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 ↗
An apocalypse escape vessel – a steel hull ice-capable sailing boat for all the family that has almost zero electronics and is manual operation throughout – armed with an array of weaponry.
A 28ft motorboat, which sat in the water for two years because I was so busy working.
When I was 24 or 25, I bought a Warhol canvas. It was a lot of money to throw down on a little painting, but I’ve always loved art.
Gender-affirming surgery. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not widely available on the NHS and a lot of it you have to pay for yourself.
I would love to have a good memory. I’m at an age when remembering something right away is as good as an orgasm.
Dying just a millisecond before I was about to say something I really wanted the people I love to hear.
As someone who left the world around me a little kinder and less hierarchical.
Feeling you want someone else’s welfare as much and sometimes more than your own.
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.
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.
Robert Peston, Jeremy Vine, Jon Snow, John Prescott, John Lewis, Kellie Maloney
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