Dad and I are heading to the Roundhouse. We’re going pretty early; the concert starts at eight and it’s only just gone seven. We’ll get in, have a drink, meet Salvi, get ourselves a good position on the floor. I want Dad to feel as relaxed as possible.

It’s fairly busy out and about this evening. As it’s the end to another glorious day, people are wandering to restaurants, heading to bars, lingering outside pubs where they’ve been all afternoon. They and we are in good spirits. Dad’s cane taps rhythmically as we walk. He’s been playing Blondie’s Greatest Hits on the old record player all afternoon. He’s told me three or four times how much he’s looking forward to tonight. I am, too, as Salvi’s coming. And I’m excited to be going to the Roundhouse, at last.

‘Twat!’

‘Uh-oh,’ I say. We are passing a small, busy pub. Men and women are huddled at and standing around picnic tables out front, laughing and drinking, but a couple with matching hostile glares are squaring up to each other further along the pavement. Beer is sloshing from his pint glass; she is brandishing a huge goblet of red wine.

‘Oh, do fucking shut up, there’s a love.’

I automatically swerve Dad over and bring us to an alarmed halt as the woman wallops the man on his bicep, where a bright, apparently freshly done tattoo of a tiger’s head stares out from under a wrapping of cling film.

‘Aargh! You bitch!’

The couple start screaming at each other.

‘Oh dear,’ says Dad, still holding my arm. I’m glad he can’t see the spittle flying from the woman’s mouth; her grubby pink vest top falling off her shoulder to reveal a purple bra strap, or the man’s face, a canine snarl.

The pair stumble off the kerb in front of us. There’s a shout from one of their mates to ‘Get out of the bloody road!’ They tussle a little, drunken and ineffectively, like kids in a playground, or sumo wrestlers, then the woman trips on what looks like her own foot, in red wedged peep-toes, and stumbles forward like an ungainly flamingo, her head slam-landing on the man’s chest. He catches her by the elbows and she rests her head there awhile then she suddenly starts to cackle hysterically. His meaty face, too, breaks into a laugh.

‘You stupid cow!’

‘Oh, fuck off!’ And, as they laugh, the man rams his arm across her shoulders like the top bar of medieval stocks, forcing his good lady into the gurning, temporary stoop of a hunchback, and frogmarches her good-naturedly back into the pub.

‘Some people love a good old barney,’ I comment, as the delighted onlookers trail into the pub behind the reconciled couple.

‘Some people shouldn’t be together,’ says Dad.