Residents on a Nottinghamshire road have been left perplexed as to why a mysterious plate of bananas keeps appearing on their street corner once a month.
The bananas – always whole but peeled – have been showing up on a regular basis in the residential area of Beeston for more than a year, residents say, and people are keen to find out who is leaving them there.
“I think it has been happening for at least a year. I see them all the time, it’s difficult to remember exactly when,” said Claire Fenwick, who lives nearby. “I’ve never seen anyone leaving them. They could be for animals but I’ve never seen a peck taken out of them.
“My friend will message me to say, oh, the bananas are back today. But we have no idea where they’re coming from, or who is doing it.”
The bananas – about 15 to 20 are left each time – are placed on a plate opposite a church on the corner of Abbey Road and Wensor Avenue in Beeston, a town about three miles south-west of Nottingham.
Some residents said they were oblivious to their presence and had walked past the spot multiple times without noticing them. “What bananas?” asked one woman peering out of her window a couple of doors down.
Others said they always noticed them and were desperate to know the story behind them. James Oviedo said he walked his dog past the corner nearly every day, and thought the bananas had been appearing for two years.
“It’s quite strange. There’s always a big bunch of them peeled on the plate and they always appear to be drizzled with what seems to be honey,” he said. “I thought it was perhaps a religious thing at first […], or maybe someone just likes to feed the insects or something.”
One of the main theories is that the bananas are being placed there as a religious offering.
In Hinduism, offering bananas to deities is a common practice, with the fruit said to represent abundance, fertility and good fortune. Honey also has symbolism in Hinduism, considered to add natural sweetness and nourishment in offerings.
Others think that perhaps someone is trying to feed the local wildlife, although the bananas don’t seem to get eaten.
“We would love to know why they’re being left there. We’ve all been discussing it in our WhatsApp group, we’re completely puzzled,” said Lauren, who lives next to the street corner where the bananas are left.
She said they had been appearing ever since she moved in about a year ago, and thought they were left during the night, or early in the morning.
“I’ve walked past in the evening and there’s been nothing there, then [the plate] is there the next morning,” she said. “I hope it’s nothing untoward like someone trying to poison animals.”
When the Guardian visited the site on Monday, the only remaining evidence of the latest offering was a pile of about 15 bananas discarded in the hedgerow; the plate had been removed.
Recently a sign with a request appeared on the corner: “Please, respectfully, no more bananas! The uncollected plates and rotting bananas leave such a mess. Wishing a happy new year to you all!”
Clare Short, a local volunteer litter-picker who put the sign up, said she took it down as she didn’t “want to make it like a feud, I don’t want it to become a big thing”.
She said the bananas appeared on the second of each month, and it was a “special thing” for whoever left them and she “wished them well”.
“But if they could come back and clean up the mess a few days later that would be lovely,” she told the BBC. “I’m going to keep an eye on it and keep cleaning up the mess.”
