How fucking romantic

Five floors below my flat, a truly touch­ing moment is play­ing itself out. It’s so heart-rending that it puts me in mind of West Side Story’s re-creation of the Romeo and Juliet bal­cony scene, as the tene­ment fire escape becomes the loc­a­tion for Tony to ser­en­ade Maria with the song Tonight.

But this isn’t the Upper West Side of New York City, this is Clapham in south-west Lon­don, although the woman being ser­en­aded by the man from the street below is also named Maria (sadly I don’t know if he’s called Tony — one can only hope). He’s not singing much either, to tell the truth. It’s more like drunken shout­ing, and it doesn’t com­pare too favour­ably with the lyr­ics of Tonight:

“Come down­stairs, Maria! Come down the fuck­ing stairs, you fuck­ing bitch! Come on, Maria! Come on! Get down these fuck­ing stairs and let me in! Maria!”

Ah, such romance. Just like in the movies. It warms the heart, it really does. Oh look, here come the police to remove him …