Carving your beloved's name on the trunk of a tree, or doodling it on the school desk, is so 20th century. For the modern urban dweller, the only way to really impress your betrothed is to spread your love in three-foot high letters on the side of a train.
That was Raymond Agbegahs's plan. The graffiti vandal has spent the past decade spraying messages for his girlfriend on train carriages and railway stations in south London. Unfortunately the authorities weren't impressed by his declarations of love, and the 24 year old has been jailed for two years.
Part of Streatham's FV Crew graffiti gang, Agbegah targeted depots in Streatham, Norbury, Dulwich and Parsons Green, where he would break in overnight and tag carriages with the Byronesque homily "I Love Emma", signed with his sobriquet "Milk". In one month he managed to cause £23,650 worth of damage to Southern Trains stock, while Network Rail and South West Trains had to fork out cleaning bills of over £4,000 each.
After rocking up some 58 convictions - many for graffiti writing - and breaching a 2003 ASBO, Mr Agbegah's one-man epistolary adventure in the power of love has ended.
Happily for the romantics among us, it appears that these exhortations of desire were not made in vain: the mysterious "Emma" was present during the sentencing, heavily pregnant and apparently willing to stand by her man. Whether or not she'll still love him without the articulated missives of devotion rolling by as she waits for the train at Streatham Common is another matter.
Image from eropelad's Flickrstream
