Squally at first
I love the words used in the Shipping Forecast.
One of my favourite things is to listen to it (- I like the 5.20am edition although I confess I often listen on BBC Sounds rather than live) and write down my appreciated version in my sketchbook.
I like to whittle it down so that it no longer has the wind directions in nor wind speeds. I love the coastal stations and sea areas but like them in isolation from the rest of the forecast. I like to refine the forecast so much that it could be about my day, or week, or how someone’s year is going, or relationship, or parenting - anything.
I like to re-define it so that there is a hint of humour there amongst the familiar words and phrases. Reimagining it as my own prose or almost poetry. Words that could be used as measures for our emotional state rather than the oceans that surround us.
It is a concept that has been playing on my mind since 2020 and mid-pandemic I found myself listening to comforting voices on BBC Radio4. I played with ideas with the forecast then and then let it fall dormant.
In 2024 I heard Charlie Connelly speak - he is the author of Attention All Shipping - a book full of facts and his account of visiting each of the sea areas of the Shipping Forecast. I watched him do his talk ‘Attention all Shipping - A celebration of the Shipping Forecast’ in Shrewsbury - a major town in the largest landlocked county in England. The auditorium was packed. Charlie asked how many of us either lived by or worked on the sea… very few hands were raised… yet we were all drawn there by the pull of the Shipping Forecast. Nostalgia? Poetry? Comfort? Facts? Fascination? It almost doesn’t matter why people like it, but we do.
It galvanised my thought that it had appeal to more than just myself and so I resumed my exploration of it.
I made a tea towel initially with one of my versions of the forecast on it - and it was so popular at my Christmas Open studio event that this also encouraged me to play more with the topic.
And so I’ve been playing some more. This time really enjoying having a perfect focus for my love of lettering and have made a second tea towel design using the Sea Areas -
These are both available to purchase from my website (click here!) or The Artists’ Gallery and I’m enjoying creating works on paper, board and canvas for an exhibition that will be held at The Courtyard Theatre in Hereford from Friday 4th July until the 14th July. If you are a Shipping Forecast Fan too then I’d urge you to book to see Charlie Connelly talk at The Courtyard on Wednesday 9th July and see my exhibition there at the same time!