In My Life - George Harrison/The Beatles

Chapter Twenty: Memory Lane

As soon as she stepped foot off the train, suitcase in hand, Connie let out a deep sigh. For the first time in ages, she was home.

It was a feeling like no other, a minute of pure joy but also relief as she realised how little her surroundings had changed. She'd changed, and so had the rest of the world, but Liverpool appeared to have remained a safe haven, a perfect example of Northern life compared to what she'd grown used to in the South.

Knowing only a few days in advance that she'd be returning, Connie's father hadn't managed to get the time off work to pick her up from the station, and no one else was available either. The last time she'd visited home Paul had picked her up, but the chaos of beatlemania meant that something like that was now impossible. Not that Connie really cared, anyway. It was an hours walk from the station to her home on Forthlin Road and after not seeing her home city in so long she couldn't imagine not taking the time to reintroduce herself to the sights, so Connie decided that if she had to walk, she was going to walk all down memory lane.

She headed straight into town as soon as she was out of the station, and without really realising she'd gotten to Mathew Street and was standing outside the Cavern Club. She'd not been back since 1962 when she'd gone to watch one of the Beatles' lunch time sets, when John had pulled her up on stage as a joke. Bands always used to do that in the Cavern, except it was Cilla they'd usually pull up to join them since everyone knew she had an amazing voice, and so John had pulled Connie up as a joke, forgetting she was actualy a decent singer. It had been a wild night and she couldn't help but smile at the memory. Part of her wanted to go in and check out the band playing the lunch time set, but she knew it would be no fun without any of her friends, and she dreaded going in and one of the managers spotting her. The last time she'd been in they'd tried to talk her into covering a shift, and as much as she missed working as a barmaid, she didn't have the time or the energy for it, so she kept walking further into town.

The docks was the next stop on her nostalgia trip, the smell of the water instantly taking her back to her teen years, the boats reminding her of her hatred of sea-travel and intense seasickness. She'd never realised until she'd moved to London how lucky she had been growing up so close to the sea. It was so beautiful and scenic, and there was no where in London that quite matched up to it. The great old Liver building was across the road, and the sight of the Liverbird on top made her feel almost patriotic to the city. She remembered all the times she'd walked down that road, be it with her parents or her friends, remembering all the times she and George would get chips and bring them down to the water front. They were nice, peaceful memories, the ones that came to her when she was feeling particularly sad in London.

After considering a walk down to her old school to see the bus stop where she used to meet George and Paul every day on their way home, she decided against it. Instead she hopped on a bus to Penny Lane, deciding that her craving for a steak and kidney pie was too much to handle, the chip shops in London not even coming close to the Penny Lane one.

Connie hadn't been on a bus since she was eighteen and had just moved to London. In her first week down south she'd been too scared to use the tube so had thought the bus service would be fine to get her to and from work, except it was completely different and the different systems left her feeling confused and the driver irritated. After one incident where the driver and the passenger waiting behind her yelled at her, Connie decided never to use the London buses again and instead stuck to the tube, which was less scary and actually quite exciting.

The bus in Liverpool, however, was nothing but simple, and for once she got on it in perfect time unlike when she was a teenager and was constantly running after it. After she paid she went to sit on the top deck, thick with cigarette smoke as it always was, sitting at the very back where she always used to, staring out the window as the streets went by, so focused on the nostalgia that she completely missed her stop and had to get off at the bus station down the other side of Penny Lane. She wasn't bothered though, since it meant she got to take a walk down the high street.