THE simple fact is I was just one of the lucky ones.
From the mid-1980s I began to follow Liverpool Football Club with an almost religious-like zeal.
I never missed a home game for season after season and began travelling to many grounds around the country to watch the Reds play - London, Derby, Nottingham, Norwich and Birmingham were among the cities I visited.
I also went to Sheffield.
My first visits there were both in the spring of 1988 as Liverpool first booked a place in that year's FA Cup Final with a semi-final success over Nottingham Forest. Later, with my sister to accompany me high up in the West Stand, we enjoyed watching Kenny Dalglish's all-conquering club inflicted a 5-1 hammering of Sheffield Wednesday in a First Division match.
Hillsborough was the venue for both games and in April, 1989, I returned to that same ground.
For that first semi-final in 1988, I found myself directly behind the goal on the Leppings Lane terrace. It was a jam-packed area with little, if any, room for manoeuvre once you were in-situ. I'd had similar experiences on other terraces at away grounds, but during that semi-final match, I distinctly remember feeling things were getting somewhat tighter than normal.
In the end, though, that was put to the back of my mind as the Reds won the game booking a place at Wembley, and as a 20-year-old student, it was the least of my worries at the time.
Sometime in late March or very early April the following year, my Dad drove me up to Anfield where I'd gone to purchase my ticket for that year's FA Cup semi-final, which, for the third successive season, was to be staged at Hillsborough.
And I can distinctly recall looking at the ticket and being dismayed to discover that like the previous year, Liverpool had been allocated the smaller Leppings Lane End and not the much bigger Spion Kop End for all of their standing supporters.
Those thoughts of the small, packed terrace 12 months earlier came back to me, but when Saturday, April 15, 1989 dawned fresh and bright, all I could think about was going back to the South Yorkshire ground to give my support to my team and hopefully see them reach another Wembley final.
I can't recall that much about the coach journey to Sheffield that sunny morning, except to say it seemed to take longer than the previous year's one, and we eventually parked up at I guess around 1.30pm.
A short walk later without mishap and with very little queuing for the turnstiles at the Leppings Lane End, I was in the ground behind the terracing.
This was my third visit to Hillsborough and I knew pretty well the layout of things. So when I saw that the tunnel that led down to the terracing right behind the goal was already looking to be filling up or maybe even full, my mind flashed back to the previous year's experience.
Did I really want a repeat of all that again? No chance, I said to myself.
It was a decision that saved my life.
I then happened to see a steward chatting to someone, and I asked directions to the side area of the terrace, and he pointed me towards the right. I then walked around the outside of the stand before entering the clearly far less crowded pen on the side of the ground where the main TV camera gantry on the South Stand was situated.
Save for a handful of fellow Reds supporters, the terrace was empty. There was plenty of room to sit on the concrete steps and have a read of the matchday programme. It was now gone 2.30pm, and as I glanced around I wondered to myself where the rest of our fans where - this, after all, was an FA Cup semi-final.
A further look to my left told me everything I needed to know - and fear.
The middle area was packed, dangerously packed. Almost 30 years later now, I can still see a man aged in his 50s or even 60s perhaps, wearing a long coat, deciding he didn't fancy it any more and being helped over the metal fencing that separated the individual pens into which supporters were, literally, herded.
Almost certainly that man's decision to get out then saved his life too.
It was now getting on for 2.50pm, and still the terracing I was now stood up in wasn't full by any stretch of the imagination. But as I glanced again to my left, it seemed to be getting worse by the minute.
What happened after that period has, of course, been well documented.
Despite everything, the match kicked-off on time.
Six minutes later it stopped.
Scores of supporters were fatally injured with hundreds more badly hurt.
Those that survived that day all suffered in one way or another.
Some time around 4pm, I think, fans were told to leave the ground and return to their transport.
Of course, those were the days when mobile phones resembled house-bricks and cost a fortune so everyone headed for public telephone boxes and houses around the ground to ask if they could make a call home.
I joined a big queue outside a house in Leppings Lane itself and eventually got a message through to someone, although not my parents. I was desperate to speak to them and it was not until our coach stopped at a service station on the way back to Liverpool that I was able to get through to them.
Those hours for my Mum and Dad must have been sheer hell. They had gone shopping in Liverpool that afternoon, returned to their car, put the radio on and heard the grim news from Hillsborough knowing full well that was the part of the ground I was due to be in.
To this day, nearly three decades later, it is a subject that they understandably find too distressing to talk to me about. As a parent now myself, I know exactly why.
So I returned to Liverpool that Saturday night around 8pm, shaken and upset, but luckily alive.
The rest of that evening was spent on the phone with schoolmates who hadn't managed to get a ticket for the game but knew I'd be there, while one made a special trip to see me in the house.
I can remember scribbling on a piece of scrap paper how I had seen the tragedy unfold and how it could have been prevented. It was pretty much how those with far more knowledge than me on such matters were to sum it all up.
Twenty-seven April 15ths have happened since that fateful one in 1989.
And now, at long, long last, justice has won the day.
The real truth of what happened, always known by the people of the city I'm proud to call home, has now been shown to the whole world.
The families' fight for justice has been won, and I am both so thrilled and relieved for them.
It's been a hell of a long time coming and they have experienced hell to get there.
But thank God they have triumphed in the end.
I will never forget April 15, 1989 for its horrors.
But I will always remember April 26, 2016 for the day that justice finally prevailed.
God bless those magnificent Hillsborough Families and God bless those 96 Angels.
Every single one of them, truly, has never walked alone. And never, ever will.
