Posted October 25, 2011 in Diary | No Comments so far

Back in 1999 I was living in Whitechapel, near a couple called Mick and Kerry who spent a year or so having a passionate love affair.

We all knew this because their affair was being conducted in full view of the public. On several walls near my flat, they’d been having the written-language equivalent of fantastic sex for all to see.

The graffiti started appearing in March 1999, appearing first on the wall pictured above and then spreading slowly onto a disused old doorway across the street. These spray-painted messages of love became quite wild and transcendental at one point; this next one sees both Kerry and Mick touching the infinite.

But being extremely versatile communicators they weren’t limited strictly to the grandiose; they knew how to be succinct as well.

By the summer there was quite a lot of Mick and Kerry graffiti. Who were Mick and Kerry? Where did they live? What kind of a strange relationship did they have, that their intimate pledges of love were spilling out in front of an intrigued if bemused public?

The messages stopped appearing in early autumn 1999. I imagined several possible reasons for this.

Firstly, I honestly couldn’t think of anywhere else they could spread their messages to. They’d taken up almost all of the available free space, and it wouldn’t have been in the spirit of things to expand to another street.

Secondly, the graffiti could have been a by-product of the honeymoon phase of their affair. Maybe their relationship was at a more mature stage with dinner parties starting to replace amorous late-night graffiti.

Thirdly, their red spraycan might have finally run dry.

As time went by, it seemed that we’d heard the last from Mick and Kerry, that their story would remain an enigmatic mystery. But several months later a new message appeared – from a devastated Mick.

Our local love story had reached a tragic conclusion, made all the more poignant by Mick’s last lament being scratched on to a door with a piece of metal.

And that was that for Mick and Kerry. None of the questions I had about them would ever be answered, but there’s one thing I did know for sure; somewhere, in a flat near mine, was a failed graffiti artist with a broken heart. And somewhere else – maybe very far away by this time – was a mad girl called Kerry with a red spraycan.