When I’m 64, I’ll still love The Beatles

Ges on the Box

THE day before we went to live in Aden, in 1963, my boyfriend sang “All My Loving” - you know, “Close Your Eyes and I’ll Kiss You...” and so on, to me.

I didn’t and he didn’t. You don’t when you’re both nine do you? Well, not in those days anyway. He was called David Morris and was really, really nice . . . he used to bring those Love Hearts sweets to school and put all the ones that said ‘I heart you’ on my desk.

At least, I think it was him. . . it could have been gawky Stephen, who had red hair, buck teeth and dried egg around his mouth now I come to think of it.

I remember The Beatles getting the MBE in ’65. My friend’s dad had one (he was in the Army, they’d all got them) and he sent it back as a protest. She didn’t speak to him for seven weeks. I did — well, I had to because I was the intermediary for her pocket money.

By 1967 we’d moved to Cyprus and I was 13. By then, they’d stopped touring. Not that that mattered, I was never in the UK long enough to have seen them anyway. “Sgt Peppers” had just been released. I knew every word — “When I’m 64” was my least favourite. Hey, whoever gets to that age and still wants to be loved? Unthinkable.

When Him Indoors made an honest woman of me last year, “In My Life” was played as we exchanged rings. The lyrics make me cry. My mascara ran but he didn’t seem to mind.

The Beatles are something we have in common. Him Indoors isn’t as big a fan as I am (Dylan and Springsteen are more his scene) but — bless him — he sticks on “Rubber Soul”, or “Hard Day’s Night”, or “Sgt Pepper” (or one of the many other Fab Four CDs I own) whenever we’re in the car and sings along with me as I murder the tunes. Now that’s love for you.

Occasionally, he slips on a Springsteen (we had the Boss playing “Born to Run” as we left the register office, the new Mr and Mrs) and I don’t mind. You have to humour them, don’t you?

But Dylan I can’t take. He can’t hold a tune, his songs last forever and I don’t know any of the words except “Blowin In the Wind”, so I can’t sing along. That could, of course, be his intention.

You would be correct in thinking I watched back-to-back Beatles last Saturday.

I cried. For lost youth (mine and theirs), for a dead George Harrison (who I still fancy), for evocative lyrics and Lennon’s sexy legs . . . and for the fact that I am much closer to being 64 that I ever thought I would be . . . . and, yes, I do still want to be loved.