The question
As a child, what career or life did you imagine for yourself?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
In African families, you can be one of three things: a doctor, a lawyer or a failure. I wanted to be an Egyptologist, but things worked out in the end.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 December 2022 source ↗
A magazine editor.
To work in a dry cleaner’s.
Archaeologist, pop star, store cashier.
I wanted my own ice-cream van and to be a lollipop lady.
The ability to teleport. I’d be unstoppable.Would you rather have more sex, money or fame? More than those, I’d like more time.
When I get to the restaurant and don’t see any hot sauce on the table.
Impatience. Though sometimes it helps!
That there is no ideal life. Disappointments sit around every corner, so enjoy the here and now.
When my trousers nearly fell down at Buckingham Palace. I was there to collect my OBE, and the suspenders for the beautiful Alexander McQueen suit I’d had made for the occasion went missing. Naomi Campbell was with me and we had a good laugh about it.
Any time I’ve been racially profiled. The words might be different, but the feeling is the same.
Felicity Jones, Chris Bryant, Harriet Walter, Jared Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Hayley Atwell
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