Magical Mystery Tour Part 1 : In Anticipation of Our Trip To Liverpool by Mr Alfred N.Muggins

(Mr and Mrs Muggins trip to Liverpool : The story of the Passport and the Marriage Licence. (It’s a long story, and I am not sure that I want to bore you with all of it! (or myself!))

     “How do you spell Liverpool?” asked Mrs Muggins typically.

     “Well the Liverpudlians themselves seem to spell it Liverpoool, by their pronunciation I mean,” offered Alfred knowledgeably, spelling it out by letters for his wife’s benefit.

     “You sound as if you know a lot about the place?” she suggested.

     “Well I have only actually been to Liverpool twice! Once for an Open Day at the University, when I might possibly have chosen, or been selected, to go there for University!” It was not an interview, but he was shown around a bit at the campus back in 1982. He quite liked the place, but he didn’t really remember it very clearly at all now. He did remember a nice young lady, a couple of years older, in a leather jacket, with long hair, showing him around, and remembered thinking she was ‘cool’.

     When he mentioned this to Mrs Muggins she visibly prickled.

     “It was a long time ago my love, and she was older than me, just doing her student hospitality duties! I assure you, nothing at all happened between us!” Thankfully Mrs Muggins appeared to relax again.

     “The other time was with you, my dear! Remember, we flew to the South of Spain, the Costa Del Sol, Benalmadena, for a holiday, from Manchester Airport to Malaga Airport, and inexplicably returned to John Lennon Airport in Liverpoool, and we met the Uncle and Auntie of a famous Liverpool comedian on the bus going back to the centre of the city to catch the train. Then we had some lovely fish and chips in a chippy outside the railway station.

     “And when we got back to our hometown I had to carry and partly wheel the heavy cases all the way from the railway station to the other side of the bus station to to catch the bus which got us home. Usually we parked in an airport carpark, but this time we had to use public transport because of the different airports. Even though that was only a few years ago I don’t think I would be able to do that now! It would kill me!”

     “But, in a different sense I have visited Liverpool many times, in my head!” declared Alfred.

     “Oh, how do you make that out?” asked Mrs Muggins.”

     “Well you know I am a bit of a Beatles fan?” said Alfred.

     “Of course you are,” she agreed. “I know that!”

     “Well every time I listened to my Beatles records part of me came to Liverpool!”

     “Oh yeah! You and 55 million other Beatles fans! (And that’s just in the UK!)” countered Mrs Muggins.

     “Well there you are! We have all been to Liverpool, many times, so to speak,” agreed Alfred. “I converted to The Beatles on New Year’s Eve 1976 (just in time for the New Year 1977!)! I was 13 years old. And I do remember seeing the Yellow Submarine on TV in something like 1970 when I was about 6!”