It was starting to be that time in London when the rain literally never stops, and it is unwise for anyone to go out of doors without the proper, protective rain gear. Somehow, I survived this entire time period with no boots, no waterproof jacket, no appropriate head gear, none of this, except for an old umbrella that barely managed to open without one of its wires protruding violently close to innocent bystanders’ eyes. For four months I wore an old pair of black vans with matching holes that exposed my big toes and many other parts of my feet. For some reason I was never able to find the right replacement; nothing seemed right. Anyway, on one of these rainy, and of course chilly, afternoons, Lauren and I, finding nothing more productive to do, decided to find Abbey Road. We looked it up online and took the Tube as close to the address as possible, and then figured we could take a bus from there. I had this fishy feeling that something was going to go wrong, because we had never really been to this part of town we were going, and we weren’t even sure if what we had looked up was really THE Abbey Road, or just some other road that happened to also be called Abbey Road. But we went anyway, because Lauren was confident, and while I was not, as usual, I wanted to try to find it anyway.
We took the Tube to this stop that was kind of near this other stop where we had once gone to this football game (at this point I don’t really remember the exact names of any of these places, and you’re just going to have to take my word for it). Although it was only about three in the afternoon, I could already feel the onset of sundown, and the sky delicately changing its hue from a light grey to a darker, more sinister cement-grey. With maps and umbrellas in hand we began the trek, never finding a bus that would take us in the right direction. After what seemed like miles, perhaps two, we began poking our heads in the little businesses that were interspersed between the gentrified, picturesque houses, asking, without much hope, “where we might find Abbey Road, you know, like The Beatles?” Most of these bakery and French launderette owners did not offer us answers in a language we could really understand, and after many of these encounters, one was finally able to assure us that we were walking in the right direction. Literally three hours had passed since we had left our flat, but we continued on, determined to have that picture, the proof that we had been there.
Finally we were on Abbey Road. But where was the cross walk? It turned out that finding the road was not the end of our journey, but just another beginning. The rain soaked up my poor little exposed toes, and although we tried not to admit it aloud, we were both soaked, freezing, and loosing hope. Each time we came to a cross walk one of us would proudly declare that we had found it, that it “totally looks like the picture” only to discover that no, that they all looked the same, that we had no way of knowing. Then, eventually, when nighttime officially fell, it became obvious that we had found it. There was the recording studio, and the graffiti, and love notes to John and Paul and the other guys, all in front of a street where cars whizzed past, not giving a second thought. After several embarrassing tries, we finally got the pictures, after nearly being run over. They are taken at night, of us alone, because there was no one standing around willing to take a picture of both of us together. We got it, but after all that work, the picture kind of makes me wonder why we cared so much. The whole thing was a pretty nerdy endeavor, but then again, most things Lauren and I did were lame, in a really good way.
