The Shipping Forecast

Tyne - Part 6

Winter, and the gale's rage long gone, frosty glass in ill-fitting windows and still the air, silence lying thick in alleys and pathways 'tween darkened stone houses. Bright night, starry night, children slumber under cover and blanket, cat in the corner and dog under bed. Dripping melt and fall of snow from branches; the music of the season plays its soft tune across houses and fields, clifftops and beaches, wild country lanes and silent, star dappled, somnolent sea.

Restless in his sleep, the fishermen who tosses and turns while a'fear for his kin, one ear listening for the sound of peril, t'other soothed by the murmur of a mermaids dream in pools of glistening silver, sunlight dappled and winter bright.

Here the inn-keep, care free in slumber, his troubles dispersed in deliverance of his son from a brig wrecked in the Bay.

Here too the maiden fair, alone in the dark but present with her love, hand in hand and skipping 'cross fields of blossom yellow, smiling into her pillow with the memory of a love a-known.

See also the 'prentice, curled up in the loft and shivering in his shift, penny poor, honest and true, but warm with the knowledge he basks in the sun of another's dreams.

There the harbour master sits at his desk, writing his memories into words, capturing for no-one but himself the history of a life before his memory loses it for him, while the candle gutters and sleep cannot be found.

There lies the town, nurtured by the harbour that beats heart-like and lifeblood to its cause, its people reposing in hope of a day more fortune than the last.