Ben Lowry: Autumn in Northern Ireland always seems to begin in late August

A difference between Northern Ireland and the south of England, where I lived in the late 1990s, is that autumn comes earlier here.

Since I was a child, autumn has always seemed to come at the end of August. In the far south of the UK mainland, it seems to arrive a month later, at end of September.

placeholder image — People sit on deckchairs among brown leaves fallen from the trees in St James' Park in London last week. But while Northern Ireland is often autumnal in late August, the south of England can be warm and sunny until the end of September. Photo by Susannah Ireland / AFP

In the province, you might be lucky and get a sunny start to September. In southern England, you might be lucky and get a sunny start to October.

I was reminded of all this on August 18, when I was up early to drive someone to the airport. It was a grey morning when I stepped out to my car in a t-shirt, and I felt a blast of chilly air. I had that horrible sense of summer being almost over.

When I was younger I thought that I would spend six months in the southern hemisphere if I was independently wealthy.

Come September I would be heading for the warm waters of Australia or some such location, as that part of the world headed into spring. On a visit to Glenveagh National Park in Donegal as a young man I was struck by the fact that just such a rich man, the former owner and tycoon, Henry McIlhenny, spent six months there in summer and the rest of the year in America. I now think that dividing your life up evenly in that way would lead to a rootless existence.

Instead, I would head off to Australia/New Zealand for a month, some time after Remembrance Day, when summer is arriving there, returning to NI after that blast of sunshine for Christmas, and having had enough rays to propel me into January, when the light here is returning.

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