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
Michael Harding: I decided to have another go at finding a camper vanI woke at dawn and walked the beach reflecting on how splendid it was to be aloneWed May 8 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Notre Dame and the farmer who died by the light of the moonThat cathedral felt like it belonged not to Paris but Europe, and the fire seemed to awaken something across the continentWed May 1 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I’ve gone through life without cutting anyone’s toenailsA retired nurse who performs that charitable act for old men saved me from melancholyWed Apr 24 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: A woman with the cure said oatmeal could fix my heart‘You look very poorly, sir,’ she told me. ‘You look as sick as a small hospital’Wed Apr 17 2019 - 06:00
‘Vegans just don’t drive the same vehicles as meat eaters’Michael Harding: I find meaning driving around with white leather under my arseWed Apr 10 2019 - 09:31
In Leitrim, sometimes I don't know if it's raining or if I am living in a cloudMichael Harding: The two of us stand at the end of the garden. The lake below, the moon aboveWed Apr 3 2019 - 06:00
‘I presumed the two tribes of Ulster might eventually blend, as folks do at a wedding’Michael Harding: The blood shed during the Troubles only nourished separate identitiesWed Mar 27 2019 - 06:00
‘Stupidity has been a heavy burden since childhood’Michael Harding: My mother once gazed at me and, with one question, opened up an appalling possibilityWed Mar 20 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘What the f**k are you doing in bed?’ said the woman demanding champagneThere’s a Dublin wedding at the hotel, and a nocturnal party animal I want to avoid at breakfastWed Mar 13 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I wanted to warm my arse in freezing Warsaw. So I went to churchI find it consoling to contemplate death, not as an ending, but a transformationWed Mar 6 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: No wonder the graveyards are full of young menYoung people in Dublin are just as distressed as they are in LeitrimWed Feb 27 2019 - 06:00
‘I loved my friend as a man sometimes loves another man’Michael Harding: ‘Thank you, Bernard Loughlin, my mentor, elder and guide’Wed Feb 20 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘The nuns disappeared very fast in the end, like snow off a rope’The last nun in town, switching off church lights and the plastic statue I came to ownWed Feb 13 2019 - 06:00
‘Are you the man who had the heart attack? How could you be so stupid?’Michael Harding: ‘Indigestion,’ she scoffed, ‘between your shoulder blades!’Wed Feb 6 2019 - 07:27
Michael Harding: After my heart attack I needed more exercise so I went to AldiSelf-pity afflicts me, I spent most of Christmas brooding about my illnessWed Jan 30 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘Good morning sir. Did you order an ambulance?’ said the hotel receptionistAs I walked out of hospital I was overwhelmed with gratitude. I wanted to hug the entire hospital and everyone in itWed Jan 23 2019 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘My indigestion turned out to be a heart attack’I stood pot-bellied in my pyjamas and began leaping through half remembered tai chi movements like a duck trying to dance the lead in Swan LakeWed Jan 16 2019 - 06:00
‘Writers are like mongrel dogs. They lick everything off the ground’Michael Harding: ‘If I ever saw that poet again,’ the ferryman said, ‘I would gladly take him on board, but he would never reach the island’Wed Apr 4 2018 - 06:00
Leitrim is being invaded by spruce trees, and they're closing in, like a slow moving armyIt bothers me what will happen when the entire county has been plantedTue Mar 27 2018 - 19:52
Getting my glasses fixed in Carrick reminded me that melancholy never lastsMichael Harding: even as a teenager, the sorrow of things was forcing me to speak, and the best grammar available was the exquisite innuendo of metaphorWed Mar 21 2018 - 07:58
She spoke no English so we used the international language of soupMichael Harding: My friend in Warsaw left me in a restaurant with a frail little woman I couldn’t talk toWed Mar 14 2018 - 06:00
Michael Harding on Room Little Darker: ‘so much fun you’ll probably frighten yourself’Book Club: ‘Stories spin with such control and elegance you must read them. Feel the sweat of it. The passionate hotness of it. The power and pulse that lie at the heart of it’Mon Mar 12 2018 - 11:15
Tea is the limit of my intimacy when someone unexpected calls to the doorMichael Harding: In the old days everyone got a mug – apart from priests and high-ranking nunsWed Mar 7 2018 - 08:27
Michael Harding’s epic journey home: ‘I needed to see Leitrim’A flight from Warsaw to Liverpool, another to Cork diverted to Shannon and then a bus to Galway and another to Athlone . . .Fri Mar 2 2018 - 15:00
Michael Harding: I worry I’m the elephant in the roomEven though I walked a lot, it was doing me no good. Because every time I went out I ate moreWed Feb 28 2018 - 06:00
‘It’s been very quiet around here’ apart from the half-naked people in the ditchMichael Harding: ‘I ate the head off Cyril and threw him out at the gate. I could have killed him’Wed Feb 21 2018 - 09:37
‘The General says I only go to Warsaw to get away from the Beloved’Michael Harding Valentine: Being alone without the Beloved can be sweet because I long to be with herWed Feb 14 2018 - 06:00
‘All your old shite about religion, that’s all pram-baby talk’Michael Harding: I presumed he didn’t have running water in whatever galvanised cottage he sheltered in on the side of some Leitrim mountainWed Feb 7 2018 - 11:02
I envy Marty Whelan. His voice bouncing into bedrooms in Cahersiveen and KillarneyMichael Harding: The first time I ever made love, a radio was playing Bob Dylan’s ‘Forever Young’Wed Feb 7 2018 - 05:00
The worst part of getting old? Nobody knows who you are any moreMichael Harding: ‘Are you retired?’ the man asked, which caused the General’s face to turn beetroot redWed Jan 24 2018 - 06:00
A fearless and good priest's lonely last walkMichael Harding: The cool rains of Roscommon, and the soft sleet showers over Kilronan mountain were a gentle embrace, compared to his earlier life in the heat of AfricaWed Jan 17 2018 - 06:00
I was panting like a dying walrus. The flu had arrived in full forceMichael Harding: When I got home, my nostrils felt like they were in the microwaveWed Jan 10 2018 - 05:45
People who live on the edge of the world know there are no borders, only loveMichael Harding: ‘I was in Raqqa,’ he whispered, 'when it was beautiful. And I was in Bagdad when it was beautiful. And I was in Beirut when it was beautiful’Wed Jan 3 2018 - 06:00
I’m in the sauna with an angry Brexiteer as large as a sumo wrestlerMichael Harding: I knew that if I opened my mouth I could never unwind my rage. My anger would be incarnate in the airWed Dec 27 2017 - 06:00
To me, west Cavan was the most beautiful place in the worldMichael Harding: Christmas brought emigrants home, and they triggered a rash of house parties and Hughie’s special songWed Dec 20 2017 - 06:00
Perhaps I was a cat and am now reincarnated as a humanMichael Harding: I saw my cat bang his paws on the floor and tears came out of his eyesWed Dec 13 2017 - 08:45
‘Brexit? What is that? Something to get rid of bad breath?’Michael Harding: The gales of laughter softened me too, dissolving the solemnity of all that a man tries to pretendWed Dec 6 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: It had been raining in Leitrim for four monthsA slanting sun two weeks after All Souls’ Day, in the month of the dead, is one of winter’s most remarkable miraclesWed Nov 29 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: How I discovered Santa was realThe annual winter trip to Dublin was my only chance to get a word in Santa’s earWed Nov 22 2017 - 06:00
I don’t think rationally. So I have endless conversations with ghostsMichael Harding: ‘Are you with me?’ I inquired. ‘I am,’ he whisperedWed Nov 15 2017 - 06:00
Facebook is amazing. I befriended a friend recently, only to discover he's deadMichael Harding: For days I tried to remember his faceSun Nov 5 2017 - 06:00
Love in old age is more about gratefulness than graspingMichael Harding: On the plane I wonder how many below are crossing the sea in dinghies, no one certain of finding love in old ageWed Nov 1 2017 - 06:00
I fell off the treadmill and lay there thinking of IrelandMichael Harding: Go you therefore to Ulster and tell them the Good News is for everyoneWed Oct 25 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Conversations with friends in search of lost timeIf only I were at ease inside the narratives I weave around my sense of self – but I’m notWed Oct 18 2017 - 06:00
Polish is a tricky language but Hiberno-Cavan-English is worseMichael Harding: It’s a pity the ancient tongue of South Ulster is not given more formal recognition by governmentsWed Oct 11 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: I'm as confused about masculinity as my catMy cat is a sorry sight whenever some neighbouring queen comes around the yardWed Oct 4 2017 - 09:40