The question
How close have you come to death?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.
When I was doing my gold swimming badge. I had to get undressed in a swimming pool and had forgotten my gym kit, so the teacher gave me a kit two sizes too small. In the water, I got my arms up over my head to get the shirt off and they locked. I sank to the bottom of the pool and sat there until a girl jumped in and dragged me back up again.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 June 2017 source ↗
A flight from Paraguay to South Africa that went badly wrong. The plane nearly fell out of the sky and the oxygen masks dropped. People were screaming but the pilot saved the day, and then apparently never flew again.
Death is always close.
Travelling Europe with a friend, when I was 29. She was driving and the brakes went, on one of those vertiginous Italian mountains. It was terrifying for the 20 minutes it took to coast down the mountain.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years ago, but so early that I knew it wasn’t a death sentence. Until we get a cure for cancer, early detection is our best hope.
My older sister, Jeanne. We fought when we were kids, but she is so entirely capable.
A 12-hour nightshift at a toy factory in Southend.
When I heard John Noakes had died.
I have the invisibility of a middle-aged woman. I live in Brighton, and feel for the first time in my life that I belong. My kids are safe, my husband’s in a good place and we have a roof over our head: I can’t imagine needing more than that.
For a while I wanted to be a policewoman, but I didn’t have five O-levels.
A television. I don’t care for things. When I moved, I downsized and threw away most of my possessions.
Joan Jett, Marc Almond, Sheryl Crow, Jake Shears, Jo Nesbø, Yann Tiersen
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