Michael Harding: ‘Thank you for your love,’ I wrote to a friend. Then I tore it upI tried writing letters, but during lockdown they became too intense and sincereWed Mar 03 2021 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I wear a tie to Zoom meetings. It helps me play a role – myselfLike any good actor, I understand the importance of costumes and propsWed Feb 24 2021 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I have privatised my religious practiceMy only refuge is my father’s bookcase, decked with icons gathered over many yearsWed Feb 17 2021 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I judge a farmer’s character by how he treats his cattleMy late neighbour, Johnny, treated his livestock like petsWed Feb 10 2021 - 06:00
Michael Harding: How I ended up on a Zoom call with a psychotherapistShe was in an embarrassing fix: listening to nonsense from a stranger on the internetWed Feb 03 2021 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Just after Christmas, I began talking to the birdsI imagined myself like Saint Francis, a halo of little birds around me in a cloud of loveWed Jan 27 2021 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Talking to strangers. That’s what I missI ate my soup slowly, to prolong the conversation with the waitressWed Jan 20 2021 - 06:00
Michael Harding: The beloved woke up and I pretended I was doing yoga exercisesShe was curious why I was doing yoga in bed at that hour. I had no plausible answerWed Jan 13 2021 - 06:00
Michael Harding: The dead bee and the woman who lost her sonJanuary is a dangerous month for people inclined towards melancholyWed Jan 06 2021 - 06:00
Michael Harding: In January almost everything seems possibleI often wonder not just where Christmas has gone but where my entire life wentTue Dec 29 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘I’m not keeping a social distance from her. She’s deaf’‘We live together. We’re going to see her doctor. We can’t talk to each other if we’re apart’Wed Dec 23 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I drenched the garden with vulgar Christmas lightA red rope of light here, a cluster of dots there. It is garish and I love it like a childWed Dec 16 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I lock myself in, strip naked and take a clipper to my hairThe rush-long tufts behind my ears drive many women insane – but not in a good wayWed Dec 09 2020 - 12:18
Michael Harding: I got up close with a badger one night. I know he’s still out thereI still stand at the window waiting for snow and hoping to catch a glimpse of himWed Dec 02 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Though I cheered for Biden, I was more like Trump than I could admitLike him, I was terrified of vulnerability, terrified of ageing, terrified of being seen as weakWed Nov 25 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: One day I couldn’t walk back up to the houseThey told me to put on a gown as short as a miniskirt. Would I get high heels as well?Wed Nov 18 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I used to be so smart. Now I’m a complete gobshiteAn old and familiar tormenting voice inside my head began. ‘What kind of a gobshite are you?’ it inquiredTue Nov 10 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Three reasons you’ll never see a cat in DonegalDriving around Donegal for weeks I didn’t see a cat anywhere. Then one day a man in Crolly told me whyWed Oct 28 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: The tree that broke my heart will be born againI’m over 65, I stay at home and I watch the magnolia that represents my own ruinationWed Oct 21 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: In time there might be nobody at all left anywhere in rural IrelandI fear a day strangers wander into the hills above Lough Allen and nobody is leftWed Oct 14 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Primed for the worst, I prepare for a phone call with my doctorI was astonished that one solitary bird in the garden could lure me away from all my worriesWed Oct 07 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: The woman at the checkout said my mask made me look constipatedI confessed that for a few days I had felt like a washing machine with a blocked hosepipeWed Sept 30 2020 - 06:00
Micheal Harding: The day I stopped killing beesThe bee lurched between the pebbles, like a drunk in a yard of beer kegs, then diedWed Sept 23 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I remained a boy until I was 60. Then my depression beganIt took 9 years to wash the melancholy out of my system. Now I’m a happy boy againWed Sept 16 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I went home to my microphone, and my invisible companionsThe biggest thing I learned during the lockdown was how to use digital mediaWed Jul 01 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: A mask simply wipes the smile off any human faceIt’s like being on a leash. Surgical gloves, queuing rules and social distancing all restrict youWed Jun 24 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Four men cooking meat is not my idea of joyGrouchiness, Covid-19 and the horror of America made me try to kill a bumble beeWed Jun 17 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: My mother, the choc ices and the gorging nuns‘Sure God love them,’ my mother would say. ‘They don’t have an easy life’Wed Jun 10 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: How I learned to stop worrying and love my enemyThe amazing thing about hatred is that it has no foundation – it’s like a mirageWed Jun 03 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: As a child I was hooked on the soft porn of deathWhen my teacher told me Edgar Allan Poe’s people were from Cavan, I wasn’t surprisedWed May 27 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘She went off this morning and I couldn’t give her a hug’My daughter drove off smiling, the scarf around her shoulders enveloping her with my loveWed May 20 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I had strong urges to shoot all the birds‘Shite! shite! shite!,’ I roared, as I leaped up in rage, and ran towards the doorWed May 13 2020 - 06:00
‘I’m cut off from my partner, and I’m dying for a good... encounter’Michael Harding: She didn’t actually say ‘encounter’. The real word rhymes with ‘duck’Wed May 06 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: My chicken-keeping, fiddle-playing, long-ago loveMany years ago I met a musician who played in a Dublin pubWed Apr 29 2020 - 06:00
Coronavirus: There’s no denying that my mental health is becoming fragileMichael Harding: I try to look on the bright side, to reassure myself all will be okayWed Apr 22 2020 - 07:12
Michael Harding: The world was never this quiet in my entire lifeI’m astonished by small things: budding trees, a goofy pheasant, two crows on a branchWed Apr 15 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: The faster I read, the more gin I downedI stretched on the bed for a moment and woke up hours later, still clothedWed Apr 08 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I sat alone in my room, even though I wasn’t in isolationWill there be friends in the garden again when the fields are white with daisies?Wed Apr 01 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘Overwhelmed, I took my old anti-stress tablets from the drawer’I contemplated taking one. But if I took one today, I might want one every dayWed Mar 25 2020 - 06:00
I don’t want to swim. Taking off my clothes in the dressing room is too stressfulMichael Harding: ‘It’s the sight of my own body in the mirror that I find terrifying’Wed Mar 18 2020 - 09:28
Michael Harding: Starving, he moved through the Luas like a broken puppet. Nobody gave him a pennyI keep my headphones plugged in and avoid other people’s lonely eyesWed Mar 11 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Then I saw her. Taller and blonder than I remembered‘I was so excited about her returning from Australia that I couldn’t see straight’Wed Mar 04 2020 - 06:00
‘My father was on the streets of Dublin in 1916,’ he said. ‘On the wrong side’Michael Harding: Winners write the history but there are other stories worth rememberingWed Feb 26 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘I could hear my boots under the bed, crying all night’Their leaky soles were no match for a Warsaw winter but in the end I couldn’t abandon them . . . even for swanky ItaliansWed Feb 19 2020 - 05:57
Michael Harding: I have solved the mystery of my Polish great grannyI was proud when I realised I might have a tiny drop of Jewish blood in my veinsWed Feb 12 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Are you Dimitri, she asked. I thought she might be a spyThe way Trump and Putin toy with Europe, I wouldn’t be surprised who meets who in the shadows of a cafeWed Feb 05 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I was in my underpants, finishing off the pint...Then I decided that another was required, so I popped in to a GAA dinner danceWed Jan 29 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘Rage began to boil inside me, but I didn’t let it surface’I distracted myself with my mother’s old mantra: I don’t know where I am todayWed Jan 22 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: The beloved is like wine. And I want to be drunk all the timeI get so obsessed that I don’t even like going out to my studio for half an hour without herWed Jan 15 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: There’s nothing as pleasing as another person’s miseriesTaking the General for a spin in the campervan has downsides but there’s an upside tooWed Jan 08 2020 - 06:00
