Sandra Harris Writes

LOVIN’ LOVE ISLAND: MY GUILTY PLEASURE. (2015- THE PRESENT DAY) ORIGINAL TELEVISION NETWORK: ITV2. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Well, I can’t be highbrow all the time, can I, watching subtitled black-and-white Eastern European films about the meaning of life and death? Sometimes, even an intellectual like myself likes to kick back of an evening and watch a bunch of girls falling out of their bikinis in an effort to attract the attention of a group of (mainly) dunder-headed blokes with washboard abs. I’ve only started watching it properly this summer, but I’m as hooked as a fish on a… well, on a hook, I guess. What’s it all about, anyway, Dougal? Well, Ted, it doesn’t really have a story as such, it’s just about football and that. Oh, you mean, what’s Love Island all about? Well, you see, Ted, it’s like this… It’s basically a British game-show about romance and dating, right, the only kind of game-show I could physically tolerate. It’s been going on for a few years now and it has somethi...

  IN PRAISE OF BACON, AND A GOOD DAY… BUT MOSTLY BACON. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Every now and then, you get a lovely day, don’t you? One that shuts your complaining trap for five minutes, lol, and makes you realise how lucky you actually are to be alive. Today was one such day. I had a nice walk in the sunshine with my son, who was off school for an appointment, which got cancelled and left us with some unexpected free time. I love it when that happens, when something just unexpectedly frees you up like that!   I took him for a haircut after we’d done our errands and shopping and such, and, while he was chatting away about football to his barber, I had a bizarre but highly enjoyable conversation with a total stranger, a college student who lives locally. It turns out that this young man, not a native Dubliner, hails from the same place where my mother’s family comes from. I named him all the places where my different aunties lived, he knew them all and furthermore informed...