The Tour Guide Who Ran Out of Facts
A free B2-level English story for language learners, readable online in English, with an option to listen via the free Storyteller app.
When his summer job's folder of town facts runs out halfway through a walking tour, Barnaby starts making things up, and one quiet tourist is taking notes.
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Barnaby had been hired to lead walking tours of his small harbor town for the summer, mostly because nobody else had applied. The job came with a laminated map, a bright yellow cap, and a folder of facts put together by the town council years ago.
The folder was thin. By the third stop, the old clock tower, Barnaby had already told his group everything it contained. The tower was built in 1902, and the clock had been running five minutes fast ever since.
Eight tourists were looking at him, waiting for more. He probably should have admitted the truth. Instead, he pointed at a small window near the top of the tower.
"That window," he said, "is where the clockmaker lived. He refused to come down for eleven years, because he was convinced the town would steal his gears."
The tourists laughed and took photos. Encouraged, Barnaby kept going. The fountain in the square, he explained, had been designed by a sailor who was homesick for the sea. The crooked lamppost outside the bakery had been hit by a runaway cheese wheel in the 1950s. He was starting to enjoy himself.
Only one person wasn't taking photos. She was an older woman in a green raincoat, and after every story she wrote something down in a small notebook.
At the end of the tour, she waited until the others had left. "Young man," she said, "my name is Imelda Ross. I've been the town's volunteer historian for thirty years."
Barnaby felt his face turn hot. He tried to think of an excuse, but nothing came to mind.
"The clockmaker story is nonsense," she continued. "The cheese wheel is nonsense. The sailor is nonsense." She closed her notebook. "They were also the first stories anyone has actually enjoyed on that tour since it started."
Then she told him that the town's real history was far stranger than anything he had invented. The clock ran fast because the mayor in 1902 had wanted everyone to arrive early for church. The fountain had been paid for by a man who lost a bet about the weather.
"The council's folder leaves all of that out," she said. "They thought it was undignified."
The next morning, Barnaby found a thick envelope that had been pushed under the door of the tourist office. Inside were forty pages of handwritten notes, each one marked with a date and a source. On the last page, Imelda had added a short message.
"Real facts only from now on. But you may keep the cheese wheel."
