When I was a kid with no responsibilities.
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.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 December 2016 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 585 →The day my daughter, Clara, was born, and pretty much every day since.
If it wasn’t for coronavirus, it would be right now. All my life I’ve felt a pressure to achieve. It’s gone now, and that gives me a sense of freedom. Whenever I, for short moments, forget about corona and climate change, I’m happy.
A year ago, after only four lessons, skiing alone in the Sierras.
More from John Simpson
View profile →I’d like to say sorry to my mother. I had to choose between my parents, and I chose my father because he didn’t have any other kids. (My mother was a war widow and had two children from her first marriage.) I thought, in a childish way, that one had to be fair. It was very difficult for my mother and me, and we never really got over it.
The problem with my job is that you meet people you admire and then you don’t admire them so much. The only one I carried on admiring was Nelson Mandela.
Reading the news. It’s a dull job.
Comfort, warmth and security.
I would have behaved better to my first wife, and the girl I lived with afterwards. I was always away.
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