Ask a Busy Woman: In My Life - My Beatles Tribute

"There are places I'll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I've loved them all
But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more
In my life I love you more" John Lennon

In 1963, The Beatles played the Coventry Theatre and Beatlemania came to the Midlands city close to where I grew up. I feel like I can remember, though I was very small at the time, the images on the local news. The screaming girls, literally crying out their black and white eyes on our tiny television screen in our Leamington Spa home. Barely at school, I can remember the some of the impact of this unique cultural wave. "Love Me Do", "Please, Please Me", "I Saw Her Standing There" - I knew the words back then and despite all the other stuff that rattles about in my skull, I remember them now.

Fast forward to this week and I am paying homage to the voices and lyrics of the ultimate pop group in their home city which is now also home to Number 1 child and her growing family. Number 1 kindly organised for my beloved and me to join the Magical Mystery Tour in the city which is forever honoured through the soundtrack of the sixties.

I came to Liverpool the first time - not this time as we've paid a few visits in the last twelve months - with the preconception of 'another Northern city'. Another Leeds or Manchester, industrial with modern gentrification round the edges and too many chain stores ripping the soul out of the city. I'm a country girl and it takes perhaps too much for me to see beyond that. But climbing on the big yellow (and slightly psychedelic) coach at Albert Dock took me on so much more than a tour of Liverpool. This bus tour takes you on a tour of the lyrics of those amazing and unforgettable songs - a reminder that many of The Beatles's songs were a love song to the city.

I hear you thinking Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields but it's more, so much more.

But first, you should take a seat on the bus with folks from all over the world and the far-flung regions of the UK because the appeal is literally universal. And the folks are young, middle-aged and as old and older than us. The guides, Dale and Charlie, love their subject. Nothing sounds like a lazily repeated anecdote, though every part of this tale is told daily on an hourly basis. Their chirpy dialogue combined with, yes!, songs as appropriate, was simply a joy.

As soon as the bus cruised down to the banks of the Mersey, I was humming away - not to John, Paul, George and Ringo - but to Gerry and the Pacemakers, another of the Merseyside greats, with Ferry Across the Mersey.

The tour takes us to the childhood homes of all of the Fab Four - two now owned by the National Trust and two very much homes to other folk. We pass Brian Epstein's rather posh pad and are reminded of the pivotal role he took in steering the band from skiffle group to the international phenomenon they became. We gaze at the gates of Strawberry Fields (a girls' orphanage where John Lennon unsurprisingly liked to trespass in his teens) and we stand by the oft-replaced Penny Lane road sign. We pass the barber's shop and the number 86 bus stop "in the middle of the roundabout" and we look at the bank where "the banker never wears a mac in the pouring rain - very strange". And between the commentary we sing along to the tracks that are a tapestry of growing up in Liverpool in the 50s and 60s.

Our last stop is, of course, the Cavern Club which has been rebuilt in recent years having been demolished but it stands on the same site (or rather under!) and has been lovingly restored. It's tiny with a stage smaller than the one in our village hall. Imagine standing at the front to hear The Beatles or the Quarrymen as they were in a previous incarnation.

So that's my Beatles tribute and as I write I can confirm that yes, I bought the t-shirt. Or rather Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!