Ben Lowry: That melancholic moment in June when the days begin to get shorter again

(Click here to read Ben Lowry’s main article on Pat Cullen and her view on the IRA)

Gradually it will get darker and darker until the end of December.

It is a slightly melancholic moment in the year, and yet NI is likely to have mostly pleasant weather until the end of the summer, which is when the darker evenings will begin to become obvious.

People watch the sun rise at the Summer Solstice at Stonehenge in Wiltshire yesterday, Friday June 21, 2024. The solstice was actually the day before this year, on June 20, not the 21st, so the celebration in the photograph was taken at the nearest dawn after the solstice. The exact moment when the north pole was tilted closest to the sun was at 9.50pm on Thursday. Pic: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire

The summer solstice was actually on Thursday, June 20, not the 21st. The celebration in the photograph on the opposite page at Stonehenge was not taken on the solstice, but the nearest dawn after it. Here is a story I did at 10pm on the solstice, talking to people in bright daylight in Belfast on the solstice.

A rival newspaper once asked NI expats what they most missed about the province, and one of the most oft-cited answers was the super long June days. We get 40 minutes extra daylight even than London (sun sets here at 10.03pm, 9.21pm in the capital) and even it is well to the north of most of Europe and almost all of the United States.

I still remember as a child being told to go to bed when it was still light and you could hear people chirpily outside, talking and acting in ways that you associate with day not night. It seems we all have such memories, wherever in the world we end up. Most of the world’s population lives far closer to the equator so won’t have that experience.

• Ben Lowry (@BenLowry2) is News Letter editor