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 8 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 1 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 4 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 5 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 8 2020 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘Christmas 2019 is a return to the things of the heart’I notice again what is beautiful in the Christian tradition, rather than being defeated by itTue Dec 24 2019 - 14:00
Michael Harding: Sometimes I find the rain in Leitrim comfortingI meet a man from Allepo and we chat about his country, Islamic poetry and Leitrim weatherWed Dec 18 2019 - 06:00
‘Are you a Muslim?’ the man asks. ‘No, I’m from Cavan’Michael Harding: After a Niall Breslin podcast recording, call to prayer made senseWed Dec 11 2019 - 06:00
It’s not surprising cocaine has become rural Ireland’s new poitínMichael Harding: When I walk down empty streets, I see young people with no dreamsWed Dec 4 2019 - 06:00
In the end we are all the same despite the oceans we must crossMichael Harding: A mother in Shenyang is mourning the loss of her son in DroghedaWed Nov 27 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Memorial cards have a way of appearing from nowhereMichael Harding: I imagine them falling out of the air, like messages from the invisible worldWed Nov 20 2019 - 06:00
I rejoice when I meet people from Riga, Lagos or Aleppo in LeitrimMichael Harding: The county has been rejuvenated by people from other societies coming hereWed Nov 13 2019 - 06:00
I know of men who don’t go out for monthsMichael Harding: They sit in their own solitude, knowing that never again will they hear a cow or calf calling out to themWed Nov 6 2019 - 06:00
‘Doing my taxes I felt incompetent as a child and wept’Michael Harding: I felt as incompetent as the child I once was, and still am, insideWed Oct 30 2019 - 07:00
Making a bed in a camper van after six pints? It’s dangerousMichael Harding: Songs and music in a west of Ireland pub provide nourishment for the soulWed Oct 23 2019 - 06:00
The man who called his wife ‘the beloved’ like he was sucking a sweetMichael Harding: It was only when the couple spoke about Russia that I saw behind their masksWed Oct 16 2019 - 06:00
I made a joke about Mayo and Canada. The Canadian was not amusedMIchael Harding: I didn’t think anyone would take offence in a filling station in CastlebarWed Oct 9 2019 - 06:00
What’s worse than a fat man squeezed into small togs? A man my age in tattered togsMichael Harding: Such moments of openness are dangerous because they form the threshold of love; when a stranger becomes a belovedWed Oct 2 2019 - 06:00
My daughter left for Australia and now there’s an absence which nothing can cureMichael Harding: I didn’t show emotion. I sorted all that out in the garden on SundayWed Sep 25 2019 - 07:03
‘Like many other victims of suicide, he simply fell through the net of care and love around him’Michael Harding: Yet another fine young man falls victim to the scourge of suicideWed Sep 18 2019 - 06:00
‘I have been free from melancholy since the heart attack. The stent woke me up’But leaving Donegal and driving through Leitrim, I felt sad again and lonely . . . until I saw her at the door and realised that the beloved is the keyWed Sep 11 2019 - 06:00
The man beside me on the plane took off his shoes and socks to cut his toenailsMichael Harding: I kept telling myself it was funny, although I had sporadic urges to open the emergency door and shove him and his toenails into spaceWed Sep 4 2019 - 06:00
I had an urge to go to Belarus. Fortunately, I had a heart attackMichael Harding: Booking flights on a whim is dangerous. I’m off to Minsk for a week of monastic livingWed Aug 28 2019 - 06:00
I bottled my rage for years until some therapist could take it out of my guts like ashes'Don’t look so scared,' my friend said, as I stepped across the thresholdWed Aug 21 2019 - 21:05
The sean-nós singer continued, verse after slow verse. Then a phone rangMichael Harding: If he had flung the thing out the window, we would have applaudedWed Aug 14 2019 - 06:00
Irish music is a repetitive hum that dissolves the egoMichael Harding: You can’t get angry at a music festival. It’s poison to the singing heartWed Aug 7 2019 - 06:00
‘I like to keep up with the intellectual wing of the DUP’Michael Harding: A more charming man than Jim Wells you could not meet in a day’s marchingWed Jul 31 2019 - 06:00
‘I needed a lot of comfort as a child because I felt stupid’Michael Harding: Even now I am regularly overwhelmed by my own sense of stupidityWed Jul 24 2019 - 06:00
Would my dead mother’s voice from old recordings destroy my warm memories?Michael Harding: How did I get from my mother to Nigel Farage turning his arse to Beethoven?Wed Jul 17 2019 - 06:00
‘I’m burdened by the life I never lived, by the wild man I never released’Michael Harding: I had visions of hot tubs in the woods, shamanic rituals and Asian massage therapies, and chilling out with beautiful strangersWed Jul 10 2019 - 06:00
‘I learned storytelling from country people and Travellers’Michael Harding: In the old days country people were slow to talk about personal or emotional mattersWed Jul 3 2019 - 06:00
How do you get ticks out of your arse? Slap a bit of butter on themMichael Harding: ... or hold the flame of a cigarette lighter close to the tick's backsideWed Jun 26 2019 - 06:00
The man with five stents thought my skirmish with death was nothing to brag aboutMichael Harding: He had five stents to my one but you wouldn’t catch him making a gobshite of himself by talking about it on the radioWed Jun 19 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I like to gaze at Claire Danes’ face in Homeland. Her survival is reassuringCarrie Mathison is not just a mythic figure on the screen. She also survives inside meWed Jun 12 2019 - 06:00
Trump visiting Ireland? ‘We should be on our knees with gratitude,’ he saidI called the General about a misplaced mackerel but he had other things on his mindWed Jun 5 2019 - 13:23
Michael Harding: I see my late mother in the mirror since I went on heart tabletsNow that I have begun to slow down myself, I find her everywhereWed May 29 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Some people claimed the hawthorn bush smelled of sexBut there is something terribly tender in the white bush that lifts my heart every yearWed May 22 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Does Poland need a State visit from Panti Bliss?Watching Panti on stage in full flight, it struck me that show business is also a fight against the darkWed May 15 2019 - 06:00