Someone keeps leaving plates of peeled bananas on a British street corner

Cassie Brummitt can’t remember exactly when she first saw bananas.

It wasn’t long after that I moved to Beeston, a small town outside Nottingham, England, about two years ago.

She was walking past the intersection of Abbey Road and Winsor Street, and there they were – a bowl containing more than 15 peeled bananas “all in a pile.”

“I remember thinking that was very strange,” Brummett said. As it happens Host Neil Coxall.

This wouldn’t be her last encounter with the bananas in that corner. She says the amount of banana varies. Sometimes they are in a bowl. Sometimes they’re on a plate. But they are always peeled and stacked, left near a fence at the same intersection, like some kind of potassium-rich offering.

“It seems to be some kind of secret.”

At first, Brummett felt as if she had found a secret that no one knew, as if the sightings were “her own little thing.”

But then she learned from social media that bananas are a long-standing — and sometimes contentious — local mystery.

“I don’t think anyone knows (where they come from). Or if they do, they keep quiet about it,” she said. “But yeah, I have no idea. I’ve heard they might show up early in the morning or late at night, so it seems kind of secret.”

Beeston resident James Oviedo walks his dog by that corner almost every day, and says the bananas have been showing up “for at least two years.”

“There’s always a big bunch of them peeled up on the plate, and they always seem to be covered in what appears to be honey,” he told CBC.

“It’s very strange, and honestly, I’m surprised it took this long for people to start asking questions.”

The neighborhood is residential, but Banana Corner isn’t in front of anyone’s house, Oviedo says. So, as far as he knew, no one had captured footage of the fruit leaver in action.

According to a recent report by BBC News. Bananas seem to appear like clockwork on the second day of every month.

“I kind of wondered if maybe it was an emotional thing. Like, I don’t know, maybe like a superstition,” Brummitt said. “Sometimes people leave bits of food for the fairies at the end of the garden, for example.”

But if so, the fairies don’t seem to be hungry.

“It usually starts to rot, and eventually someone will throw it in the bushes next to the corner,” Oviedo said. “The board often ends up disappearing, and I think it’s because people collecting trash remove it. I’ve also seen the board end up on the side of the road broken before.”

The secret of Canadian bananas

This strange British phenomenon echoes another banana-related mystery that has long been unfolding in northern Canada.

For years, someone has been dumping banana peels at a stop sign on a concrete traffic island at the intersection of the North Klondike and Alaska Highways in Whitehorse, Resident Jenny MacKinnon said in an email after hearing about Piston Bananas As it happens.

“It is a fact known to most locals, without any context or anyone acknowledging it,” she said.

Louis Rifkind, who often rides his bike past the traffic stop, says he’s been seeing the crusts for “at least a decade.”

He’s heard speculation that it started as a protest against composting regulations, but he suspects the real story may be much more mundane.

“Maybe it’s just a routine, you know, that this guy, who has a banana maybe every day or whatever, whenever he comes into town, he just used to throw it away,” he told Coxall.

“Please, respectfully: no more bananas!”

Meanwhile, back in Beeston, rotting fruit has become a nuisance and an eyesore for some residents.

One frustrated neighbor recently went so far as to put up a sign saying: “Please, respectfully: No more bananas!!”

“Unassembled dishes and moldy bananas leave such a mess!” The sign goes on to say. “Happy New Year to you all! From a Nottingham Clean Street cleaner volunteer.”

Oviedo said that was of no use. The bananas kept coming.

When Brummett saw the sign, she was surprised that someone was bothered by bananas. For her part, she has come to appreciate the simple thrill of learning about a strange local mystery.

Plus, she says, it gives people something fun to talk about.

“It doesn’t really hurt anyone, and it’s brought me a little bit of happiness, you know, just walking down the street,” she said. “It’s weird, and there’s nothing wrong with things being a little weird.”