“The last broadcast of the Shipping Forecast at 0048 each day is traditionally preceded by the playing of “Sailing By”, a light orchestral piece by Ronald Binge. This is only very rarely omitted, generally when the schedule is running late. Though occasionally played in full, it is common for only a section of the piece to be broadcast; that section being the length required to fill the gap between the previous programme’s ending and the start of the forecast at precisely 0048.[14] “Sailing By” serves as an identification tool – it is distinctive and as such assists anyone attempting to tune in. The forecast is then followed by the national anthem “God Save the Queen” and the closedown of the station for the day, with the BBC World Service taking over the frequencies after the pips of the Greenwich Time Signal at 0100.” Wikipedia
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My darling insomniacs, you have made it to 00.48
Viking North Utsire South Utsire
Our father Vikings are silent, but the sea roars in our heads and calls us back through scandi noir, the love of bleakness and no-hopers, the first underdogs cowering in their mud against blades and muscles, those terrible Europeans –
our primal fears never leave us so now we have left them
cosying up with their fika, chocolate chaud, kannelbunnen, croissant, lebkuchen.Who would want to give up all this? only the British mongrel sea-dogs, biting their own tails
not to mention the hands that feed them,
they are still circling, snarling, a shit show as they say.
Slap their bums and send them home. It’s more than they deserve.
Forties Cromarty Forth Tyne
My blessed land of the flat language I have never seen you so angry, not since
the iron lady stole our hearts and buried them in the dark
can you remember that? Ask yer dad, mam, little one, you’re too young to be
so dirty, covered in remnants, revenants, life’s ashes taken from our own soil.
I think tomorrow we will see flags on the horizon and you will come and grace us.
Dogger Fisher German Bight
Humber Thames Dover Wight
So many songs. Our souls
follow the sirens and here they are, salted and raw
beached, sunk, drowned, shot or shut
into blank black nothingness as if the sea had taken them but it wasn’t the sea it was
you, shouting no mercy you have forgotten how to sing you have forgotten the feel of grass on your naked feet how the sun is, where you began
Portland Plymouth Biscay Trafalgar FitzRoy
I cry for you, but I miss the sinister sound of Finisterre –
the end of the earth. Are we there yet? I wonder how many times you asked this.
Did you think you had reached it, with the changes wrought had you done enough to doom us? But wonder is not a sin.
Are you weeping for me now?
Sole Lundy Fastnet Irish Sea Shannon Rockall
Malin Hebrides Bailey Fair Isle Faeroes Southeast Iceland
Other lands of my mothers fathers mothers, coming with nothing but hope.