Ben Lowry: Anniversary happiness and glorious June weather too

Not only have there been two fine celebrations, back to back (the Northern Ireland centenary, then Queen’s Jubilee), but the weather has been good.
By Ben Lowry
Published 8th Jun 2022, 18:44 BST
Updated 14th Jun 2022, 07:21 BST
The award winning chef, Jean-Christophe Novelli, who has a restaurant in Belfast, with Prince Edward on the pier in Bangor, Co Down on Saturday June 4. It was almost perfect early summer weather across Northern Ireland that day of Queen's Platinum jubilee celebrations. Photo by Stephen Hamilton / Press EyeThe award winning chef, Jean-Christophe Novelli, who has a restaurant in Belfast, with Prince Edward on the pier in Bangor, Co Down on Saturday June 4. It was almost perfect early summer weather across Northern Ireland that day of Queen's Platinum jubilee celebrations. Photo by Stephen Hamilton / Press Eye
The award winning chef, Jean-Christophe Novelli, who has a restaurant in Belfast, with Prince Edward on the pier in Bangor, Co Down on Saturday June 4. It was almost perfect early summer weather across Northern Ireland that day of Queen's Platinum jubilee celebrations. Photo by Stephen Hamilton / Press Eye

The forecast on Saturday, when the royal festivities were at their height, was for undiluted sunshine across the Province (but rain in parts of England).

I hoped it would turn out to be accurate and suspected it would be so, given the unanimity of the online weather charts for various towns and cities in NI on Saturday.

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And sure enough it does seem to have been accurate, having been cloudless in both Belfast and Bangor when I was there to follow the royal visit (will our already good forecasts one day become so accurate as to be like something from a sci fi film? ‘At 11.59am it will rain in your location for three minutes and 22 seconds,’ etc),

Dry, warm, sunny weather in June in a place as lush as Ulster is almost the perfect combination of climate and vegetation. Everything is now in full bloom, having been propelled in its growth by our liberal supplies of precipitation.

The glorious days are almost surreal in their length (I was once in Iceland in June, where it never gets dark, and there was something almost spooky looking out to the still sea in the middle of the night in full daylight).

Here in Northern Ireland in early June the days are already super long and yet have almost another three weeks before they peak.

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I remember clearly as a young child going to bed in daylight and having a sense of missing out on something because of the sound of voices outside and people living their lives as if it was daytime.

Soon the light will turn, and my optimistic thoughts will do so too, but for now I am savouring this spell of anniversary happiness and life affirming seasonal early summer joy.

Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor

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Related topics:Ben LowryBelfastNorthern IrelandQueenProvince