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ON KEEPING A DIARY... BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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  ON KEEPING A DIARY. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © People have been keeping diaries since the dawn of time, every since the first caveman chiselled a likeness of the first woolly mammoth onto a nice blank chunk of cave wall. It’s human nature to want to record things, to want to say I was here and yes, I mattered, I had an effect on things, I was somehow important.   I’ve taken to reading other people’s diaries a lot lately, by which I mean people’s published diaries. No, I haven’t been rootling through the coats and bags of friends and family and reading their secrets, haha, interesting as that might be. I read published diaries out of curiosity, to see what folks’ lives were like back in the day, what people thought about, what mattered to them and whether the same things matter to us now, whether we liked or disliked the same things and so on. Diaries are often the main or even the only way we have of finding out what a particular period in history was really like. Take all the diaries and j
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I'M NOT A HOARDER, DEAR; I'M A COLLECTOR...! BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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I’M NOT A HOARDER, DEAR; I’M A COLLECTOR…! BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I’ve been watching a load of programmes about hoarders on YouTube lately, purely in the interests of research, you understand, and not just because I’m procrastinating and putting off writing things. I found the programmes wholly fascinating, anyway, and I wanted to share some of my observations with you and see what you thought. Firstly, it’s kind of like car crash TV, isn’t it? What you’re looking at is truly awful and disturbing, but you can’t look away. What’s more, you don’t want to look away, because what you’re watching is so compulsive. Addictive, even. I could no more skip or miss the outcome of a particular hoarding show than I could eat a banana without gagging at the squishy brown bits. Also, if you’re in any way inclined to hold onto too much shit yourself (books, ahem, my own personal downfall! Oh, and Victorian dolls…) , these shows make you feel better about your own hoarding habits. I never know if
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WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR WRITING IDEAS FROM? BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR WRITING IDEAS FROM? BY SANDRA HARRIS. © People who know I’m a writer are always asking me where I get my ideas from. You can find inspiration literally anywhere in life, I tell them. Look around you in the house; pick up an ornament and make up a story about it, or write a non-fiction piece about its origins, if you know them. Read books, watch films, study paintings or listen to music. Better yet, get out of the house altogether and go for a walk.  It’s better than a book of writing prompts. You’ll see ideas around you wherever you look. People always look a bit dubious when I say that. A walk? Really? Just walking around and observing things and people? They probably wouldn’t believe me if I added that, if walking around the place observing and inter-acting with people were a job that you got paid for, I’d do it in a flash. And, just to prove my point about how rich and fruitful our local neighbourhoods can be as a source of inspiration and ideas for our
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HAVE A VERY HAPPY HALLMARK CHRISTMAS...! BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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  HAVE A VERY HAPPY HALLMARK CHRISTMAS… BY SANDRA HARRIS. © ‘Hallmark Channel  is an American  cable television network owned by  Hallmark Media, a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards. The channel broadcasts family-oriented general entertainment programming, including television series and made-for-TV-movies.’ WIKIPEDIA. Hallmark specializes in movies about single women who find love at Christmas, or families who reunite at Christmas, or families of single women who reunite and find love at Christmas. For some folks, yes, mainly wimmin folks of a certain age, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a whole bunch of Hallmark Christmas Movies to curl up with on the coldest days. They don’t mind that the films are often quite similar to each other, conforming perfectly to a formula that nearly always hits the jackpot, or that some other, bitter folks have dismissed the whole genre of Hallmark Christmas Movies as a cheesy bull-shitty money-spinner. It’s true that the Christmas films
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DUBLIN'S BURNING... BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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DUBLIN’S BURNING… BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I want to tell you about the day I had yesterday, the twenty-third of November, 2023. It was Thanksgiving, and I was thinking about all my American Facebook friends and hoping they were all having a great day, although computer trouble prevented me from going online to wish them many happy returns of the day in person, worse luck. I had an appointment in Smithfield, one of my favourite areas of Dublin, and at about half past three, I’m strolling happily homewards along the quays when I get a text from my daughter, who’s at home for the day with her brother. There’s been a mass stabbing outside a school on Parnell Square in town, at the top of Dublin’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street.   A man whom we later learn is Algerian and in his fifties has stabbed three children under ten and a teacher who came to their aid. Then he was brought down himself by a very brave passerby, a Brazilian Deliveroo driver who whipped off his helmet and whack
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THE ONE WHERE CHANDLER CHECKS OUT... BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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THE ONE WHERE CHANDLER CHECKS OUT…                                                              BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I never got around to writing something about the FRIENDS’ Reunion in 2021. Ah shure, I’ll write something next time they’re in the news, I said to myself. Sadly, the next time the cast of FRIENDS made the news headlines was just last weekend when Matthew Perry, aka Chandler Bing, one of the most popular cast members, was found dead in the hot tub/jacuzzi of his six-million-dollar California home. There was no-one else on the property at the time and any autopsies have so far proven inconclusive. That’s so sad. But just look at Robin Williams, one of the world’s funniest comedians on the outside, and on the inside he suffered like crazy and eventually took his own life because he couldn’t go on. I’m not saying that poor Matthew Perry has gone down the same route. That hasn’t been proven yet at all. I’m probably just saying that it’s often the jokers and the wits a
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HOW TO SAY GOODBYE TO A CHERISHED HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCE. BY SANDRA HARRIS.

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SAYING GOODBYE TO A CHERISHED HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCE. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Well, well. A minute’s silence, if you would be so kind, for my gas cooker of twenty-three years standing. I’d had it longer than I’ve had my son, is one way of putting it. That’s right, the Appliance formerly known as ‘Cookie’ has finally given up the ghost and gone up to that big old scrapyard in the sky where old appliances go to die.  After years of me coaxing, cajoling, threatening and bribing him (we treat our appliances as part of the family and anthropomorphise them to the extent of imbuing them with genders) to keep going despite his encroaching old age, it’s all over. We’ve had a new cooker installed and made ready to use, by three gas fitters who were just about the surliest tradesmen I’ve ever dealt with. They were arguing amongst themselves even as their van was pulling into our yard, and they kept up the low-key grumbling and bitching the whole time they were in my kitchen, working away. It was actuall
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