Viv, Whitby is the place.  A picturesque fishing town on the North Yorkshire coast, famed for its associations with Dracula.  The whole of Britain has been unsettled in recent days, like a 22 year old having one last big adolescent sulk.
 
Can't explain the fax though.
 
For more, see http://www.durain.demon.co.uk/whitby.htm
 
Roddy
-----Original Message-----
From: Viv Kitson <[log in to unmask]>
To: Poetryetc <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 05 April 2000 12:32
Subject: Found poem?

When I came into the office this morning, there was a fax message hanging out of the machine date-marked 04/04/2000 23:02, but no sender in the header. It reads:
*
Well (I'll leave this in Times Roman). this was meant to be.
This is Whitby. I'm in an old pub on the banks of the harbour. The wind is battering at the window and tearing up the surface of the water. I know the sea outside is whipped up into a frenzy (I saw it today looking out toward the Holy Isle and Lindisfarne).
Imagine.
Or should I say
Remember
These stones have remembered it all.
They gossip with the wind.
*
Why am I - a resident of Sydney, Australia - receiving a mysterious message from Northumberland in the UK? I've looked up my maps of Great Britain to try to identify the "harbour". Is it Beal? From the map, there appears to be a causeway to Holy Island.
 
One of life's "little oddities"...perhaps I should join the rest of the family, who are downstairs watching the X-files on tv! To any UK members of the list: was the weather rough on the East coast on 4/4? Does anyone know a Whitby who turns his hand to verse? Is this his/her own work, or lines taken from a well-known poem?
 
Yours in bafflement,
Viv Kitson