Way back in the mid sixties, when the construction world was young, I worked as a site engineer on the Severn bridge. Unmarried, I lived with my two dogs in a caravan tucked under the Beachley Anchorage - I gave my address as 'Beachley Towers' if anyone asked.

I found that cooking an evening meal was irksome on two main counts, deciding what to cook (I finally degenerated to three standard meals eaten in strict rotation, a system which ensured a three week interval before the same meal was repeated on the same weekday - work it out), and disposing of the rubbish. My final solution to the latter was to collect several weeks debris into a large plastic sack so I could deposit it in one of the concrete rubbish bins beside the ferry queue just outside the site gates. I didn't have the nerve to drive up and dump the bag in broad daylight whilst people were queuing so waited till the ferry had stopped in the late evening. I then decided to wait till dark, and then again until after the pubs had closed. In the end I crept out about 1 a.m. As I pulled into the layby a police car drew up about 20 yards behind me.

Well, why should I worry? Wasn't doing anything wrong, was I? It's a free country, in'it? The bin was subject to use 24 hours a day wasn't it? All my lights were working and my tax disc was properly displayed, weren't they? Just act normally. In the dark I backed up to the bin, opened the boot and struggled to transfer an enormous black sack from one to the other - but at the same time trying to suggest it was something I did frequently at any time of the day or night. I even tried to whistle, but my mouth was too dry.

Whilst I worked the police car pulled forward to about 10 yards distance, switched off and sat silent behind its side lights. In a cold sweat I fumbled the door, crashed the gears and drove 20 yards to the site gate without indicating. Convinced I was being followed I conspicuously left the car unlocked - I'd nothing to hide, had I? - and went to bed without putting the lights on. Although the expected crunch of boots on the gravel, the knock on the door, the handcuffs, never materialised, the feeling of guilt is with me still. I decided to eat out in future.

I made an arrangement with a nearby pub and used to read the local paper, the Citizen, with my meal. It was in the edition of Thursday, 20 June 1966, that I read the following letter:

"As secretary of the Cam bridge U. F. 0. club I would be pleased to hear from any of your readers who heard or observed anything strange in the early hours of Tuesday morning. We have had two reports of some form of aerial activity which suggest that further reports might be forthcoming from your area. Yours etc. S. Miller".

I was able to reply that, with an assistant, I had been using a theodolite (which incorporates a telescope) to take tower verticality readings on the bridge in the early hours of Tuesday morning (survey was done at night when temperatures were more stable) and had seen what "appeared to be a cylinder with domed ends. At the bottom was a glowing light which pulsated at about the same frequency as a car indicator". It had disappeared from view across the Welsh side of the river.

I still have the four page response from Mr Miller in which he confirmed the compatibility of my observations with those of other people. He appreciated his good fortune in contacting a "reliable and responsible witness" who was actually using a telescope at the time, and asked many questions as to precisely what I had seen. In reply I was able to elaborate on my experience in a manner which conformed with other reports and which provided accurate information on the telescope, timing, my height above river level, (i.e. on the tower pier) and so forth.
After further exchanges, in which my description became increasingly precise and conclusive, Mr Miller sent me a four page printed document published by "The British Unidentified Flying Object Research Association", Report Form for U.F.O. Sighting. I have it in front of me now as I write, 30 years on.

I see question 32 "In your opinion, what was the object?" was answered, apparently with some confidence, "A flying saucer scout ship spying on earth's development of nuclear weapons", and question 34 "What experience have you, if any, of observing objects in the sky?" prompted the response "3 months long vacation employment playing the piano in the Windmill Theatre pit orchestra".

But I never sent it back. There were no copying facilities in those days, so if I had returned the form it would have gone forever and it exuded such an air of trust, naivety and absurdity as to prove irresistible.
As a result Mr Miller next heard from a certain Mr Hilton, who advised him that the Form had come into his (Mr Hilton's) possession following my extraordinary disappearance. A colleague helping with a verticality survey had recounted how our work had been interrupted by the appearance of a "saucer shaped object" above the Aust Tower from which "a long tentacle, some eighteen inches in diameter, had snaked down, lifted Mr Harvey off his feet, up into the saucer, before making off rapidly towards the west at a speed estimated at about that of a fighter plane".

Mr Miller never replied and the correspondence terminated.
And what, you might ask, has all this to do with our business, with contractual claims and counter claims, with disputes and arbitration? It's about evidence, isn't it.

All witnesses are suspect, particularly those who are absolutely reliable.
It's almost impossible to do something without being seen by someone. One is wary of claims to have done something wholly unobserved or unrecorded. Okay, it may happen, but it's never happened to me.
In my experience people, including myself, prove never to be as devious as I fear them to be. They just haven't got the time. How many disputes stem from groundless mistrust?

It's very easy to be convinced when you want to be, and equally easy to be misled. How many contractual arguments, held with conviction, are found to be based on little else?

We often reveal more by our questions than is revealed by the answers, don't we? 

P.S. If by any chance after all these years, Mr S Miller is reading this, please will he contact me at our Darlington office when I will be pleased to give him any more information he might require with respect to what I actually saw in the early hours of that Tuesday morning, 18 June 1966, so long ago.