I picture it as an intersection. Two winding spiralling paths, not going anywhere in particular, meeting in London on New Year's Eve 1986. A million to one chance.

He read a cycling magazine, picked at random from a bookshop, and in it was a story about cycling across America. West to East coast, Pacific to Atlantic. It took root in his soul, a vision of him doing that. Cycling, he met a girl in Montana; wondered if it was love. Stayed with a friend of hers in Maine for five weeks, as the leaves turned goldenredbrown and fell. Stayed until the snows came, and the money ran out, and left on a stormy wet night in late November. Landed in London and found a flat. Through an ad; no one he knew. Some people were staying on the floor.

She grew up in Maine, cold cold winters and rocky shores. Her college had an exchange programme, a junior year abroad. She choose Oxford University, a year studying English Lit, spent most of it down in Portsmouth with a guy she met in Switzerland. Came back an Anglophile, in the way Americans do. On graduation she went back to London, fell in love, married. He left her in 1986. She was house-sitting on New Year's Eve. She knew some people staying on the floor of a flat.

I first met Debbie walking down Gloucester Rd that New Year's Eve. A couple of us had stayed behind in the pub, waiting for her and her friends who were staying on the floor to arrive. Her hair was cut short, as always, black coat and dark pants. She thought I was stuck-up. I didn't have a coat, only my black jersey, my version of cool. She wondered if I would be cold.

Five of us went to Trafalgar Square for the countdown. We were caught on the outskirts of the Square, down by the South African embassy. Milling crowds, full of that New Year's Eve jollity, surrounded us. We first kissed on that night, but it was a brief kiss, an expected kiss, a New Year's Eve kiss.

We all decided to go back to where Debbie was staying for the rest of the night, it was closer and the tubes were packed. Making our way through a crowd to the tube station, she took my hand, or, even better, she chose my hand. And held it for a longer period than was strictly necessary to get through the crowd. We both knew that.

Debbie was house-sitting a big three storied terraced house. the kitchen area was in the basement and we all sat down there, in front of the an open fire. Various people drifted off to sleep through the night, but Debbie and I both stayed awake. Talking of America, of Maine, of studying English Lit and of music.

She had a couple of tapes she'd put together. One of the tapes had Androgynous on it. I'd never heard the song, or the Replacements before, but I thought that anyone who liked a song as beautiful as this one was someone I would like.

Since that day our two paths have merged and twined together, playing themselves out across the world.