AND NOW FOR SANDRA HARRIS'S DIARY... BY SANDRA HARRIS.


 

AND NOW FOR SANDRA HARRIS’S DIARY…

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

One of the inescapable things about being a writer is the urge to unburden yourself of your doings, thoughts and feelings on a regular basis to your public, by which I mean the handful of people who might be kind enough to read your blog.

Enjoy my free unbosomings pertaining to the month of February of which we are, thankfully, about to take our leave. I hate February, and normally view it with the distaste which one might normally reserve for, say, a persistent itch on the sweaty underside of Satan’s ball-bag, or something equally odious. (And I’m not even gonna mention Valentine’s Day and the Bridget Jones’s Diary film series coming to an end forever.)

For one thing, the weather was diabolical, or Dia-bollock-le, if we keep with the theme of the Devil’s genitals. For about ten days, there wasn’t so much as a ray of sunshine. Now, I normally consider myself a Goth who lives only for the short, dark days of winter and the long, cosy nights in front of Netflix, but apparently even I, with my black eyeliner and cool range of old rusty-black band T-shirts, need sunshine and Vitamin D to thrive. I know, Seasonal Affective Disorder! It was a shock to me too. I hate summer, but I need sun to live. Waaaaaaaargh!

Next, the News is desperate every day. On an Irish level, we have a housing crisis (not enough houses!), a crisis in our health service (not enough hospital beds, amongst other things) and a crime epidemic that probably got going during the COVID-19 pandemic and has culminated in Dublin streets, in particular, not being safe to walk through whether it’s night or day. Knife crime is at a terrifying all-time high.

Even as I’m writing this, I’m reading that Irish television presenter Brendan Courtney was attacked on Dublin’s quays last night by two lads who jumped out of a passing car and set on him, knocking him to the ground and kicking him in the head. Now, I don’t watch anything of Brendan Courtney’s as it’s just not my thing (too mainstream), but no-one deserves something as horrific as that to happen to them. He was just walking home from a gig with a bag of chips. I hope the Guards find the perpetrators and throw away the key.

 It’s all too depressing to even think about. Nothing gets done about it. Nothing gets done about anything in this country anymore, it seems, except that our fat-cats keep getting fatter and richer and our poor keep getting poorer and it all just keeps going round and round and round in never-ending circles.

The international News isn’t much better. The wars in both Ukraine and Gaza are still ongoing. President Trump has a plan for Gaza that left other countries gobsmacked with its sheer, erm, vision and insight when they heard it, and he also might have a cunning plan for stopping Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine, but, don’t worry, it won’t involve bringing Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelenskyy to the negotiating table because that would be just, well, you know, stupid. Why would anyone even think of doing such a mad thing?

On a personal level, I’ve had to cut ties forever with a whole raft of family members this month, which was tougher than it sounds. I know that there are people out there who have lost family members and would give anything to have just one more day with them and I honestly wouldn’t disrespect those people for anything in the world, but not every family is The Waltons, sadly, and sometimes cutting ties is all you can do. After trying everything else first, of course. I tried to make certain relationships work for a long, long time and it was like trying to hold back the tide. I’m not happy about it, but I’m all out of options.

Anyway, onto more cheerful things, lol, like, erm, Andrew Tate. I’m being deeply ironic here, d’uh. Apparently, ‘social influencer’ Tate and his equally charming brother Tristan have been air-lifted out of Romania, where they were awaiting trial on charges of rape and sex trafficking of vulnerable women, and flown to America, the land of the free. The real surprise is that their release was seemingly at the behest of the Whitehouse… Strange. I wonder why anyone would want to affiliate themselves with these two charmers.

Also, legendary actor Gene Hackman and his wife and their dog have been found dead in their Hollywood home under peculiar circumstances. And, of all the many, many films he’s made, not one reporter deigned to mention that he’d starred in one of my favourite disaster films of all time, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE. I love that film. And I’m very sad for Gene and his wife and dog. I hope the cops get to the bottom of the matter.

By the way, as I write this, the television is on beside me, and Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are actually bollocking President Zelensky of Ukraine in the Oval Office for not being ‘grateful enough’ for the help he’s received from America and now Zelensky is storming out of the Whitehouse and President Trump is posting on Truth Social that ‘he can come back when he’s ready for peace…!’

It’s making me think of Marge Simpson wagging a finger at poor Bart/Zelensky and saying in her Marge voice, ‘you can come back when you’re ready to make peace, young man…!’ Some daft reporter even asked Zelensky before he left why he doesn’t ‘wear a suit.’ Wtf? He’s fighting a bloody war, that's why, not having tea with the Queen of England.

So, February, even down to the last few hours, was kind of a shit-show. One thing I’m happy about. I bought myself a new notebook (as a writer, that’s my porn, lol) yesterday to cheer myself up, a gorgeous Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory-themed notebook, in fact, and when I opened it up, guess what? There was a Golden Ticket inside! Guess things aren’t all bad…

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