purpose and is largely incomprehensible, but it operates at some deeper level as a quasi-liturgical celebration of our maritime heritage and our status as a sea-girt island afloat on mysterious waters, storm-prone but somehow ordered.
I have posted the Shipping Forecast poems of Seamus Heaney and Carol Ann Duffy often enough - here they both are, with a Larkin thrown in - so instead, as a service to readers, I have topped this post with a handy, cut-out-and-keep chart of all those sea areas whose names we love to hear.
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شركة المتحدة
ReplyDeleteدليل شركات نقل العفش
شركة نقل اثاث بالمدينة المنورة
شركة نقل اثاث بالرياض
شركة نقل اثاث بجدة
شركة نقل اثاث بمكة
شركة نقل اثاث بالطائف
شركة نقل اثاث بينبع
شركة نقل اثاث بالدمام
ReplyDeleteشركة ريلاكس لنقل العفش والاثاث
شركة نقل عفش بالطائف
شركة نقل عفش بالرياض
شركة نقل عفش بجدة
شركة نقل عفش بمكة
شركة نقل عفش بالمدينة المنورة
شركة نقل عفش بخميس مشيط
شركة نقل اثاث بابها
شركة نقل عفش بنجران
شركة نقل عفش بنجران
ReplyDeleteِشركة نقل عفش بحائل
شركة نقل عفش بالقصيم
شركة نقل عفش بالباحة
شركة نقل عفش بينبع
دينا نقل عفش بابها
نقل الاثاث بالمدينة المنورة
ارخص شركة نقل عفش بمكة