Sandra Harris Writes

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

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