DAWN broke gently over Victoria Park on a chilly morning in January 1993. Spasmodic shivers ran along the long, straggly queue of people, like zephyrs through a cornfield.
Chris Kaufman, a 20-something reporter, was dazedly casting his eyes around when he saw a heavenly vision of beauty, waiting a few yards away in the queue for Rugby Sevens tickets.
His companions, John Jarman and Eddie Naylor, dared him to go up and introduce himself to her. He baulked at the idea. Spending a drunken night sleeping rough in the park rarely produces that certain tough but elegant je ne sais quoi which makes a woman weak at the knees.
Jarman, proprietor of Rogues Gallery, was carrying a gallon container of Jarman's Bloody Mary, a liquid that jolts the human body into acquiring superhuman courage and forgetting all physical discomfort. 'Go and offer her a cupful,' he said.
Chris strolled over and gave her the drink and a gift - the sight of the latest Calvin and Hobbes cartoon from that morning's South China Morning Post. The young woman was deeply moved.
Chris Kaufman, now a reporter for Reuters Television, is today happily married to Carolyn Dougall, a young Scottish lass who leases flats at Parkview.
I heard this tale yesterday, when asking for true tales of quintessentially Hong Kong romances.