A Chance Encounter (c1996 - 2011)

A Chance Encounter is a short story that I have been writing and rewriting on and off for about sixteen years, but which I never quite finished. While I was at university I decided that I wanted to write, and set about pulling together short stories, recording my dreams and noting down ideas. Sadly, I don't think that any of those inchoate scribbles exist today, but one idea did make it through, which was the notion for A Chance Encounter. Unusually, I've never changed the title despite how long I've been writing it for (normally the original title and the final title are quite different), and the concept itself is - with a few minor exceptions - not that different from the first, incomplete draft that I still have knocking about on my hard drive. This is the third or fourth - and definitely final - version of this story, and the only one that I've completed.

A Chance Encounter describes an unexpected meeting between an angel and a victim of a horrific train crash. I can no longer recall what inspired this originally, but in the final version I wrote from scratch this year, there's a degree of cynicism about bureaucracy which may or may be a reflection of having been working for thirteen of the sixteen years that have elapsed since I started this.

You can read A Chance Encounter by clicking here.

Josh & Laura

Christmas is, in many ways, all about tradition. There are traditions the majority of us observe, and still others that we choose – at a family level, or on a personal level – to follow.

I wrote last year about one of mine, which is always reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens in the run-up to Christmas; that book never fails to evoke warm, positively affirming feelings in me and stops me from developing a colder heart. This year we bought a heavily abridged children's' version for our two daughters - who knows, them reading A Christmas Carol might become a tradition for them too. Other traditions in our house may prove to be temporary until the girls grow up. One is watching the Sesame Street film Elmo's Christmas Countdown (with Ben Stiller as a hapless elf) with my daughters; I try not to think of a time when they will no longer be enthusiastic about these films, try not to think that I will find it difficult to indulge my love of all things Muppet when they've grown up and moved onto boy bands, boyfriends and the like.

A tradition I started last year is to write an annual Christmas short story. Last year's – Christmas, etc – will have passed you by, mainly because I didn't tell anyone, beyond a handful of followers on Twitter, about it. You can read it here.

This year's describes a night of optimism and promise shared between two students at an end of term Christmas party, set mostly on the streets of London that I love so much. You can read Josh & Laura here. I guess you could call it a Christmas love story.

Thanks to everyone who has either voluntarily chosen to follow (or who I have coerced into following) my sporadic thoughts and musings over the past year. Have an excellent Christmas and New Year, and expect more of the same in 2011.