Chris had tumbled sleepily from his bed and into the bathroom for his early morning wee, shower and shave. Having shaved, he pulled the plug, draped its chain over the tap and padded into the kitchen for a coffee and toast before dressing and leaving his first floor apartment for work.

As he slammed his front door, the plug chain had slipped back into the sink leaving the plug nestled in the plug hole. This wasn’t a problem, until the cold tap washer finally split and started spewing water. The resultant flood eventually burst through the ceiling of the apartment below, extinguishing instantly the flames from the faulty television, whose toxic fumes had started to fill the apartment. The crash as it fell woke elderly Mr. Kempton who was now being told by the fire officer just how lucky he had been not to have been killed by the fumes.

Chris scarcely remembered smiling at the sad looking young lady as he helped her pick up her belongings when she’d bumped into him as he stood at the bus stop.

Sarah’s mind had been miles away when she walked into the poor guy at the bus stop. She’d just found her boyfriend in bed with her best friend Kate. The bitch just laughed at her. Sarah decided she would end it all and had bought paracetomol from three separate shops. Now two of those packs sat in a filthy puddle and she just couldn’t be arsed to retrieve them. And so, instead, she decided to buy some chocolate, a chick flick on DVD and a nice bottle of Chianti Classico.

Chris barely noticed the Big Issue seller when he handed over a fiver and grabbed the magazine to read on the way home.

Kev was an unemployed ex para. Selling The Big Issue at least gave him some income and self-esteem. Some guy had suddenly appeared at his side, smiled, dropped a note into his hand, grabbed a mag and walked off. Feeling peckish Kev decided to go to the supermarket where he met the lovely young lady with the Toblerone, a DVD and a bottle of wine. In a few weeks she would end up asking him to move in. They would go on to marry and have two lovely young daughters.

At work, Chris sat idly wondering if he would ever manage to make his mark on society…