What?
A symbol used to represent the sea state on the weather forecasts of parochial northern news programme Look North.

When?
1987 - 1988 

Why?
That simple little symbol just appealed to me. The word "slight" definitely had something to do with it too, adding something intangible to the whole effect.

What happened?
I don't remember exactly how Slight became an obsession, although I do recall that it was sometime during the summer of 1987. The symbol began to appear on our local news programme, Look North, during the weather forecast. There were three members of the Slight family, and, I have to say, the others - Medium and Rough -  meant nothing to me at all. All through that time, I only had eyes for Slight. As you can see from the picture on the left, the symbol comprised a cheery little boat bobbing around on an appropriately slightly rough sea. For the terminally hard-of-thinking, the word "Slight" was added to the pictogram.
I took to drawing the little boat on any available surface, and things began to get a little out of hand. The zenith (or nadir, depending on your point of view), of the obsession with Slight came during Christmas, 1987. At the time I was living with my parents, and, in common with many children, was railed into helping out with the perennially tedious task of writing out Christmas cards. To this day, doing this still does my head in, and at the time I'd take any opportunity to hijack the cards for my own amusement. So, when I got to write out one particular card, for our strait-laced middle class next door neighbours, I didn't sign it. Instead, under the little "Happy Christmas" message, I just scribbled in the Slight weather boat. Just to make sure they didn't miss the point, I wrote "Slight" in big letters underneath. Oh yeah, and on the envelope.
About three days after I popped it through their letterbox, the now slightly confused neighbours visited my parents, just to check I hadn't gone insane or something. As if. I wasn't privy to the meeting, but my sister Cassandra was.
"What does it mean?" they apparently said, in hushed tones - "As if they feared but also desired the answer", in the words of Cass. Naturally, my parents were totally unable to explain anything, and so the whole affair was smoothed over.
Not long after that (presumably coincidentally), Slight the weather boat vanished from our screens, to be replaced with the current "Slight", comprising a couple of frankly rather rubbish wavy lines.

When Will it End?
Slight burned out in a blaze of glory that Christmas. Following its disappearance from Yorkshire's television screens, it more or less faded away, although I still look back fondly on the memories. As a sort of tribute to Slight, Spanner very kindly made me a brilliant teeshirt with the eponymous symbol printed onto it. I now wear it to confuse people.

Loose Ends
The following loose ends still remain. If you can answer them, please contact me.