The question
What worries you about getting older?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A newer fixed question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Losing my eyesight – I live for the view, and the sunset and the sunrise.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 January 2026 source ↗
When my father was in his terminal year, I discussed death with him. I recall very clearly his relief that the cancer that was taking him was at least allowing him "all his marbles". Dementia in its varied forms is not like cancer. Dad saw the cancer in his pancreas as an invader. But Alzheimer's is me, unwinding, losing trust in myself, a butt of my own jokes and on bad days capable of playing hunt the slipper by myself and losing. You can't battle it, you can't be a plucky "survivor". It steals you from yourself. And I'm 60; that's supposed to be the new 40.
Instead of saying, “I tripped up”, you have to use the words, “I had a fall.”
Running out of time.
That you get out of life what you put in. When you grow up on a farm you literally reap what you sow.
Chaotic, warm, northern.
My new year resolution is actually to read all the classics and I’m ashamed that I haven’t read everything by the Brontë sisters.
Jealousy. It’s the thief of joy.
To Gorka Márquez, who was my Strictly partner, for not winning the glitterball in 2022.
More sleep – my children do not sleep.
Neil Gaiman, Rosalind Eleazar, Terry Pratchett, Róisín Murphy, Sarah Perry, Juliet Stevenson
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