Thoughts on a rainy day

In 2013, we took the decision to move to Belfast. My husband. Richard, had retired a few years earlier and was absorbed in improving his golf handicap, becoming a golf referee and taking his WSET (the global provider of wine & spirit qualifications) exams. We had been living in central Reading in a house we loved and from where my husband could walk to work in his head office, or travel easily to his firm’s offices in London and Cardiff. As a writer and broadcaster, I could work pretty much anywhere. We thought about moving to one of several lovely Thameside towns and villages, but never really got organised about it. Then, in January 2013, on a visit to Bordeaux, I had a bi-lateral rupture of my achilles tendons which led to a short stay in a Bordeaux hospital followed by a long (5 month) stay in a rehabilitation clinic, Chateau Lemoine. (I write about this in my blog ‘Tales from the Clinic’). The clinic was on a ridge overlooking the Garonne and the city of Bordeaux. One afternoon, as we sat enjoying the view in the late Spring sunshine, me in my wheelchair, my husband beside me on a bench, my husband said ‘Would you rather be here or in Reading?” Without missing a beat I said, “I’d rather be here.”
We spent a day thinking about moving to France, but as most of our friends and our relatives lived in ireland and England, we decided against it. Then Richard said, “What about Belfast?”
Richard is English. He has not a trace of Irish ancestry. But he loved Ireland and had enjoyed his visits to my friends and family there. I love Belfast. And I couldn't be accused of dragging him there. The decision was easily made.
I telephoned my brother who lived in Dublin. "We're moving to Belfast!"
"Have you thought about the climate?"  he said.
I remember this as I write in the rain. Belfast is wetter, greyer, colder than Dublin, and pretty much anywhere else in Ireland or the UK, except perhaps the West of Scotland. We can’t say we weren’t warned.
But apart from that, Belfast has much to recommend it. We like it. We like our home. We like the friendliness of Belfast. We like that we can see the hills from almost everywhere in the city. We like being close to the countryside and the sea lough.
As for the climate, when and while we can, we travel to where the sky is blue and the air is dry. Except when it rains.