The question
What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?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.
I thoroughly enjoyed high school in Nairobi: it was before everybody had a camera on their phone. I experimented with fashion and hairstyles that I am glad I don’t have any record of.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 October 2019 source ↗
Happiness is mostly intrinsic: you’re either a happy soul or a miserable bastard. Fortunately, I’m the former.
Now. Five years ago, I started looking after myself a bit more, emotionally and spiritually, and it’s paid dividends.
At boarding school, I was unable to get the main part in Hamlet, so I put on a production of The Homecoming with my friends. The teachers came to see it and said they didn’t know I had it in me. It felt very good.
People are often traumatised by the sleeplessness in the first years of their children’s lives, but I was insanely happy to be married and have two children. The only dark cloud was how much we were loathed for having babies who slept through the night.
When I have a to-do list and finish it in the time I intended to.
I waited tables for one night at the turn of the century. They were being fussy about how I put the food on the plates, and I couldn’t have cared less.
Like the froth on top of a hot chocolate.
Brenda Blethyn, Eve Myles, Michael Palin, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper
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