Magical Mystery Tour

Dad, you have a day in hand. Go to Liverpool and you will love it. I did the same tour in my trip and it was one of the highlights of my visit to the UK. Remember my pictures of the place? And that’s where ‘They’ started, so it has to be.

But Darling, I saw where they started it all at Hamburg… remember my visit there?

Yeah Dad, but how much more of London will you see? Move out, see the country side and enjoy the Mersey side.

So far, in life, it had always been Baby’s Day Out when I would decide where I would take my little one but now time has passed and she’s no longer little anymore. Now, she has decided on Baba’s Day Out.  So here I was searching the net for the best organized tour and booked myself on to The Magical Mystery Tour to Liverpool, the birthplace of Beatles. This music group always has had a special place in my heart… just love them. If you ask me the reason for that, then the immediate answers would be that they were easy to understand with their simple lyrics and their music just got you grooving. When I was young, possibly around 1980, the movie Birth of the Beatles was released in a cinema house called Priya in Vasant Vihar. It was still a single screen theatre before becoming PVR and it always played the English movies. I saw the movie six times in seven days…. That’s simply the most times I have seen a movie in a theatre surpassing Namak Halal which I later saw five times. 

Roll up, roll up for the mystery tour
The magical mystery tour is waiting to take you away.

At first, it was a mystery that set my heart racing on the appointed day and time as the tour operator did not show up at the Euston Station with the placard as was expected. There was another lady in a similar predicament on another tour. With the e-ticket still open on the mobile screen, I frantically started calling the local tour operator and the lady at the other end matter-of-factly said she would not be able to help. Finally, she gave me a US number where the helpdesk lady sounded more like a helpless lady. The train was due to leave at 8.07. I checked with the guy at the station ticket counter and he said there was no 8.07 train Liverpool Lime Street! There never had been one for months. Yes, there was a train at 8.43 am. Mystery was deepening further. Was there another platform 9and ¾ like the train to Hogwarts? A voice in my head said- a scam?  It was already 8.30am and the train to Liverpool Lime Street was ready to leave and here I was stranded and cheated. “Cancel my tickets and refund my money”, I shouted on the cell phone loud enough for the entire station to hear. I wanted to in fact shout...

Help! I need somebody, Help, Not just anybody.

Help! You know I need someone. Help me if you can, I’m feeling down...
Won’t you please, please help me?

I now had two choices…take a tube back to hotel and then explore London or buy a train ticket and go to Liverpool all on my own. I picked the second one and rushed to the ticket vending machine, paid by my card and started running for the 8.43am train. Having lived in Mumbai and travelled by the locals, I knew how not to miss trains and in the nick of time somehow clambered on the Avanti West Train.

Trains there are good… the WiFi works so I pulled out my iPad and started writing a stinker to the tour operator asking for a cancellation and immediate refund of money failing which I threatened to reach out to social media and give them a bad name. By the time my mail went out of my box, a mail immediately hit my inbox confirming that the tour had been cancelled due to unavoidable circumstances and that my money would be refunded in three to seven days… Thank God it wasn’t a fraud! Now magic was happening. I wrote a mail to Mike, my co-speaker at a Marine Insurance programme, who had told me that he was a Liverpool Boy and the locals pronounced it was Li’erpool. I wrote a quick mail to him to guide me through his home town and in no time he shared an itinerary which looked nice and compact. As I stepped out of the station, my heart began to flutter… I am going to get lost in Penny Lane or Strawberry Fields or least of all walk down the Abbey Road.

First stop, where else but the Beatles Museum. This was some place to read about the Fab Four, see the pictures, enjoy the memorabilia and listen to the audio detailing the fine points. For instance, did you know about Mona Best?  She owned a The Casbah Coffee Club in Liverpool which served as the venue for rock and roll music and she helped the Beatles in those initial years. Her son Pete was the first drummer in the band and was later replaced by Ringo Starr. She was given the title of Mother of Merseybeat.

Enjoy the pics, not the usual ones… The Visiting Card

The first possible selfie taken in 1965

The autograph

Ever heard of Izzie Bravo… she was a Brazilian girl who loved the Beatles so much that on her sixteenth birthday, she flew in with a friend to London to catch a glimpse of her heroes. She went to Abbey Road studios and within minutes of her reaching, the Beatles came out, stopped and chatted with her. She burst into tears. She returned a couple of times and was eventually delighted to be invited to the studio to sing the high harmonies on “Across the Universe.” So, dreams do come true. I too had dreams and I too dreamt of meeting the Awesome Foursome but never had the means of Izzie to land in London…anyway… I got to meet my idols today and stand next to their photographs, dresses and busts.

Next stop was a peep into The Cavern where the Beatles played innumerable times. Today a man sat there singing Imagine… there were still enough people there that day to create the sound of thunder when the song ended.

With joy in my heart and music in my ears, I walked to Mersey side, booked myself on the ferry ride and had an enchanting view of the city from the riverside. With loads of chubby kids on the boat, the ride seemed a lot of fun….. did I say it was only fun? I did have to respond to about fifty mails and calls from frantic office folks who were struggling with the business pressures of April 1…the All Fool’s Day for us insurers.

What’s Liverpool famous for other than the Beatles… you know who? But how could I go to the den of my arch rivals…. No no no…that’s blasphemy…can’t do it. How can a Manchester United fan walk into Anfield and that too just when they had ruthlessly beaten my team seven nil, just a week ago in the same battlefield of Mersey side? Impossible, I said to myself but then I remembered Lennon’s lines…

Imagine there are no countries (teams)
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people, living life in peace.

And I boarded the bus to Anfield, got off and took that One Small Step for Man and a Giant Leap for Mankind. Then I told myself, ok I will see the stadium but not take a tour inside for sure, John please don’t mind. Is it not good enough that I am here and now seeing the huge stadium before me? The statue of the legend Bill Shankly seemed to spread his arms wide and trying to say, Son You’ll Never Walk Alone. 

I stood before The Champions Wall and it sure looked impressive… this is a great place to be and I forgot all the rivalries in my head and began enjoying the place. 

Found myself in the gift shop and even picked a couple of stuff including refrigerator magnets and a small ball for a friend’s son who loved kicking the ball. The kids’ corner was the most fascinating and the best part was that the toddlers insisted on wearing the club clothing even before the parents had paid for them. No wonder each kid, when he or she grows up, is an absolute die-hard fan of the club…never to change colours. When it comes to colours, you need to be extra careful of what you are wearing...Red or Blue..for this is also the town that houses another famous English club, Everton who too have their fans. Since you are a tourist, my daughter had told me, do not wear either of the colours for who knows which street belongs to the Red Gang or the Blue Gang...stay safe, enjoy the trip Dad.

All check boxes ticked, I looked at my itinerary once again…oops… I had missed the Beatles statues at the Merseyside. Hopped off the bus and then took a long walk back and, finally, got my picture of the day standing beside the larger than life size statues of the Liverpool Boys who will always and always remain my idols and their songs the best ever…. No Prince or Queen matters.

And for the places I wrote about in the beginning of the long walk around the famous city, here are the facts. Penny Lane happens to be in the outskirts of Liverpool. So Penny Lane where ‘all the people that come and go, stop and say Hello was out of bounds for me. Happy though that M managed to  see it on her trip five years ago. Then there was the Strawberry Fields which used to be an orphanage and is now the HQ of the Salvation Army in Liverpool. Missed that too. And, finally, Abbey Road happens to be a place in London where there is a studio and the picture of the Beatles crossing this road featured on the cover of an album released in 1969. So there are still mysteries unexplored for another tour. Will do it, maybe ‘When I’m Sixty Four!’

With a loads of happy memories of places visited, things seen and experienced, I boarded my train to ‘Get Back’ to London.  So ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’ and having enjoyed ‘Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band’, I knew for sure that I would sleep well tonight watching ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.’

SS