The guide

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This weeks prompt from Sunday Scribblings is 'Guide'

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You see them in every city. Marching along holding a brolly or a flag-on-stick aloft, with a straggling crocodile of tourists trying to keep up.

The tour guide. Sometimes a student, sometimes a prim lady, or a moustachioed ex colonel!

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“Follow me, this way that way, stop, gather round”

Some tourists listen intently, hands cupped around their ears whilst others talk among themselves seemingly unaware that the guide is using all of her training to try and find something interesting to say about a dowdy building or a pigeon-poo strewn statue.

A group of Japanese disciples shuffle along stopping every few seconds to take another photograph. Bus, snap, church, snap, taxi, snap, pavement, snap, sky, snap.

A gaggle of giggling schoolgirls turn as one, as a crowd of bored looking boys slouch past in the opposite direction.

“Look here, look there, look left, look right, look up, look down”

Twenty ladies of a certain age, sensibly dressed for the walk through the city, concentrate on their guides every word. They stop her now and then to ask another question. “How interesting, I say, goodness me, well I never, that’s really fascinating isn’t it Doris”

At the end of the journey the weary walkers bid farewell to their guide who wanders between them, hand held out in the hope of gathering in a little extra cash. Then with renewed enthusiasm it’s off to collect the next band of followers.

Thinks - “off we go again, what have I got here, excuse me, I’m talking, concentrate please, my feet hurt, why do I do this?”