Ben Lowry: The prospect of shortening days in Northern Ireland seems not so bad this year amidst such fine weather

(scroll down to link for this week’s main column by Ben Lowry on the Titan sub)

And it came just as a three-week spell of stunning weather was coming to a close. It seems almost symbolic of this at first imperceptible seasonal downturn, in terms of diminishing daylight, that the weather in Belfast is forecast to be wet for five of the next seven days. Yet this year it has not bothered me as much as it has in past years. The length of the days seems to matter less when you get a proper summer, something that is traditionally unlikely in Northern Ireland. In a miserable summer (I still remember 2001 as such) then it is possible to get an unwelcome foretaste of autumn as early as a bad, damp July day. In hot climates it doesn’t matter: I never have a sense of autumnal gloom when I am in Spain in October, which is my favourite month to be there – it is still hot, but not intolerably so, and still sunny every day.

On Friday eight days ago there was a slight break in the NI hot spell and it was for a while grey, wet and notably cooler than it had been. Having spent much of a fortnight working from a room that I struggled to keep cool, by closing the blinds etc, I felt near relief. When I was younger I would laughed at such an absurdity – of almost wanting a spell of good NI weather to end.

In the picture above, a crowd can be seen listening to the red haired US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland Joseph Kennedy III joke about the danger of getting sunburnt if he stayed outside too long in NI in such conditions. He was speaking in glorious weather at the US Consul general's residence in south Belfast on Thursday, a day after the peak in the calendar, at an early celebration of American Independence Day.

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor

Ben Lowry main article: Some of Titan sub dead were billionaires yet we only felt for their humanity