Why I gave up cardigans for waistcoats - Michael Harding returnsI was hoping to make an impression in the world of polished grandeurWed Sep 13 2017 - 06:00
I still gaze at the beloved as she sleeps and see a strangerMichael Harding: In relationships I find out who I am, not who the other person isWed Jun 28 2017 - 07:00
I’m an old farting male who has given up hotels for hostelsMichael Harding: I love privacy but hate ‘Downton Abbey’ obsequiousnessWed Jun 21 2017 - 11:32
The child tugged my arm and said: ‘You are like Mr Bean!’Michael Harding: I had a go at speaking Mandarin but I managed to mangle the wordsWed Jun 14 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding on a happy fortnight of Cill Rialaig calmThen the shutters finally opened and I returned to the belly of this raging worldWed Jun 7 2017 - 06:00
The beauty of Kerry couldn’t erase the memory of angry dad in the Topaz stationMichael Harding: The man, as devoid of emotion as Clint Eastwood on a bad day, looked at me as though he might break my armsWed May 31 2017 - 06:30
I was never on Skellig but I made love in Kerry in the 1970s with a petite German girlMichael Harding: She could see beneath the mask of codology that I was still a peasant of simple tastes and devotionsWed May 24 2017 - 10:58
Radox is as near as I ever get to an exotic life in the bathroomMichael Harding: Getting a new bath installed is not as simple as you might thinkWed May 17 2017 - 06:00
Leitrim boy's dam was a work of art 'holding back the shite'Michael Harding: ‘It’s not brains you need to appreciate art,’ I shouted, ‘it’s love’Wed May 10 2017 - 06:00
‘Wasn’t he lucky to go like that? Feet washed. A few pints. Off to sleep’Michael Harding: In awe of old people so detached from the world they could laugh at the frenzy of it allWed May 3 2017 - 06:00
An emotionally constipated night out in a posh Dublin restaurantMichael Harding: The General stared at me ... he hates looking silly in front of city peopleWed Apr 26 2017 - 01:00
Wee Daniel, his amazing missus and the frog in the poolMichael Harding: Wise woman’s words in Donegal put a spring in my stepWed Apr 19 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Making my peace with the tree-choking ivy‘I must have loved currents . . . and I still can’t resist anything with a dried grape in it’Wed Apr 12 2017 - 05:00
‘Do you have your wee pennies, love?’ The question filled me with childish ecstasyMichael Harding: Random encounters are the perfect medicine for melancholyWed Apr 5 2017 - 00:00
‘The secret to a happy marriage? Avoid magical thinking’Michael Harding: Darkness envelops me in the evening but my beloved does not fear that demons haunt the houseTue Mar 28 2017 - 06:00
‘If these vitamins work I won’t need Viagra’Michael Harding: I made a mistake about my vitamin dosage and began to feel fidgetyTue Mar 21 2017 - 06:00
'In my swimming togs, toenails like a neglected donkey'Michael Harding: Magda arrived in a shining black costume, sat down and asked had I been talking to myselfTue Mar 14 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Learning late in life to listen to womenThe iPhone changed everything. These women were different. Their narratives were emotionalMon Mar 6 2017 - 18:07
'I cherish flutes as much as the waterbowls I use when I sit before my shrine'Michael Harding: 'I am a bad musician, but I play for the strange sensation of being alive'Tue Feb 28 2017 - 08:52
‘Closing the door one final time on the world where I was born’Michael Harding: Gathering up the discarded ornaments and junk, I thought I saw my mother againTue Feb 21 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘I wrapped the tiny body in a page from the Leitrim Observer’The mouse in the attic shared my passion for apples. What else did we have in common?Tue Feb 14 2017 - 06:00
'What my new guru showed me: I'd been looking at the world arseways'Michael Harding: The ultimate teaching is that there is no teaching, according to the 70-year-old with a greasy pony-tailTue Feb 7 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Trump is not relevant to Leitrim but there’s no escape from his windy guffEvery time I wake to go to the toilet I can’t resist looking at my phone to see if he has tweeted anything new since midnightTue Jan 31 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: 'You need a good rogering, it loosens everything''Advice from a poet a long time ago when I was young and chaste and full of inhibitions'Wed Jan 25 2017 - 06:07
Michael Harding: When even a ram trying to have sex ends in disappointmentDisappointment is everywhere and is not helped by listening to negativity on the airwavesTue Jan 17 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: The unbearable lightness of looking for garlic in TallaghtEvery time I try to walk to an exit I always end up back where I startedTue Jan 10 2017 - 06:00
The trouble with Donald Trump is I’m obsessed with himMichael Harding: he will make America new again in his own brash style of naked greedTue Jan 3 2017 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Subtle and awkward silences as families say goodbye at Knock airportLoved ones bid farewell as emigrants leave Ireland following Christmas visitsSat Dec 31 2016 - 03:00
Michael Harding: The first time a woman asked me ‘do you want to shag?’New Year’s Eve, 1972. Of course we didn’t dare, but I’ll never forget the offer, or the girlTue Dec 27 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘If Trump realises the moon is his real enemy he is liable to nuke the heavens’Moonlight annoys the Trump because he associates it with Islam, hence his rants against Muslims, according to a wise Cavan manTue Dec 20 2016 - 06:00
Forestry swallows houses. Its onward march is unrelenting in the westIn rural Ireland it’s the animals as much as humans that make a person sociableTue Dec 13 2016 - 08:00
Michael Harding: Mary and Jesus have gone off on the bus and I want them backA child rearranged my crib, leaving only the donkey, ‘because it’s a stable and he’s a donkey’Tue Dec 6 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Trump’s election saw me take to the bed‘When I lie in bed, unwired from internet or iPhone, I worry about nothing’Tue Nov 29 2016 - 09:00
Michael Harding: Country people have no grammar other than intimacyThere was no point explaining that we tell lies all the time. It’s called codding.Wed Nov 23 2016 - 10:00
Michael Harding: A poetry evening made me want to talk to Patrick KavanaghI wanted to go to the poet and tell him how beautiful Monaghan can still beWed Nov 16 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: ‘The first longing I had was for a bee’Our columnist revisits his childhood and muses about being as secular as BeckettWed Nov 9 2016 - 06:00
I’m not sexy in a rustic way – my cap frightens the horsesWearing an ‘Irish’ cap, Michael Harding was sneered at on the Dart. He should have had a copy of Waiting for Godot under his armWed Nov 2 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Maybe that’s where our souls are hiding, in our feetHere we are, holding the song and the pain together with the sly beat of a foot on the floorSun Oct 23 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Memories of the women I lost and that kiss on a sofa in EnnisMeeting years later, we were older and in less danger of setting each other on fireWed Oct 19 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: The older I get, the more susceptible I am to apparitionsThe nuns from Minsk never appeared, but a man came like an angel from heaven and built a shed for my logsWed Oct 12 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: Airports are cathedrals of oppressive certaintyIt’s difficult to speculate on the meaning of life as people come and go with little bags on wheelsWed Oct 5 2016 - 06:00
'There's no avoiding what makes me a man ... I'm just selfish'How to be a Man: Sometimes masculinity can feel mechanicalWed Sep 28 2016 - 06:00
Michael Harding: geolocating the ditch Auntie Mary peed inWe’re using Google maps to find Auntie Mary’s lost phone in a ditch in WestmeathWed Sep 21 2016 - 04:00
Michael Harding: Clowns! That’s what we need. More clownsClowns were seen as the laughing stocks who would never make anything of themselvesWed Sep 14 2016 - 08:13
Michael Harding: I believe in Richard Dawkins and religious iconographyI know the universe is empty but I still slide back into a devotional life if I’m given half a chanceWed Sep 7 2016 - 01:00
Michael Harding: Belief in banshees marked my mother outAll the orthodoxies of Christianity were to my mother as naught compared with her conviction in this single truth about bansheesSun Aug 28 2016 - 08:00
Michael Harding: Seeing a beautiful man naked can be intenseImagining young men without clothes is no problem, but the older men are, the harder it gets to fantasise them out of their suitsTue Aug 23 2016 - 14:55
Michael Harding: The mysterious promise of a room with a corpseThere is always a hint of something invisible in a room where human remains lie in reposeWed Aug 17 2016 - 10:33
Michael Harding: How I cracked the mystery of the smelly feetI got out of bed and checked the laundry basket, pressing my nose into each sock and assuring myself that the smell was definitely not coming from thereWed Aug 10 2016 - 06:27
Michael Harding: I finally made it inside the big houseI began to feel not so much like a lord of the manor as a monkey in heavenWed Aug 3 2016 - 01:00