The question
If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Not being able to have a baby for two and a half years. Lots of people say it made me a better person; I think it made me worse. You go to a very dark place with your friends because they are having kids, and you want to be happy for them but you’re not.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 February 2021 source ↗
Since hostile people still call me a former Playboy Bunny, even at 82, I probably shouldn’t have done that in my youth, even to write an exposé. And since a couple of times they’ve also referred to me as a former CIA agent, because I went to two Soviet-era communist youth festivals, I probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Yet if I hadn’t done both, I might have judged other people by such empty symbols, too.
I would have started therapy earlier.
I would find a much better way of looking after my mum in her last three years of dementia. I did my best, but it was incredibly difficult to find the right kind of care unless you’ve got £3,000 a week to spend.
I would be less naive.
Very hard, meaningful kisses.
A fishmonger, then a surgeon.
A cure for endometriosis.
A wedding, in 2012.
Keeping a relationship with the love of my life, for 16 years.
Our son. And ideas for Woman’s Hour, or businesses to start.
Bill Clinton, Keir Starmer, Sadiq Khan, Zack Polanski, Jimmy Carter, Jeremy Vine
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