Hiya. I've been reading up on the shipping forecast after an afternoon's waiting for a tedious visa related meeting with a Cuban colleague led to the mutual nostalgia for coastlines getting cracked out. I love the shipping forecast more than many other things. More than toast and jam, for instance, and more than going into the close in my old house on a hot day and it being all cool and quiet and tiled, however less than a cup of coffee in a small yellow cup that says "Koffie" on the side and less than finding very wee and sweet mangoes in the fruit shop beside the park.
As regards the shipping forecast: in 2002 they changed the name of Finisterre to FitzRoy in honour of the guy who founded the Met Office. I always liked Finisterre, along with Utsires North and South and Malin. Here's a Seamus Heaney poem called The Shipping Forecast for ya:
Dogger. Rockall. Malin, Irish Sea:
Green swift upsurges, North Atlantic flux
Conjured by that strong gale-warning voice.
Collapse into a sibilant penumbra.
Midnight and closedown. Sirens of the tundra,
Off eel-road, seal road, keel road, whale road, raise
Their wind-compounded keen behind the baize
And drive the trawlers to the lee of Wicklow.
L'Etoile, Le Guiliemot, La Belle Helene
Nursed their bright names this morning in the bay
That toiled like mortar. It was marvellous
And actual, I said out loud, 'A haven,'
The word deepening, clearing, like the sky
Elsewhere on Minches, Cromarty, The Faroes.
Things are a little melancholy around here, the wind is howling against the window and down below the sad dogs in the vet's yard are howling too, and somewhere in the distance a plane's taking off. Bogota feels very empty sometimes, when you know everyone you fancy talking to is in their bed and everyone else you fancy talking to is on the other side of the world and also in their bed. I chose it and i don't regret it but sometimes i wonder about going home because it'll never be the same as it was. Even the shipping forecast isn't the same anymore.
1 comment:
Beautiful post. I was actually searching for Carol Ann Duffy's "Prayer" poem, which I saw on the subway in London last week and it really hit me. In this age of Facebook and Farmville and American Idol, that moment on the subway reminded me that I used to love poetry. Does anyone read it anymore?
Sorry to hear about FitzRoy: didn't they hear the magic in the name Finisterre? The end of the Earth? With all due respect to Mr. Fitzroy, and I'm sure he was a lovely man, it's not the same.
I'm a Cuban man living in Miami, you're a Scottish lass (I presume) living in Bogotá, and somehow a poem on a subway in London brought us together by way of something called Google.
Sometimes I hate the Internet, but sometimes it's pretty cool.
Keep up the great writing!
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