Does anyone on here listen to the Shipping Forecast , its aired on Radio 4 at 0048 and 0548 I do listen in sometimes but i cant get to understand it
Can you ?? I must admit i do like the music to it .
ragga 
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFdas-kMF74"]YouTube- Classic BBC Radio Theme ~ Shipping Forecast (Sailing By)[/ame]
The Shipping Forecast is your/our maritime history.
The Shipping Forecast is in a way to understand the sinking of the Titanic or the battle for the Atlantic. The Compass Rose.
It is the same poem but it's beauty is it changes every day.
Here is my connection when I was 8, with the weather in the English Channel.
I'd bolted my tea and I was listening for the confident sound that my father's footsteps made coming up the yard after work.
Dressed in his navy blue overalls with a loose brown jacket over the top, he came through the kitchen into the front room. In his arms wrapped in a large piece of brown paper was a box like shape.
My mother had just finished making his tea and was wiping her hands on a tea towel, my sister and I watched (holding our breath) as the package was unwrapped.
Dad carefully lifted it up. It was a radio. Our radio. Our very first radio.
We didn't have a desk or cabinet to stand it on so Dad placed a washing board across the arms of a chair and the radio on the washing board. The radio was oblong, a light brown veneered case, with two dark brown knobs, one for off and on and the other for tuning. It had a large white dial on the right and a speaker on the left, behind silken straw coloured cloth framed with intricate fret work, I couldn't wait for Dad to turn it on.
He couldn't.
We didn't have electricity. The house only had gas.
"We'll get an accumulator tomorrow." he said.
There was nothing we could do. So my sister and I sat on the floor next to it and turned the tuning in knob.
The Home Service. The Light Programme. Scottish, North, West, Welsh, Hilversum, Brussels, Lyons, Paris,. Stockholm, Prague.
The Light Programme, Welsh, Scottish, North, West, Paris,. Brussels, Hilversum, Stockholm, Prague. We did this for an hour and then we went to bed.
The next evening dad came home with an accumulator. It looked like a large thick glass brick with a wire handle on the top. It had two terminals, black and red. Inside were some strips of metal standing vertically.
"What's that liquid in.......?
"DON'T GET THAT ON YOU IT'S ACID." said Dad. It's sulphuric acid, wash your hands, it will rot your clothes! Don't get it on you, it's sulphuric acid. Don't get it on you.
Dad got the square biscuit tin that he kept his 5 essential tools in from the cupboard, took out an old pair of pliers and connected up the leads from the radio to the accumulator. Lined up the red line on The Home Service, then turned the knob to on.
Nothing. Then a hum.
"It's the valves." Said Dad.
Then Radio spoke 'Here is the news'.
I sat on the floor with my arms around my drawn up knees staring up at the dial and looked at the point where the red line intersected the Midland Home service.
The radio changed my life.
I met all kinds of people. I couldn't wait to get home from school
At 5 o'clock Children's Hour started."
"I say Jennings where did you get that strange stone?"
"Hello young gardeners, my names Percy Thrower and I'm going to pot up some Begonias."
"The Ninth Legion marched north and that's the last we ever saw of them. A cold swirling mist just closed in behind them."
For the first time in her life my mother had no problem getting us to come into the house in the evening to get ready for bed. In our pyjamas with a biscuit in hand we could sip our Ovaltine, and listen to;
"The Archers, an everyday story of country folk."
"Well Tom Forest, what are we going to do?
"I'm blowed if I know............Oh dear!.......... Oh dear oh lor!......... "
Music: "DAN DER RAN DER RAN DER RAN, DA DER DAH, DA DIDDLY DAH!"....................
Journey into Space, with Doc, Mitch and Lemmy on thinking they were all alone on Mars.
"Doc! Doc!"
"Yes Mitch."
" What's that over there?"
"My god, it's a light and it's moving!"
"Now we have the stars of stage, screen and radio with the BBC review orchestra under the baton of Henry Hall."
"Good evening, my name is Henry Hall and tonight, is my guest night."
It was eight o'clock, we had to say "Good night." It was time for mysister and I to go to bed.
When I listened to the radio I saw everything in colour.
Jean Metcalfe, with "Two Way Family Favourites" at lunchtime on Sunday always wore an orange lipstick.
On children's hour, Toad in "Toad of Toad Hall wore a bright yellow waistcoat.
Mrs. Dale when she told us she was "Worried about Jim," took off a large round black hat and hung up a camel coat
Freddy Grisewood on Friday nights "Any Questions" had a blue checked shirt, a blue and red stripped tie and light brown suede shoes.
And Dan Archer drove a mud spattered red Massey Ferguson tractor around Brookfield Farm.
The following January on a cold morning I got up early to the smell of a kipper being grilled over the fire. The kettle next to the kipper was boiling. It was nearly 7 o'clock and Dad was preparing to go out to work.
The radio now sitting on a cabinet was giving the farming and shipping forecast.
"Dover............Wight.............Sole.............visibility...........one...........mile...........1012.......falling.............Biscay.................Scilly..............Finnesterre......
.......1004..............two............miles...............falling.........Malin............Rockall............Shannon..............four...........miles.................1016.................clearing.
I loved the names in the shipping forecast. Tyne, Cromarty, Goodwin, Bight. Dogger.
On the breakfast table was a copy of the Daily Express newspaper. The front page showed a picture of a ship the Flying Enterprise listing right over on her starboard side. There was a black smudge with a circle around it.
The smudge was Captain Carlsen. He was waving.
I poured some milk over my weetabix and studied the picture.
"Would you like a cup of tea?" "Yes Dad."
"That was the end of the weather forecast for farmers and shipping, after the Greenwich Time Signal, it will be time for the news."
Beep.Beep.Beep.
"It's seven oclock. Here is the news."
"After nine days of battling gale force winds in the English Channel, the Captain of the Flying Enterprise, Captain Kurt Carlsen is still on the bridge of the Enterprise. The Enterprise is now said to be listing heavily in deteriorating conditions ."
I went to school in the rain.
It rained all day.
As soon as I'd had my tea, I sat down close to the fire. on one of two tin boxes that formed the ends of the fender. In the box I was sitting on we kept coal. The tops of the boxes were padded and covered with a brown vinyl. The top was hinged and inside was a metal box in which was stored the coal for that night. The box on the other side of the fireplace contained shoe polish and brushes. The tin boxes were embossed with castle turrets.
" This is the Home Service. Here is the news."
"This afternoon in the English Channel in gale force winds and heavy seas, 54 miles from Falmouth, the battered and heavily listing American freighter Flying Enterprise, sank.
The Captain, Captain Kurt Carlsen was picked up from the sea by the tug Turmoil just before the Enterprise went down.
Captain Carlsen had been fighting for Eleven days in atrocious conditions to save his ship ."
Captain Carlsen and the mate, from the Turmoil Mr. Dancy , climbed to the top of the funnel and jumped into rough seas.
They were picked up by the Turmoil and are both safe.
The American destroyer Willard Keith, which was also standing by reported that 39 minutes after the captain jumped, At 4 10 pm. the Enterprise rose very slowly by the bows, paused, then suddenly plunged stern first leaving only a tell tale swirl."
This is one of my memories of the Shipping Forecas.
ladywood
