A pause button. If I could be watching my kids enjoy something, and hit pause to make it last.
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
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You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 November 2013 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 206 →A small pair of ginger balls.
My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends. I can’t eat or drink for pleasure anymore, so when they offer to come it’s only for the blessed chance to talk. Some of these comrades can easily fill a hall with paying customers avid to hear them: they are talkers with whom it’s a privilege just to keep up. Now at least I can do the listening for free. Can they come and see me? Yes, but only in a way. So now every day I go to a waiting room, and watch the awful news from Japan on cable TV (often closed-captioned, just to torture myself) and wait impatiently for a high dose of protons to be fired into my body at two-thirds the speed of light. What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech.
To learn to relax and enjoy it.
More from Stephen Merchant
View profile →Is That All There Is? by Peggy Lee.
Watching Bruce Springsteen at Glastonbury. During Because The Night I actually shouted, "This is the greatest moment of my life!"
Failing to get anything in the New Year honours, not even a poxy CBE.
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