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
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 04 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 06 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 09 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 02 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 Sept 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 Sept 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 Sept 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 Sept 04 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 07 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