Sandra Harris Writes

NO SEX PLEASE, WE’RE… TRAUMATISED…? BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Last year, Ann Summers Ireland Ltd. reduced the number of shops it operates in Ireland from three to two. Also last year, sales from the Irish arm of this UK company’s adult sex toys and lingerie retailers nose-dived by a whopping forty-five percent, from 3.34 million euros to 1.82 million. So, what gives? Are the Irish having less sex and, if so, why? Well, there might be a couple of theories to explain this extraordinary state of affairs. For one, it might have had its roots in the COVID-19 pandemic, which was well underway by this time five years ago. Can you even believe it’s been five years? It’s mad how fast time flies. During this pandemic, if you were lucky enough to live with your spouse or significant other, you could have as much sex as you liked, because you weren’t required to socially distance or isolate yourself from people you lived with, unless you or they actually contracted the virus. In fact, people pro...

COVID-19, FIVE YEARS ON. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Was it really five years ago today that our government announced the closure of all schools for two weeks because a virus called COVID-19, also known as the coronavirus, had travelled here from China? It was better to be safe than sorry, we were told, little knowing that the two weeks off school would turn into five and a half months and that those months in lockdown would turn out to be some of the strangest and most surreal and bizarre we’d ever experienced as a country.   I remember where I was when the school closures were announced. In a record shop, looking at CDs. I was convinced, I suppose, like many other people, that it would be a storm in a teacup and over before we knew it. Boy, was my face red. The school closure thing turned out to be a blessing in disguise. My son, still coming to terms with an autism diagnosis, wasn’t having an easy time of it in school and the break was a huge relief to both himself and myself....

TWENTY-ONE THINGS I’LL MISS ABOUT THE LOCKDOWNS. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Okay, so is that it, then? Two solid years of living in fear, wearing masks to cover our faces, sanitising the top layers of skin off our hands and poking people with a two-metre stick to make sure they didn’t breach our personal defences (or was that last bit just me, lol?) , and now suddenly it’s all over? Throw away your masks and your hand sanitisers and safety signs, and roll around in a big ball of humanity licking people all of a sudden? Okay, fair enough, the global coronavirus pandemic may be approaching end-game, but there are certain things about the various lockdowns- here in Ireland, we had three main ones- that will always make me feel nostalgic when I think about them. Note, by the way, that I’m not saying I’ll miss the pandemic that killed so many innocent people, every single one of them someone’s son, daughter, friend, sibling, parent or neighbour. It’s the lockdowns I’ll miss, and here are the...

  COFFEE-SHOP CONVERSATIONS. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I met a total stranger in a coffee-shop yesterday, as you do, and, as we were the only two people in the place besides the staff, we chatted for well over an hour about… guess what? That’s right, the pandemic, lol. Shure, what else do Irish people have to talk about these days besides the blessed pandemic, unless it’s climate change, which is making our Irish weather even more unpredictable lately, or giving out about England for causing Brexit, which is causing our package deliveries from the UK to be delayed because the stuff we’ve ordered is all sitting in containers at Customs or on lorries somewhere in Eng-er-land? Ahem. No offence, Britain…! The pandemic, Brexit and climate change-slash-the weather, that’s all we Irish have to talk about nowadays. Isn’t it shocking? Still, at least we haven’t yet lost the art of conversation, as evidenced by my lovely chat with Maura yesterday. She told me how she’d come into the area...

  C'MON DUBLIN... CLEAN UP YOUR ACT! BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Don't get me wrong. I love Dublin. I love it more than anywhere else in the world. I can't ever imagine wanting to live somewhere different. It's the exact right city for me. But we're a year into the Covid-19 pandemic now, and there are a few things about our glorious capital that are niggling at me. School's back- for now!- and so yesterday, after doing my usual Mammy-errands, I decided to go for a walk, just for the sake of it. Not to go anywhere in particular or buy anything, but because I thought it would be 'nice' just to reconnect with my gorgeous neighbourhood. My wander took me into the area of Dublin known as the Liberties and, then, on up the hill to Christchurch and the surrounding environs. The first thing I noticed was that the streets are destroyed with dog muck. It's everywhere. If you took five steps with your eyes shut, you'd be nearly guaranteed to walk into a bi...

  THE TOP TEN THINGS ANNOYING ME ABOUT LOCKDOWN RIGHT NOW! BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Firstly, it's probably the fact that I currently have so little to write about due to being in lockdown that I end up writing posts like this, lol. My favourite shops and restaurants are closed, so I can't entertain myself by going there. Cinemas and libraries, ditto. Both my kids' birthdays are in January, and they'll have to celebrate them both at home and not by going out for dinner somewhere, like we'd usually do, and there's nothing we can do about it besides low-level grumbling. Grumble, grumble, grumble... Why are they still showing footage of people being swabbed for Covid and now vaccinated for Covid on the news? I'm sick to the back teeth. if you'll excuse the pun, of seeing those deadly swab sticks or whatever they are going up peoples' noses and throats WHILE I'M TRYING TO EAT MY GODDAMN DINNER. It's so off-putting. And now they...

CHEERIO, SECOND LOCKDOWN... HELLO, CHRISTMAS! SANDRA HARRIS. © I'm guessing I wasn't the only Dublin person who woke up yesterday on the first of December and felt a huge sense of relief, as if a great weight was being lifted off me and chucked away. It was the day we Irish folks exited our second national lockdown, six weeks of doom and gloom unalleviated by even a flicker of hope and beset by worries over the approaching festive season. It was a strange creature, that Second Lockdown. While I'm not suggesting for a second that the first COVID-19 lockdown earlier in the year was fun or enjoyable, there were aspects of it that were. Spending extra time with loved ones, getting to properly re-watch your DVD collection or re-reading your best-loved books, your kids not getting in trouble at school because there was no school, that type of thing. This Second Lockdown, as I've suggested, was a horse of a different colour altogether. The kids still had to go to school, the...

  WHY NO LOCKDOWN CAN CANCEL MY HALLOWEEN. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © 'Foul feet smell something horrible...' 'I must think of a brick wall...' There's been a lot of talk this year regarding the 'cancellation' of festivals like Halloween and Christmas. True, the Paddy's Day parade and festival back in March were physically cancelled due to COVID-19, but no-one was banned from getting stinking drunk in the privacy of their own home in honour of our national saint and watching cheesy 'Oirish' films like Darby O'Gill and the Little People and War of the Buttons till their eyes went square . That's what I'm saying. Any number of physical events can be, and have been, prohibited in the national interest, but no amount of legislation or lockdowns can cancel a feast day itself, or the good feeling it habitually engenders. Halloween in particular is not just one calendar day. It's a feeling that you keep in your heart all year ro...

HERE WE GO AGAIN... ANOTHER LOCKDOWN! OPINION PIECE BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Today was the most depressed I've felt in a while, and this has been by anyone's standards a pretty depressing year. It's because tomorrow Ireland goes back into national lockdown for six weeks, courtesy once more of our friend the global pandemic, caused by COVID-19, alias the coronavirus, the only international killer that's not wanted in countries all over the world. I came up with that last bit of witticism myself, so don't you journalists out there go stealing it, now. Anyway, even though we've been living with certain restrictions for months now and have adapted to them somewhat, it's going to be a real wrench watching our favourite shops and restaurants having to close again till December. They'll be losing some of the biggest weeks of the year, shopping-wise-and-footfall-wise, and the three and a half weeks they'll be allowed to open in December probably won't b...