PW
When I came round after being seriously ill. I’d had a dose of morphine, the sun was shining and I thought, “Ah yes, I live!”
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 16 June 2018 source ↗
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.
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Others on this question
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Susan Calman
Scottish comedian
Genuinely – and my wife, Lee, knows this – dancing with Kevin Clifton on Strictly.
George Saunders
Short-story writer and novelist
Pittsford, New York, writing my first book when our kids were small, riding my bike to work because we only had one car…that feeling of being needed and loved and vitally involved in something artistic that I didn’t fully understand, everything still lying ahead of us.
David Shrigley
British visual artist
Walking the dog on a beach in Dorset with my wife.
Irvine Welsh
Scottish novelist
Happiness is mostly intrinsic: you’re either a happy soul or a miserable bastard. Fortunately, I’m the former.
More from Paul Whitehouse
View profile →A professional footballer.
The eradication of poverty would be nice, but at the moment, a double macchiato.
When my dad died this year.
I was what I call a “nut lifter” in a factory in Enfield. I had to get nuts and bolts from the production line into big tins.
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