The question
What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I’m happy whenever I’m with my wife, Allegra.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 8 February 2025 source ↗
Camping with my parents in the south of France. We went every year with the beautiful bell tent they made on a sewing machine. We even had a lavatory tent which was fabulous except, one day, it blew away with my father in it.
Well, I’m happiest on Martha’s Vineyard, between July 1 and Labor Day, riding my tricycle with Larry Bobo every afternoon and fishing with Buddy Vanderhoop. But I was happiest from my childhood through high school in Piedmont, West Virginia; it was magical. I was sorry when it was time to go off to college.
When my kids were born.
During my Queensland childhood, on the days when I avoided the chlorine-infused shower gauntlet and being corralled into the deep end of the school pool.
I worked on a kibbutz in Israel and had to clean out the chicken run. It was like an oven. Inside were rows and rows of chickens that had been shitting for months – the whole floor was six inches deep in chicken shit.
Not following through on things.
I’d like my parents to be alive – I miss them.
A successful marriage, my third.
On the interstate. Anyone who has driven in the United States will know that you are always very close to death – it is like the wild west on the freeways.
It’s like arriving somewhere that you’ve always wanted to be.
Shobna Gulati, Sebastian Coe, John Grisham, Father John Misty, Boy George, Craig Revel Horwood
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