#40 Completed – Finally, I know what dogger means

This one is an ambition that has grown throughout many years. Having studied Geography for at least 12 years of my life I think it is criminal that I have completely avoided comprehension of that British emblem on the radio waves – the shipping forecast.

I must stress it is not passed me by all these years without my appreciation. I love hearing the words piled out by a reassuring voice who seems blissfully ambivalent to the fact that most of her audience haven’t the foggiest idea of what she is saying. Yet somewhere far away, I like to think that there are crackling mucky radios diligently delivering information to their Guernsey-wearing salt-weathered owners as they bobble along a lonely stretch of water.

So, time to learn what on earth it is going on about. To my surprise, this is remarkably easy…

First of all, there are about 30 regions creating a membrane around the shores of the British Isles. I decided to draw a map of them as you can see. This gives you a rough understanding of where on earth (or on sea) they are talking about.

Then, I decided to print off a glossary of term as found per the Met Office website. This was the other key piece of info you need. It tells you every single word the reader could possibly say and what it actually means. This is where I learnt for each region, or cluster of regions, they give information on:

• Gales
• Visibility
• Pressure systems
• Wind
• Precipitation
• and Sea State – apparently, I haven’t consciously heard them talk about this one yet.

Wikipedia tells me you have 370 words to gain all the info and they stay strictly to the script with little deviation or hesitation – although Nicholas Parsons would bring the reader up on repetition of course. The only thing left is to give it a go.

So I brought up the latest shipping forecast broadcast by the BBC, as always, this one at 05.20 this morning.

Amazingly, what had been a quite foreign language before had simply sprung into geographical life. A lot of the phrases and terminology were quite obvious before but things like ‘later’ meaning over 12 hours from now is something you can only guess from beforehand.

It initially gave gale warnings – a pretty important set of info for all sea-faring folk I suppose. Then it goes into its regional analysis in a clock-wise fashion from 12 o’clock until every area has been completed.

From a physical geographer’s perspective, the forecast is great in giving specific data for different cells of the map and even allows you to build up an idea of how you think those weather systems may develop in the future. From a human geographer’s point of view, it is an important means of measuring and translating spaces, places and situations across a geographical landscape, using physical indicators to paint each listener a picture of the seas.

From my perspective, I’m just excited to be able to understand something that has joyfully mystified me for well over decades. And although such mystery has gone, the informed journey is just beginning…

Though, you’d have to be mad to think I’ll be up at 5.20am tomorrow morning for a listen.