The question
What thought won't let you sleep?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A long-running fixed question in The Guardian's weekly Q&A questionnaire.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Thinking about all the worst possible things: losing people, dying, how am I going to die? All that sort of stuff. I stay awake thinking about furniture and shoes as well. It’s not all death.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 January 2019 source ↗
Poetry. I start getting into a float state, and write stanzas and couplets in the middle of the night.
My children, because they come with me wherever I go.
I’ve been awake almost my entire life. I have had insomnia since I was a child.
As I get older, sleeping gets harder. I exercise, I do mindfulness, I take drugs occasionally.
I wanted to be a footballer and then a squash player – I was in with a chance because I was very good. But I fell out of love with that by 14 or 15 and joined a youth theatre.
I love clothes and accoutrements, so it would be either a suit or a watch. I love Mark Powell in Soho, and Paul Smith.
When I am in Italy with the family, not thinking about work.
It’s hard to beat David Attenborough. Everything he does is quality. I like people who make me proud to be British.
The Wimpy in Kingston when I was 16. I’d recently become vegetarian, and there weren’t many veggie burgers in 1988.
“I don’t love you.”
Joely Richardson, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, David Hasselhoff, Elaine Paige, Donny Osmond, Daniel Mays
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