Edited by Clive Hilton, Wednesday, 10 Mar 2010, 13:11
Now I'm not averse to words. Quite the contrary, I love 'em; I like what they can do. I like the way that words can conjure up whole words in my mind. I like novels; I like dictionaries; I even like cereal packets in the mornings. I need my fix of words. I like the spoken word too, which is why I generally go for Radio 4 in the morning. I like to hear John Humphries when he goes off on one, all bristly and cantakerous. It sets me up for the day. Until we get to the weather forecast.
So what is it with me, words and weather forecasts? On telly, it would seem that most female weather operatives are surreptitiously auditioning for a part in a daytime soap opera and most of their male colleagues believe that what they are really delivering is a monologue from Richard III.
Either way, instead of telling us what the weather is going to be for the day, I find myself having to absorb bits of meaningless guff along the lines that a particularly itinerant low front will be casually ambling up the Welsh Marches and probably making a bit of a nuisance of itself in the process before fizzling out over the Black Country to be replaced by a playfully hesitant high working its way in from the east before it too joins the spent ranks over Rockall. Uh?
Within 3-and-a-half seconds my mind has turned to mush and my eyes have glazed over in a sort of aural equivalent of the rabbit in the headlights phenomenon. When I've come to and pulled my face out of my cereal I find myself no wiser as to what the weather might be, so I revert to Plan B, which involves looking out of the window. Can it really be so difficult to say what the weather might actually be in terms not dreamt up by someone who writes get-outs in small print for a living?
As a matter of fact, it can be done, the delicious irony being that the Beeb did it rather well when they first put their mind to it about 300 years ago. As an example of GOOD DESIGN (LOLA! students, take note), ladies and gentlemen, I give you -
The shipping forecast.
If ever there was a better example of sublime economical word efficiency - maximum info, minimum fluff, maximum meaning - I've rarely come across it.
As Einstein had it, make it as simple as possible, but no simpler.
Dogger, Fisher, German Bight be blowed...
Now I'm not averse to words. Quite the contrary, I love 'em; I like what they can do. I like the way that words can conjure up whole words in my mind. I like novels; I like dictionaries; I even like cereal packets in the mornings. I need my fix of words. I like the spoken word too, which is why I generally go for Radio 4 in the morning. I like to hear John Humphries when he goes off on one, all bristly and cantakerous. It sets me up for the day. Until we get to the weather forecast.
So what is it with me, words and weather forecasts? On telly, it would seem that most female weather operatives are surreptitiously auditioning for a part in a daytime soap opera and most of their male colleagues believe that what they are really delivering is a monologue from Richard III.
Either way, instead of telling us what the weather is going to be for the day, I find myself having to absorb bits of meaningless guff along the lines that a particularly itinerant low front will be casually ambling up the Welsh Marches and probably making a bit of a nuisance of itself in the process before fizzling out over the Black Country to be replaced by a playfully hesitant high working its way in from the east before it too joins the spent ranks over Rockall. Uh?
Within 3-and-a-half seconds my mind has turned to mush and my eyes have glazed over in a sort of aural equivalent of the rabbit in the headlights phenomenon. When I've come to and pulled my face out of my cereal I find myself no wiser as to what the weather might be, so I revert to Plan B, which involves looking out of the window. Can it really be so difficult to say what the weather might actually be in terms not dreamt up by someone who writes get-outs in small print for a living?
As a matter of fact, it can be done, the delicious irony being that the Beeb did it rather well when they first put their mind to it about 300 years ago. As an example of GOOD DESIGN (LOLA! students, take note), ladies and gentlemen, I give you -
The shipping forecast.
If ever there was a better example of sublime economical word efficiency - maximum info, minimum fluff, maximum meaning - I've rarely come across it.
As Einstein had it, make it as simple as possible, but no simpler.