I was thinking today. Yes, I know that's unusual. You only ever see the outside of things. You see a person and can't help making a judgement about them based on their appearance. But what if that fat guy that looks like a wife-beating arsehole is actually a sensitive gay man incapable of hurting a fly? What if the dopey looking girl on the train is actually a physics student who's always top of her class? You don't think that way. You look through a window and see a family eating dinner in front of the TV. Is that all there is to that story? I doubt it. How did they get to that place and time, and what is that place and time going to do to them? Maybe there are tensions there, or romantic undertows that you don't see. Maybe somebody will murder someone as a result of that dinner conversation. It's so easy to see the surface of life. How often do you look around in amazement? How often do you consider the full consequences of your actions, or of somebody else's?

On Saturday July 24 this year, I invited Chantell to a party at my place. She asked me if she could invite Aidan along because she hadn't seen him for a while. Against all probability, he didn't cancel, he came along. He wasn't going to drink at all, he was going to drive home that night. Halfway through, when the rest of us were half-pissed, he asked me if he could crash at my place, enabling him to drink. Extreme drunkeness led to our first real conversation, and our first kiss. The next day we exchanged phone numbers. I sent him an SMS on the Monday asking if he wanted to catch up, which apparently he did.

If I hadn't had the party and invited Chantell, she wouldn't have asked Aidan to come. If Aidan hadn't wanted to get drunk, he wouldn't have stayed. If he didn't stay, I wouldn't have gotten his phone number. Then I wouldn't have caught up with him later. So we wouldn't be where we are now: madly in love and planning our entire lives together.

That really makes a person think.