Ben Lowry: Dark days in Northern Ireland at this point in the calendar but there has been uplifting sunshine

In Northern Ireland that means 17 hours of darkness and only seven hours of daylight. That can make it a gloomy time, albeit greatly lifted by the festive spirit.

But an advantage of being so far north in December is the low angle of the sun on those days in which it actually appears, of which there are many. OK, it is sunny perhaps only one day in three in a place as cloudy as NI but, cumulatively, that is a lot of days. There were such fine days this past week. The sun, being so low, penetrates far into building interiors (unless it cannot rise above surrounding trees etc). In each house or flat in which I have lived there are points where the December sunlight comes in almost horizontally, lighting up rooms right to their back, better than in July, when the sun is too high to get so far inside.

This week in Bangor I saw twitchers excitedly photographing waxwing birds, which are over from Scandinavia. They have not been here for a while, I was told, and are here due to the cold spell.

It was almost minus 10 this week in Co Down, colder than it has been for two years. I do not recall a severe December cold snap since the record breaking 2010. Or am I missing another such year?

In 2010 we also had that beautiful, arctic combination of cold and sun.

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