Sandra Harris Writes

  HAVE A VERY HAPPY HALLMARK CHRISTMAS… BY SANDRA HARRIS. © ‘Hallmark Channel  is an American  cable television network owned by  Hallmark Media, a subsidiary of Hallmark Cards. The channel broadcasts family-oriented general entertainment programming, including television series and made-for-TV-movies.’ WIKIPEDIA. Hallmark specializes in movies about single women who find love at Christmas, or families who reunite at Christmas, or families of single women who reunite and find love at Christmas. For some folks, yes, mainly wimmin folks of a certain age, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a whole bunch of Hallmark Christmas Movies to curl up with on the coldest days. They don’t mind that the films are often quite similar to each other, conforming perfectly to a formula that nearly always hits the jackpot, or that some other, bitter folks have dismissed the whole genre of Hallmark Christmas Movies as a cheesy bull-shitty money-spinner. It’s true t...

DUBLIN’S BURNING… BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I want to tell you about the day I had yesterday, the twenty-third of November, 2023. It was Thanksgiving, and I was thinking about all my American Facebook friends and hoping they were all having a great day, although computer trouble prevented me from going online to wish them many happy returns of the day in person, worse luck. I had an appointment in Smithfield, one of my favourite areas of Dublin, and at about half past three, I’m strolling happily homewards along the quays when I get a text from my daughter, who’s at home for the day with her brother. There’s been a mass stabbing outside a school on Parnell Square in town, at the top of Dublin’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street.   A man whom we later learn is Algerian and in his fifties has stabbed three children under ten and a teacher who came to their aid. Then he was brought down himself by a very brave passerby, a Brazilian Deliveroo driver who whipped off his helmet and w...

THE ONE WHERE CHANDLER CHECKS OUT…                                                              BY SANDRA HARRIS. © I never got around to writing something about the FRIENDS’ Reunion in 2021. Ah shure, I’ll write something next time they’re in the news, I said to myself. Sadly, the next time the cast of FRIENDS made the news headlines was just last weekend when Matthew Perry, aka Chandler Bing, one of the most popular cast members, was found dead in the hot tub/jacuzzi of his six-million-dollar California home. There was no-one else on the property at the time and any autopsies have so far proven inconclusive. That’s so sad. But just look at Robin Williams, one of the world’s funniest comedians on the outside, and on the inside he suffered like crazy and eventually took his own life because he couldn’t go on. I’m not saying that...

SAYING GOODBYE TO A CHERISHED HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCE. BY SANDRA HARRIS. © Well, well. A minute’s silence, if you would be so kind, for my gas cooker of twenty-three years standing. I’d had it longer than I’ve had my son, is one way of putting it. That’s right, the Appliance formerly known as ‘Cookie’ has finally given up the ghost and gone up to that big old scrapyard in the sky where old appliances go to die.  After years of me coaxing, cajoling, threatening and bribing him (we treat our appliances as part of the family and anthropomorphise them to the extent of imbuing them with genders) to keep going despite his encroaching old age, it’s all over. We’ve had a new cooker installed and made ready to use, by three gas fitters who were just about the surliest tradesmen I’ve ever dealt with. They were arguing amongst themselves even as their van was pulling into our yard, and they kept up the low-key grumbling and bitching the whole time they were in my kitchen, working away. It was act...

  More Things in Heaven and Earth . . . By Sandra Harris. © This memory always comes back to me when the nights are drawing in and the smell of coal fires fills the air. Eight winters ago, on a bright, cold Saturday afternoon, I sat down for coffee and a chat with some friends in a little caf é in Dublin 2. A few doors down, my two children, Reuben, ten years old at the time, and my adult daughter Lisa, were swapping Pokemon cards and gamers' gossip with a friend of Lisa's in a coffee-shop. A couple of hours later, about 5pm, I looked up from my coffee and saw my children and their friend, a young male in his twenties, file past the café window one by one. Reuben first, bouncing along happily, fuelled by ADHD and the once-weekly Coca-Cola, then Lisa, more sedately, then the friend. They didn't look in and wave, though, even though they knew where I'd be. “Oh, look, there go my kids,” I told my friends in surprise. “If they're heading home now, I suppose I...

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...