Forty years ago this evening I was living at my parents’ house in Hartlepool. Sometimes I’d go out on a Friday evening, but more often I wouldn’t. I was in two minds about it on this occasion. I was quite inclined not to bother. But after a bit of deliberation, I did. There were a few places where I was likely to meet people I knew.

I strolled into the town centre, and walked into the Park Hotel. Two of my chums from Hartlepool Amateur Computer Club were there, with two girls I didn’t know. So I started talking to them. One of the girls was called Sara. She was pleasingly attentive. We exchanged phone numbers and she phoned me the following morning.

A bit less than five years and a couple of degree courses later, we had a joint bank account and a mortgage in Leicestershire. Her parents had moved back to the East Midlands by this time so we looked for jobs in the area before we graduated. I started a career at Rolls-Royce in Derby, Sara went to work in Leicester.

And apart from a seven year holiday in London, I’ve lived in the East Midlands ever since the day Sara and I drove down the M1 to move into a flat in Leicester in August 1989. I had no idea at the time but at that moment I stepped across the threshold of the Park Hotel I was at the crossroads of my life. If I’d stayed in like I was tempted to, or if I’d gone to some other pub, I would never have moved to the East Midlands. Never would have lived in Derby, or Leicestershire. Wouldn’t have had the same career, because I was lured into becoming a sys admin, and later a system engineer by a reorganisation at Rolls-Royce.

I would never have known my wife, whom I met here in Leicestershire in 2006. We live a bit less than six miles away from the house that Sara and I bought thirty-five years ago.

My best guess is that I’d probably still live in the North-East now, all these years later. Maybe I’d be married to someone else. Or divorced. I’d like to think I’d still have done the Computer Science degree, but there’s no doubt that my relationship with Sara was a powerful motivation to do that. I might well not have.

Sometimes apparently inconsequential choices can have profound consequences. Perhaps life is full of pivotal moments disguised as near-meaningless.

Sad footnote: the other young lady in the Park Hotel was called Carol. She was killed by a drunk driver on the A19 in December 1989. I don’t know why she was driving her car on that particular day, but it was of course another profoundly consequential choice. If she’d set off ten seconds earlier or later she’d most likely be alive today.