A Mysterious Tour

Picture this... an average size town, not far from London. We're outside a train station. The weather is nice, the station’s not too busy. Zoom in on a group of people waiting at the stop for a bus. There’s a very cool young guy on his way home, wearing a new pair of Levi’s and a red The Killers t-shirt. On his left some American tourists, on his right an elderly couple. The guy’s me, obviously and it was the American family who caught my attention. Not because of their dress sense – they were wearing the standard American holiday attire: beige knee-length bermuda's, a light blue baggy shirt (the kids had white ones with ‘Lakers’ printed in big letters), white trainers and white socks. Nor was my attention caught by the likeness of the parents – creepy, though she didn’t say a word during the entire journey. The dad was loud and carried some guidebook, talking to his kids about this place they were trying to get to. I didn’t hear where they were going. I became interested in the conversation when I heard him describe it. He was saying something about an exhibition of photographs of every head a barber had had the pleasure of knowing. “It says here, and I quote: ‘All the people come and go and stop to say hello.’ So it must be a good place to visit. You might even see some celebrities,” the American said. It got his kids’ attention. As you know I like photography and I was intrigued. I hadn’t seen anything about an exhibition of some sort in the area plus the only two celebrities around here are John Tickle and Ali G, and the last one isn’t even real. I decided to follow them.

They got on the 117 and three minutes later got off again. They either didn’t know Staines at all or they were very lazy. We could have walked here! It didn‘t appear to be their destination because, once again, we were waiting at the bus stop. Five minutes later the 458 to Kingston came into view. That’s better, I thought, Kingston’s a nice place and there are plenty of things to do there. The bus was nearly empty, so I sat two rows away from the Americans. Not too near to be noticed and not too far for me to listen in on their conversation. As soon as they sat down the kids started asking about Penny. Whoever? I rummaged in by bag to look for a book. A book would be an excellent undercover accessory. I also plugged my earphones in, so I really looked the part. Mister undercover! Clearly I’m not the best spy in the world because I got distracted and (again) missed hearing about our destination. However, I did pick up that there was supposed to be a banker with a motorcar on the corner who was very funny because children laughed at him. To top it off, he never wore a mac in the pouring rain. Hm, strange, I though, very strange, or maybe it was installation art.

To my disappointment they got off about twenty minutes later near the Marshalls roundabout. Surely the exhibition couldn’t be around here. Maybe they were hungry and had decided to go to the pub? But if they didn’t even know about walking from the train station to the bus station, it seemed unlikely they would know their way to the pub. The tourists weren’t the only ones to get off and for a moment their voices were out of hearing. When I caught up with them they were walking towards the roundabout and seemed to be looking around for something. I heard them talking about a shelter and a nurse selling poppies. Well, at least it sounded like that. I couldn’t linger on the roundabout. That would be way too obvious and besides my enthusiasm for this art thing had somewhat diminished. Let’s be honest, there’s nothing on this roundabout, except for some trees. There are houses on the left, a field on the right and there’s the Marina behind us. I turned around and decided to walk back to the bus stop before I made a complete fool of myself. However, it wasn’t long before I realised the Americans must have followed me, their voices growing louder by the minute and sounding rather agitated. Curiosity roused once more, I put Mister Undercover back into action: I stopped, kneeled down and pretended to do up my shoelaces. Smooth. When they were at a reasonable distance I started my pursuit.

I didn’t want to walk too closely behind them, so it was really difficult to hear what they were talking about. I caught snippets of their conversation. Something about firemen and hourglasses; the Queen and clean fire engines. It didn’t make sense. We seemed to be going towards the Marina and I was really puzzled. I’ve been to the Marina often but never seen any art centres.

From an open window I could hear someone playing the trumpet, I knew the song. At the same time my eyes fell upon the road sign. I started to laugh, one of the American kids turned round to look at me. There I was, Penny Lane, in my ears and in my eyes. All those things the American had been talking about were from that Beatles song. Only they weren’t singing about this little lane. The Americans were in completely the wrong town. Fantastic!

Two things crossed my mind. Would there really be a banker waiting for a trim at the barber’s in Penny Lane and, should I tell them?

The Beatles - Penny Lane

Songwriters Paul Mccartney, John Lennon