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A hairdresser – I still want to be a hairdresser.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 July 2023 source ↗
The question
As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
View all 197 →
Isabelle Huppert
French actress
I dreamed of being an artistic skater. And a nursery nurse.
Father John Misty
American musician
A mutant turtle ninja.
Gloria Estefan
Cuban-American singer and songwriter
A psychologist and then a diplomat.
The Doctor in Doctor Who. I still do.
More from Pauline McLynn
View profile →I talk over people all the time.
Never be rigid in your thinking, be open.
I hope the happiest moment is still ahead of me.
Not being able to breathe – I get very panicky at the thought.
Eight or nine years ago, I disgraced myself in the Japanese ambassador’s home in Dublin, at a celebration for my late mother-in-law’s book about living in Japan. Afterwards, when I had to apologise, she told me it was the worst night of her life and, because I was drunk enough not to remember the details, it will never not be the most embarrassing night of my life. People are filling in details even now – “Remember when you fell under the table during the first course?”
Walking along Oxford Street on Saturday pulling a shopping trolley that my mother bought me. I remember saying, “I’m never going to use that!” and there I was, very grateful to have it in my life. She died before Christmas and I can’t ring her to tell her that she was right.
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