Sandra Harris Writes

  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...

  MY JOURNALING JOURNEY: THE STORY SO FAR. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I started journaling in November 2020, without really knowing too much about it, because I really wanted to write words in a notebook with a pen again, after years of typing my work on my laptop. I actually had a real yearning for using a pen and paper again. So I found an unused notebook in a local second-hand bookshop that I liked the look of, and bought it for this exact purpose. I didn't realise at first that the journal was part of a series by a lady called Keri Smith, entitled WRECK THIS JOURNAL. The idea is that you find inner freedom and creativity by following the journal's prompts to do mad things to it, like rolling it down a hill, bringing it into the shower with you, poking holes in it with a pencil and even punching the pages, after first dipping your fist in something. Sweet Jesus. I knew I'd do none of these things to the poor, poor journal. I'd write things in it and carry it around ...

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...