The year Simon Harris was born, I was in a mental hospital

"He would have been seven when they decriminalised gayness, 10 when they closed the last Magdalen laundry, and 11 when they allowed miserable couples to legally split; he would have grown up in a very different, rapidly changing Ireland, an Ireland that was psychologically decolonising at warp speed."

Newly elected Taoiseach Simon Harris, gestures as he leaves the Dail, in Dublin, following the vote by Irish parliamentarians to elect him, making him the youngest Taoiseach in the Republic of Ireland's history. Picture date: Tuesday April 9, 2024.

There’s a T-shirt online that says ‘It’s Weird Being The Same Age As Old People’, with which I must agree. It’s weird AF.

Simon Harris would have been seven when Kurt Cobain died; he’d have just turned three when an unknown Nirvana played to a few hundred Sub Pop fans in a student union bar in London, a fiver to get in and cut-price pints.