The question
Excluding property, what is the most expensive thing you have ever bought?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's weekly The Q&A repeatedly uses this standing prompt, with minor contractions and word-order variation.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
In my 30s, I was staring at a pair of expensive boots in a shop window when the photographer Gordon Parks came up behind me. He instantly understood, because he grew up even poorer than me; he made me buy them on my credit card.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 March 2017 source ↗
In 1992 I was in New York, and somebody showed me a work by Louise Bourgeois. I never realised that sculpture could move me, and I was so affected by this piece that I bought it. It was a lot of money.
A beautiful, sequined dress for a showbiz function. It was pushing £1,850.
A table that used to belong to David Bowie: it was £13,000.
A Tiffany watch for my wife. The security guard was following us, so I deliberately bought a really expensive watch to prove we had money. I don’t think I’ve seen her wear it.
I haven’t done it yet.
Dying just a millisecond before I was about to say something I really wanted the people I love to hear.
I’m walking down a street in New York, the sun is shining, I’m on my way to see friends who are chosen family—and I’ve just written a couple of pages that I like.
Being a salesgirl in a baby shop where the others said things like, “He’s Jewish, but she’s American.” Also, after college, being a waitress in London, and trying to make change in the old money of shillings and pence.
I behaved badly with two old lovers. Years later, when I took one to lunch to apologise, it made it worse.
I’ve had cancer three times, but never felt close to death except when I walked between parked cars on my street and a car sped past my nose.
Robert Peston, Jeremy Vine, Jon Snow, John Prescott, John Lewis, Kellie Maloney
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