The question
How close have you come to dying?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Swimming off the north Cornish coast eight years ago. I remember thinking, “Why did they teach you how to inflate your pyjamas in life-saving classes at school, when they could have just told you what to do in a riptide?”
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 January 2017 source ↗
I was caught by a wave while swimming at night with friends in Southampton. That shook me.
I had spinal meningitis when I was 13.
I was almost run over by a bus when I was 13. And in 1991, in the Gulf war, an Iraqi missile hit close to my house.
I’ve had motorcycle accidents – I had one where I ended up in intensive care. But if you are on a frontline – which I have been – and people start shooting at you – which they have done – you put yourself in quite considerable danger. So: on a moving frontline in northern Afghanistan in 2001.
As I get older, I get happier.
Funerals are for the people left behind, so I don’t mind.
My father, because he’s never run away from anything.
Like you are standing with an army.
To anyone I’ve worked with between 5.30am and 8.30am. I am not a morning person.
Ten years ago I bought a painting. I lived with it for a year before realising I didn’t like it at all. So it’s on my wall, mocking me daily.
Dan Stevens, Adeel Akhtar, David Arquette, Aidan Gillen, Noel Clarke, Adrian Edmondson
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