The Shipping Forecast

Way back in the 1950's when I was a lad and dinosaurs still roamed the Earth, we didn't have television. (You poor soul, I hear you cry). However, we didn't worry because we had the wireless to listen to. We used to huddle around it as if it was a fire and would keep us warm the closer we got to it. (As it was full of valves and wires, it probably did) Now, as peculiar as this may seem, we used to love to listen to the shipping forecast which was given out at the end of the nightly news bulletins. This weeks obsession with the weather has reminded us of this. It was the names of places that we had never heard of and had no idea where they were such as Finistere, Dogger Bank, Cromaties, Fair Isle ( I thought that was a type of pullover) German Bight etc which fascinated us. What makes this even more strange, is that we live in the middle of the country therefore the shipping forecast had no relevance to us whatsoever, just far away places with strange sounding names.