Last year, during four days in January, when I directed Rhoda, my second short film, in a tiny house in Camberwell with Juliet Stevenson and Emma D’Arcy.
When were you happiest?
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.
When I was 15 or 16 - I slept really well then. Now I sleep on a bed of anxiety-tipped nails.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 April 2009 source ↗
Others on this question
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Nicola Adams
British boxer
When I won gold at the London Olympic Games.
I was happiest in every aspect of my life in the 1990s, when I was married to Paddy [King, a management consultant] and we had the two children and my mum lived with us, and Countdown was the biggest show on Channel 4.
Nicholson Baker
Contemporary American novelist and writer
When we had children at home. But recently I finished a book about old secrets that I’ve been working on for a long time, and when I was done, I felt a gigantic, joyful relief in having escaped from the corn maze of remembered facts in which I’d been wandering for so long.
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