Last year, as I strolled down a normally peaceful village high street on a gloomy Saturday afternoon, I witnessed a man being killed.

At the time, I had absolutely no idea of the severity of what I was seeing.

I had become aware of it by the sound of raised voices and a number of people ahead of me stood still and staring at a commotion outside a takeaway on the opposite side of the road.

It looked to all the world like an over-heated argument. No more, no less. Voices were raised and there appeared to be a bit of pushing and shoving. I wondered what, in a fish and chip shop, at that time of day, could have sparked such a dispute.

As I watched from afar, unsure at what I was actually seeing, people were already intervening. I didn’t want to be one of those who gawped from afar at two grown men shouting at one another so strolled on my way.

But not before I had seen chairs, put on the pavement for customers, thrown as part of the debacle. A clumsy and unnecessary escalation, I thought. After which, things seemed to settle back down. The spell was broken for those watching on and everyone carried on with their business.

It was, I felt at the time, something of a storm in a teacup.

By the time I’d made it to the shop I was aiming for, I’d found myself on the same side of the street as the incident.

Police were, at that very moment, arriving and an ambulance, siren blaring, was close behind.

The fellow who had been hit was sat on the ground, being assisted by some passers-by, looking bloodied and distressed but very much alive.

I walked on. What I’d seen didn’t look particularly serious. I was surprised to see any blood. But I had no idea of what would transpire.

It was a little over a month later that I discovered that the man I’d seen bloodied on the pavement had died as a result of his injuries - weeks later. I was gobsmacked.

I hadn’t seen the two men arguing actually come to blows. But I had seen the chairs flung. One, apparently, had struck the victim on the head. It had caused a brain injury which would eventually kill him.

The person who threw the chairs is now serving time behind bars for manslaughter.

What had appeared to be an unacceptable boiling over of tempers had resulted in the fickle hand of fate delivering the most devastating consequences – primarily for the victim and his family, obviously, but for the man who’d thrown the chair too.

His whole future changed in one violent outburst as red mist descended – for whatever reason – in front of his eyes. A day neither could have imagined taking the turn it ultimately did.

It reminded me of the fragility of life. How the road you travel is dictated, so often, by the most surprising twists and turns that you can scarcely contemplate - normality gone in an instant. Lives extinguished. Dreams shattered, families left bereft. Lives altered beyond recognition. All in a few moments of madness.