Racial and homophobic slurs – the F- and N-words. When I moved to London, people screamed the F-word from their cars, and that stings.
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
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What does love feel like?
Relationships
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How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
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When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A fixed Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
“You’ll never walk again.” This was when I was eight or nine and recovering from viral encephalitis.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 122 →It would be a racist comment.
Bruno Tonioli
Italian choreographer
Growing up as a gay boy in a small town, you get used to people saying bad things pretty quickly.
Edward Bond, the playwright, said I was like a turd flowing on the effluent of British culture.
More from Maggie O'Farrell
View profile →Last week, while I was wet-wrapping my child’s chronic eczema.
All my clothes are secondhand, but I did buy a pair of new silver Vivienne Westwood shoes to get married in, which I still have.
To keep going and never give up, and to enjoy it to the absolute full because, at any moment, the curtain can fall.
Effervescence in the soul.
How long have you got? I have written a memoir and the subtitle is Seventeen Brushes with Death.
Last summer, swimming in a waterfall in Cumbria with my daughters.
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