Last night we discovered we were both awake when we shouldn’t have been. Usually if I happen to be awake I try to lie still so as not to disturb Anne and vice versa. On this occasion we decided to turn on the wireless set on a timer – that usually gets us back into the land of nod.
During the night Radio 4 is basically the long wave broadcast as far as I can see and on this occasion it was on the World Service News (I think – I wasn’t that awake). We got talk of meetings to discuss diplomatic approach to dealing with China and an article about a Pakistan woman rugby player (international?) who drowned on a boat trying to get to Italy to get her kid an operation.
That wasn’t going to get me to sleep again. Fortunately the Shipping Forecast came on. Result. What a great news item. I rarely hear it nowadays because our kitchen radio (wireless) is DAB and doesn’t have long wave. I suppose I might be able to find it on DAB?
The point is that the Shipping Forecast is so reassuring. Doesn’t matter what the weather is like. It is the fact that this has been broadcast all my life. It is a constant. A monotone delivery makes it very relaxing.
Now this morning’s forecast was not particularly good news 4 – 2 falling with rain but the content is irrelevant, unless you are on a boat.
This got me back to sleep but before it did it reminded me that a few years ago I came up with a project to write down a year’s worth of BBC traffic and travel bulletins. The plan was to consolidate each bulletin so that all roads mentioned during the year would be included once.
The country would have been gridlocked. This is still a valid project. Just needs planning and executing. In an ideal world I could source a year’s worth of bulletins in one go rather than painstakingly wait for 12 months. Probs never happen but the idea is good.
I eventually nodded off and woke up at six forty five.