The question
How close have you come to dying?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Ten years ago, I went to visit my dad in Australia. I walked to the edge of a cliff and looked over and tripped. I righted myself but my head was over the edge. No one saw it.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 July 2018 source ↗
In dreams, but that’s about it.
It’s nearly happened twice, each time after an operation.
And actually now having had the advantage of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and being able to look at some of the records of what the apartheid government was doing, the thing that is surprising to me is why so many of us survived. I mean, how is it that they did not assassinate more of us?
About five years ago, a half-tonne tree branch fell and missed me by three feet.
My A-level results - I got two Cs and an A. I had applied to do philosophy at Cambridge, and thought my life was over.
Cleaning toilets at McDonald’s when I was 16.
I would be a bit nicer to myself.
Nothing – I don’t like music. I want my funeral to be uncomfortably quiet.
To be looked at.
I didn’t learn to be intimate with people until I was in my 20s, so I was a very bad friend in my teens. There was a girl I was best friends with at college; I always used to kiss the boys she liked. I’d like to apologise to her.
Eve Ensler, Jo Nesbø, Sue Perkins, Bernadine Evaristo, Julian Clary, Jenny Diski
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