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.
As a child playing in my parents’ garden in Birmingham, which they still have, and where my daughters play, swinging on my swing that my dad made for me.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 January 2023 source ↗
At the beginning of lockdown; it was just me and my new baby and my partner in the house. It was lovely.
Last Tuesday, lying on the couch, watching Schitt’s Creek with my husband. Happiness is the small, ordinary days, not the big, up-in-lights ones.
This is going to horribly upset my wife, my children and my grandchildren, but it was when I did The Greatest Snowman last year for Channel 4. Being let loose on an Austrian mountainside to build snow sculptures was my happy point, and who knew I’d find an icy G-spot at nearly 58.
Merging with nature or merging with people.
Going through a divorce.
Waitressing. I was so bad. I smashed things. I once mistakenly ordered a very expensive bottle of wine for a table. They thought they were ordering a very average bottle of wine, and I ordered them an £800 bottle and they drank it. I got the sack a few weeks later.
To let things go.
Having no purpose.
When I was young, I was pretty reckless – my 20s were quite hedonistic. I don’t know whether I’ve been close to death, but I may have been without realising.
A grandfather clock for my partner’s birthday.
Helena Bonham Carter, Andy Serkis, Donald Sutherland, Kathleen Turner, Dominic West, Hilary Swank
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