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.
When I was young, I was pretty reckless – my 20s were quite hedonistic. I don’t know whether I’ve been close to death, but I may have been without realising.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 January 2023 source ↗
When I rode on the back of a motorbike from London to Rome with my eyes closed the entire way.
On a school trip to Wales when I was 12. My canoe capsized and got stuck upside down next to a rock. I was underwater for about 30 seconds but it felt a lot longer.
When I was a kid in Tooting, our house caught fire. We didn’t realise until the fire brigade turned up.
Swimming off the north Cornish coast eight years ago. I remember thinking, “Why did they teach you how to inflate your pyjamas in life-saving classes at school, when they could have just told you what to do in a riptide?”
As a child playing in my parents’ garden in Birmingham, which they still have, and where my daughters play, swinging on my swing that my dad made for me.
To let things go.
To still be working.
Going through a divorce.
Having no purpose.
Waitressing. I was so bad. I smashed things. I once mistakenly ordered a very expensive bottle of wine for a table. They thought they were ordering a very average bottle of wine, and I ordered them an £800 bottle and they drank it. I got the sack a few weeks later.
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