In 1993, at a football game between Millwall and Portsmouth, I was drunk as usual.

A policewoman was ushering us Portsmouth fans back towards the station when she saw me staggering and went to arrest me for being drunk.

Seeing that I was not disorderly, she asked if I was OK. I said: "Yes, fine, just having a good time." She said it didn't look like much fun and asked whether I drank often. I replied: "Every day" and cried.

She held my arm gently and told me to stop drinking. Life was too good to drink every day, she told me. She said I looked too good to be a drunk and was too good a man to die young. The policewoman looked at me with pity and a kindness that made me cry again and think.

Two months or so later I got sober. I haven't had a drink in 17 years.

Ian Geddes, Southampton

The second story affirms my belief in angels and how we may never know it it really is that is helping us:

My father parked the car at the top of a steep hill when I was about six years old and walked down to a pub.

I was in the passenger seat alone, before seatbelts existed. The car started rolling down the hill towards the pub, a main road and a huge wall, picking up speed.

I expected to be killed.

Miraculously, a man leapt from a vehicle into my dad's car and managed to stop it at the bottom off the hill, just a few inches from the wall.

Dad didn't return until he was drunk, as usual, by which time the man had taken me home, but no-one was in.

I always wondered who that man was who saved my life, then disappeared, 57 years ago.

Karen, London

I wonder if these stories remind you of times in your life when a stranger has helped you?