Ben Lowry: Amid floods and grim January weather in Northern Ireland, there was a brief and welcome flash of spring this week
Tomorrow is the first day of spring, or so said the ancient Irish. I happen to agree with them.
(Click here to read Ben Lowry’s main column about Belfast city centre finally returning to life years after lockdown)
A fellow journalist asked me this week, after the storms: is January still one of my favourite months?
Yes, it is!
January is not my favourite month by any means, just one of the better ones. It can of course be soggy and grey and chilly and bleak. This week was a reminder of that.
This week was also a reminder of something else – hints of the end of winter, even when it is at its peak. On Wednesday there was a fair amount of sunshine, just after the wet conditions and winds of the previous day, sadly in some cases including flooding.
There is almost always a moment in January when you have a brief sense of spring, sometimes indeed quite early in the month. Just as there is often a grim moment in July, perhaps when it is unseasonably wet or slightly windy, when you get a (very unwelcome) flash of autumn, even though there is plenty of summer still to come (or is usually).
That first feeling of spring and renewal for me this year was the intermittent spells of sunshine on Wednesday, and it was an uplifting sense.
The awareness that for many months ahead, better and warmer and brighter weather is coming. A sense that I never have in those dark days of November.
Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor