Sandra Harris Writes

  MISSING YOU ALREADY, STRICTLY! BY SANDRA HARRIS. © STRICTLY COME DANCING held its twentieth final the other night, and peel my tangerines if it wasn’t a total glamour-fest! My kids and I have been watching it for about twelve or thirteen years now and it’s been the highlight of our winter televisual viewing season ever since. This year they celebrated their twentieth anniversary and this added an extra element of nostalgia and excitement to the whole thing. Back in the days of X FACTOR, when the two shows would clash on rival stations, we’d have to make do with watching STRICTLY during the breaks of Simon Cowell’s massive brainchild (that’s kind of an odd image, isn’t it?) , but, with the demise of X FACTOR, it’s been STRICTLY all the way ever since on a Saturday night. It's a dancing talent competition show with ‘celebrities’ as the contestants, as opposed to the ‘ordinary’ folks utilised in regular talent shows. I put ‘celebrities’ in inverted commas because, sometimes,...

  WORLD AIDS DAY: LOOKING BACK ON THE START OF HIV AND AIDS IN IRELAND. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Sunday the first of December was World AIDS Day, and our national broadcaster aired a programme a few days earlier to mark it: MEMORIAL: HIV AND AIDS IN IRELAND. A physical memorial to all the Irish people who died of AIDS stands now in the Phoenix Park, a gorgeous sculpture using the little red AIDS support ribbon people wear on their lapels as inspiration for its shape. I haven’t been out to visit it yet myself, but I hope there are seats provided so that people who want to reflect about times gone by and people who’ve passed can do so in peace, tranquility and comfort.   I was only a young one myself when AIDS first began to be talked about and noticed in America. That first little headline from 1981 in an American newspaper, RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS, was something I had no clue of until much later. Young gay men began to present to doctors in their droves with the ...