Sandra Harris Writes

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....

  IT COMES TO US ALL… BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I recently discovered that a man I knew slightly but really liked and was looking forward to getting to know better- we’ll call him Dave- had died, just two days after I last saw him. I did that thing that pretty much everyone does when they hear that someone they know has died. I said to the person imparting the news: Oh, but how can he be gone? I’d only just seen him and talked to him two days earlier…! As if that could somehow make someone immune from death. I was stunned at the news and really, really sad at the loss to the world of such a decent, gentle kind-hearted soul, someone who adored animals and wildlife, music and poetry (he’d written countless poems himself) and chatting to people and having a laugh. He’d been cut down in his prime as well, having not even reached his fiftieth birthday. I’ll say it again, it just made me so sad, thinking about how he might have had plans left undone and wishes and dreams left unfulfill...

LET’S HAVE A HALLOWEEN CATCH-UP! BY SANDRA HARRIS. © It seems like ages since I wrote anything personal so I thought a dreary Monday afternoon in the run-up to Halloween might be a good time for a chat. Speaking of Halloween, I’ve officially decided that it’s my favourite festival of the year, even more so than Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas and I’ve had some magical festive seasons, but I’m fed up with the terrible commercialisation of Christmas. The pressure to spend money on certain things is ridiculous. In previous years, I’ve given in to it like a turkey to the slaughter, but no more! No more tubs of feckin’ Celebrations, Cadbury’s Roses, Miniature Heroes and Quality Street that will be still sitting there in the cupboard in March. No more chocolate-covered toffees, sexy-delicious as they are, and no more of the boxes of jellies, fudge or liquorice sweets with the smiling Santa on the box, because, you know, our teeth, lol.  And in what universe would ...

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...

  WHEN PETS PASS AWAY… BY SANDRA HARRIS. © You’ll notice I didn’t title this piece COPING WITH THE PASSING OF A PET. I could no more tell you how to do that than I could advise you on stocks and shares. I can’t even bring myself to use the ‘D’ word in reference to the demise of a pet. It’s a topic I find very emotional, so I figured maybe it was time I wrote about it and tried to make sense of it. My kids and I kept hamsters from October 2017 to   October 2022. During this time, we constantly had hamsters living with us in the house. The Last Ham passed away in October 2022, leaving us pet-less for the first time in five years. This was a horrible shock to the system, I can tell you. My daughter told us- my son and I- that she didn’t feel able to care for any more pets for a while, certainly that side of Christmas. As she’s the one who typically does all the grunt work for the little critters, we had to respect this. We were all devastated, though. A Christmas withou...

  MISSING YOU ALREADY, WORLD CUP 2022…! BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Aw. I feel bereft today. The 2022 World Cup ended yesterday, the eighteenth of December, and now all I have to look forward to is Christmas with its tons of great presents, the FATHER TED Christmas special on telly and more delicious grub than you could shake a stick at. As I said, aw…! The four weeks of exciting football and football excitement really took my mind off the pelting rain, the freezing cold, all the talk of future gas shortages and the sight of people on the News stocking up on little primus/camping stoves from the ‘outdoors’ and camping shops, just in case we’re facing into a new, Putin-led Armageddon. 2022 hasn’t exactly been the greatest year ever for good news, has it? It was the year Russia declared war on Ukraine, and we here in Ireland should know this because we’ve taken in about 65,000 Ukrainian refugees to date. We still have killer virus COVID-19 with us; I presume Monkeypox hasn’t gone awa...

  OUT NOW … (THE) QUEEN’S GREATEST HITS! BY SANDRA HARRIS.  © Wow. I literally never thought I’d see the day, but it’s finally happened. After a whopping ninety-six years on earth (it makes me dizzy just thinking about it) , Queen Elizabeth the Second of England passed away yesterday at ‘one of her favourite houses,’ Balmoral Castle in Scotland. I just want to say that, if I owned a castle in Scotland myself, it would probably be one of my own personal favourite homes. Well, that and the chateau in France and the Alpine chalet, naturally. Oh, and, of course, the Spanish villa. But no matter, never mind my bitterness, that’s not what we’re here to discuss today. Today is the day after the day that the Queen slipped quietly away into the afterlife to be with her husband, of whom more later. For now, all we want to do is have a look at her greatest accomplishments, victories and triumphs. We’ll call them (The) QUEEN’S GREATEST HITS … 1.       In...

  HOW I SPENT MY SUMMER VACATION. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © This is the time of year when school kids are traditionally required to pen the essay on what they did over their summer holidays. I myself had the best summer I’ve had in ages, not for any major, spectacular reasons but for a load of little bitty reasons, which are every bit as worthwhile. And I normally loathe summer too, for a myriad of reasons, which makes my enjoyment of this one all the more miraculous, and baffling. Here are some of the reasons why I normally hate summer; if I have to suffer through them, then you guys have to suffer through reading ‘em... 1.       I have goth leanings, and prefer to wear black and hibernate for the whole of the winter and much of spring. Summer is usually a horrible shock to the system. 2.       Summer makes my hair do a ‘Monica-from FRIENDS in the One Where the Gang go to Barbados.’ 3.       It also m...