As a Buddhist, I was philosophically opposed to killing the wasp in my house. But we all have our limits
Eventually, I dashed around the room with The Irish Times rolled up into a weapon of death
Not even pets are safe from Andrew Tate and Tommy Robinson: ‘It’s the tone of their voices’
The General asks me: ‘Have you any idea how exhausting it is listening to them ranting about how Marxists are destroying western civilisation?’
I remember the first time I saw adults cry and behave like vulnerable and fragile children
Michael Harding: I swallowed the beauty of the moment and cherished it for years. And for a few years afterwards I found a kind of peace by just recalling the incident
There’s a room where I find refuge from the demons afflicting me
Religion can be extremely divisive, yet prayer is the one key that opens the door of the heart in every religious tradition
The General and I used to go boating. Now we sit on the patio like characters in a Beckett play
We talk about what we have done in the past rather than what we are going to do in the future
The moment I assemble the flute, the cats dive off the sofa and claw the back door, screaming to be let out
‘Would you not get yourself a concertina?’ he asked. Why? ‘It would be quieter’
Michael Harding: We had just finished the salmon when the row broke out. All had gone well until then
‘It’s not that we were taking different sides in an argument. We had become the argument.’
I decided to risk a petrol station breakfast on the way home from Cork. It was a bad move
I am forced to stop at a lay-by near Athlone, where I spend 10 minutes bent over the bonnet of my Toyota
My worries and anxieties dissolve when I hear the notes rise from a flute or a fiddle
‘All my life I have relied on music as a remedy for depression. It lifts up my soul’
An Irish man told stunned Ukrainian refugees: ‘We had wars here but we didn’t leave our country’
It was a social event for Ukrainians in the local library of a rural town, but he wasn’t there for the tea or biscuits
I tried giving up my phone. It was a disaster
I left the phone on the bedside locker – but struggled to get through breakfast in the silence
‘I’d hate to be seen searching for a grave in case people might think I wasn’t a regular visitor’
I found three little porcelain angels at my parents’ plot, none of which I had seen before
I felt Travellers were strange and different until I befriended them. Then their similarity astonished me
Their unrestrained exuberance for storytelling showed me how bearing witness to one’s own life is the core of a writers’ destiny
A teacher in school convinced me I was a useless lump of dung
His voice always made me shiver, but he also contributed greatly – albeit inadvertently – to my moral development
Michael Harding: At one time, having a pair of binoculars on the back seat of your car in Fermanagh was unwise
Maybe I am naive but for me binoculars were a beautiful remnant of Victorian tranquillity. I’ve never thought of them as an aid for killing