Often, I find myself washing-up late at night. I quite enjoy it, with no-one around and Radio 4 playing in the background. I particularly like it after midnight when the shipping forecast is aired.

I’ve always been fascinated by the sea and ships and find it wonderful to be able to listen to warnings of gales, squally showers and occasional rain for vessels far out at sea while at home in my kitchen, my feet firmly on dry land.

I love the descriptions: fog patches becoming moderate or poor; wind for a time; veering north or north-west; rough; very rough. The worse the forecast, the luckier I feel to be stuck at my sink.

Listeners, I am sure, like to hear about approaching storms – I know I do. The worse the approaching weather system, the more we lap it up. Of course we feel for the vessels battling hurricane force winds and poor visibility, but we are cosied up at home sipping hot chocolate.

Making complete sense to those at sea, some expressions are a complete mystery to the rest of us. I always wonder what is the difference between air pressure ‘falling slowly’ and ‘falling more slowly’. How big a gulf is that little word ‘more’? Does it mean your ship could be sucked into a maelstrom any second? How soon is ‘soon’, and how late is ‘later’? My favourite unfathomable expression has to be falling ‘rather quickly’.

In my early teens I used to know the forecast’s carved up zones of water off by heart: Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger... it’s as soothing as a lullaby, and as a child I regularly fell asleep to it, although that’s probably more to do with the time of night I had illicitly stayed awake until.

I like the idea of the unmanned automatic light vessels, Sandettie, Greenwich, and Channel, bobbing about on their own out at sea. Sandettie? North of Calais and east of the Strait of Dover. It’s a geography lesson.

I love the forecast as it combines my two passions – the sea and the weather. For years we holidayed by the sea and I loved to sit and watch the ocean at night.

Sadly, a long-held ambition to be a meteorologist failed due to mathematical incompetence, and I resorted to journalism instead.

Now you can listen to the shipping forecast at any time; YouTube is awash with recitations of the shipping forecast, read by the likes of Stephen Fry and Alan Bennett.

As a relaxation tool it can only be topped by it’s ultra-soporific Radio 4 shipmate, Sailing By.