The way

I emerged from my office this evening to a town awash. Just a few minutes round the corner, I was approached by a hesitant elderly lady wearing a purple beret. She and her friend in a car up the road were trying to get back to a b&b over on the other side of town and were "completely lost". Did I know the way? As it happens, I didn't so I extracted my portable telephone from the pocket of my overcoat and used the map app to give her directions. Once we'd gotten those straight, she seemed quite pleased and headed off into the night. I turned round and there, right in front of me, was an Irishmen with spikey white hair, wearing a black coat. He'd seen me giving directions to the old lady - did I perhaps know the way back to his hotel? It sounded familiar but I wasn't entirely sure so out came me fern again. and we sorted out the way. I told him "I'm not an official tour guide you know!"and his response was "Well, perhaps you should be!", before he too bounded off down the dark street.
A few minutes later, I boarded the public omnibus and sat there, watching the sodium streetlamps flick by, one by one. Mere moments into the journey, just across the aisle a burly man in a woolly hat and donkey jacket leaned over and asked me in very shakey English whether he'd gotten on the right bus! I assured him that he had and he promptly launched into a heavily accented anecdote about going shopping at "Lindill'...he meant "Lidl".
Clearly, today, for one day only at least, I looked like a man who knew where he was going....