Storm Warning

Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire: southwesterly five or six veering westerly or northwesterly four or five; moderate or rough; showers; good.

The stormfront is in abeyance as he sits there eating his breakfast: fried bread, sausage, bacon, two fried eggs, black pudding, mushrooms. This diet will kill him before he’s sixty, but it’s too late to change now. Mum cleans the frying pan and goes back upstairs in her dressing gown. Here I am, back from the paper round, muddy slush on workboots. He sops up the egg yolk with the crusty golden fried bread. The radio on, BBC Shipping Forecast at 6.30 am

Forties, Cromarty Forth, Tyne, Northwest Dogger: southwesterly veering westerly or northwesterly five or six occasionally seven later; moderate or rough; showers; good, occasionally moderate.

He sips on his tea steaming hot, five sugars. Dead before sixty. Looks at me as I fuss with the Nescafé and kettle, condensation building on my chilled nylon parka in the kitchen fug. I chew on the fur lining of the hood. The plastic fur is mangy with anxiety.

“How is it that you left the kitchen light on all night then?” To the casual observer his manner would seem easygoing, casual. But those in the know are able to taste the undergrowl, the falling barometric pressure of resentment.

Southeast Dogger, Fisher: southwesterly five to seven, becoming cyclonic gale eight to storm ten for a time; rough or very rough; rain or squally showers; moderate or poor, occasionally good.

“It’s a fluorescent tube,” I say. “It costs more to switch it on one time than to run it continuously for twelve hours. We did that at school. There’s burglars operating in the neighbourhood, they said so down at the shop.”

I know this is heresy, but it is true. Galileo suffered for his truth, and then he pointed his finger at the sky and said: “And yet the moons of Jupiter move, as anyone can see.”

Me, with my Nescafé and steaming breath, with my nylon parka weeping dew, I am a Galileo of fluorescent lighting.

“Fuck yer lip,” he says, rising from the table.

German Bight: southwest six to gale eight, becoming cyclonic storm ten to hurricane force twelve for a time; rough or very rough becoming high; rain; moderate or poor.

“It don’t cost you nothin’!” I say, making my voice more London, more English, than it’s ever been. He hates the fact that his sons are English, talk like the English. He prays to the framed pictures of Hitler, of Che Guevara, of Moshe Dayan and Enoch Powell lining the kitchen walls that the English might come to respect him, but he squirms with hatred for them nonetheless.

“Fuck yer feckin’ lip,” he says and makes as if to strike. The navvy’s thick right arm goes back, the palm and those sausage fingers. Then it’s sprung forward like a trebuchet, swift clean inward arc.

Humber: cyclonic severe gale nine to violent storm eleven becoming southwest six to gale eight; rough or very rough; rain then squally showers; moderate or poor becoming good.

But a strange thing happens. I catch the wrist as it approaches my cheek. He's slow, too slow. It stops dead in the air an inch from my face. I can feel the heat surging off it, radiating across that space between the palm and my soft hairless cheek. His face contorts, what is this, but it’s true: his wrist is held fast. So amazed is he that he doesn’t even think to try the other hand. He’s out of practice with scrapping. I ain’t.

Thames, Dover: southwest storm ten or violent storm eleven, decreasing seven to severe gale nine; rough or very rough becoming very rough or high; high rain then slight showers; moderate or poor.

“Ye fuckin’ little bastard!” he says, and tries to yank back his right hand. It doesn’t move. A realization brews like a squall on the dark sea. I am as strong as him.

Wight, Portland, Plymouth: southwest severe gale nine to violent storm eleven, veering west seven to severe gale nine; very rough or high occasionally very high in Plymouth squally showers; moderate or poor, occasionally good.

Now he figures out the other hand. He lets loose with his left, but slow again, too slow. That hand is trapped too. My right foot goes behind his foot and trips him, he stumbles, down on his knees. My hands still on his wrists, still pinned tight. Thunder and lightning: he roars out a babble of rage, and I hear the steps of Mum and my brothers clattering down the stairs.

Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides Bailey: northwest six to gale eight very occasionally severe, gale nine in Shannon and Rockall; very rough or high squally showers; good, occasionally moderate.

What they see as they cluster in the kitchen doorway, illuminated by that merciless fluorescent light: a middle aged man, overweight, red with rage, frothing slightly at the corners of his mouth, kneeling on the floor, a kid in a parka standing over him, hands gripped over the thicker hairier wrists of his father.

Fair Isle, Faroes: cyclonic becoming northwest five to seven, decreasing four at times; rough or very rough showers; good, occasionally moderate.

His eyes flick towards the door and the aghast family bundled there. “Sure an’ I didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” he gasps. “No need for all this malarkey, like.” Fog and rising mists rolling in, the obscured tide.

Southeast Iceland: northerly five or six increasing seven to severe gale nine; rough or very rough; occasional rain; moderate or good, occasionally poor.

The wrists are released; the red-faced man rises with some difficulty. He stands there puffing, stormclouds of rage boiling in a tempestuous cyclone. And the clouds dissipate, they disappear: the huge dark pillars of thunderous wrath evaporate like nothing at all was ever there.

Mum edges into the kitchen to pick up the breakfast plate and its congealed fat and bacon rinds tough as sinews, pick up the drained teamug with its crystalline sludge of sugar at bottom, and put it all in the sink. She moves with grace between the ragged rocks like a clipper.

Dad straightens up with dignity and strides straightbacked out of the kitchen, up the stairs, in the upstairs bathroom to ponder his usurpation, to shit and brood, and to strain against his furred arteries with his swelling begrudgement and gall.

This Shipping Forecast narrated here by Alan Bennett

NOTE - The Shipping Forcast

Broadcast every single day for the last 101 years, the BBC Shipping forecast is arguably obsolete today in an era of online weather forecasts, but is one of the most popular broadcasts on BBC radio.

In the forecast, the waters around the British Isles are divided into 31 sea areas, also known as weather areas. A forecast for each individual sea area covers wind speed and direction, precipitation, and visibility.