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 have a penchant for happiness. I have experienced euphoria before a migraine, which may not count, but I have also felt immense happiness leaning back in a chair in sunlight, puttering in my garden, reading, dancing, immediately after giving birth and when writing.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2017 source ↗
Playing ping pong in LA.
Flying over the Australian outback in a jet, looking down at the incredible orange scenery, the uninhabited hills and gullies, listening to Tchaikovsky on my headphones and drinking champagne with a cigarette in my hand. It was 1984, I'd been to the Adelaide Book Festival and was going back to my husband and my children.
When I was a young father and teaching at a local primary school in Kent.
I consider myself quite a happy person. One of the most exciting times was when Sarah was born.
The man who asked me directions on the subway seven years ago: I am so sorry for sending you to Queens rather than to the Bronx.
I would have articulated aloud the comments I too often suppressed out of deference to arrogant, condescending, sexist bores.
I was a floor model briefly at Bloomingdale’s in New York in 1979. I hated it. When no one was watching, I would lock myself in the toilet and read.
The Blazing World.
Pauline McLynn, EL James, Julie Andrews, David Baddiel, Adam Kay, Joyce Carol Oates
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