Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Good Morning Good Morning

Good morning Good morning

This is going to get the dorm up gloriously, roused and ready instead of aroused and sleepy.

Good morning Good morning

Wakey Wakey, it’s breakfast with the Beatles!

Good morning, uh!

Oh, but why, Fred? Groaned Ted the Leg, we don’t have to get up for five more minutes, leave it out willya…

Well lucky you! This morning we’ve got an exclusive Beatles chorus to ease you into your schoolday. Only in the senior dorm of the Fifth is this experience possible Ted!

Grrr, moaned Ted; he was never happy that boy Ted. Still his cock up last year gave me my highest ever innings; 59

Nothing to do to save his life, call his wife in

What could I say about my Mum? Three big hugs for my Mum on my birthday. First hug; she bought me a stereo record player. Second hug; she’d ordered Sgt Pepper from the NAAFI even before it was released. Third, and biggest hug of all; she got my Dad to drive his wife in to the boarding school with the first stereo record player it had ever seen. And the first copy of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club band ever heard in a school of 600 boys.

Nothing to say but what a day

Now it was Monday June 19th and everything had changed, what a day. Two more weeks at school and then a stereo summer; my first. I was a stereo boy from now on and music would never be the same again.

how’s your boy been?

I was finally, irredeemably and totally, even unto the furthest nooks of the school, and into every last one of its multitudinous crannies, cool. Cool at school! Just how cool is that?

Nothing to do, it’s up to you

There was a quiet knock on the day, well it was quiet beneath the raucous daybreak exuberance of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

I’ve got nothing to say but it’s O.K.

At long last I wasn’t dependent on Billy and his ancient Dansette, with its dangerously scratchy needle and Billy’s Iron Law of what you could play; what he liked. Even if you still ready to risk terminal vinyl damage at the end of his stylus.

Good morning good morning

Hi Fred, can we come in?

Good morning

It was Danny Bethell and his younger brother, the endlessly humorous Laurel and Hardy of our house.

Going to work don’t want to go, feeling low down

The brothers had just poked their heads around the door.

Can we come in and listen to the Beatles? You can’t keep them to yourself you know you lucky bastard! What did you do Fred; blackmail your Mum?

Heading for home you start to roam, then you’re in town

They didn’t need to ask if I had it. That was redundant. Whatever this tumescently resplendent noise was it was definitely the Beatles, even if they were now going weird forever.

Everybody knows there’s nothing doing

The run up to Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band had seen a remarkably bullish newspaper campaign announcing it’s importance and brilliance long before it was in the shops, unlike Revolver which everyone ignored in the World Cup summer of 1966. So everyone knew it was out and was gagging for it.

Everything is closed, it’s like a ruin

Ted You WANKER! Shouted Danny. Breakfast!!!

Everyone you see is half asleep

Bollocks!!

And you’re on your own, you’re in the street

We’ll go on our own and eat everything you tosser!

Danny knew how to raise the tone, and the energy, of any conversation he was involved in.

After a while you start to smile, now you feel cool

Bloody hell it’s great! And in stereo, you lucky bastard!! Where’s that multi-coloured sleeve? Oh! I don’t know; why have the Beatles become a Lonely Hearts Band? They must see more girls in a day than we see all year…

Then you decide to take a walk by the old school

Come on, let’s go for breakfast?

There’s only one more track after this and it’s great.

What’s it called?

Day In The Life.

Day in the bloody boarding school more like! Come on, breakfast first, we’ll listen later.

Nothing has changed it’s still the same

Still at least all my CSE’s are over.

I’ve still got two bloody GCE’s left (It was impossible to talk to Danny without a verbal bloodbath)

Anything difficult?

Dunno, they’re exams aren’t they? I’ll keep revising until I take them.

I’ve got nothing to say but it’s O.K.

Are you still in the school team?

Yep, it’s the RAF at Gutersloh next week

That’s tough!

Yeah bloody enormous man mountains!

Good morning good morning, GOOD MORNING UH!

Oh Fred I’ve got Between The Buttons. Do you mind if I I bring it over so I can play it in stereo?

Is it a stereo record?

Course it is!

You’ll have to let me see, so I check that it’s a blue sleeve.

People running ’round it’s five o’clock

OK! When can I bring it over?

Just before five tonight, after I’ve played Sgt Pepper mind.

Great! Stones and The Beatles, we’ll enjoy the show…

Everywhere in town it’s getting dark

Everyone you see is full of life

Breakfast, in our converted German Army barracks in Hamm, was worth getting up for even though it was some distance away. We had to go down three floors, to get out of Balmoral, across two blocks and then into the ground floor below Edinburgh.

It’s time for tea and meet the wife

Always bloody tea, which I never drank, but at least they were a couple of German serving girls on duty, including the sexy blonde one I’d finally tried my first phrase of German on; “kann ich bitter ein kus haben?” Good grammar, I cross checked it in the library, but completely ineffective; except she smiles at me from time to time, which was usually worth a wank. Glorious word kus…

Somebody needs to know the time, glad that I’m here

Pubescent British boys and all we see on a daily basis are the German cooks and the German matron’s young assistant. Christ, German girls are sexy; both of them.

Watching the skirts you start to flirt, now you’re in gear

Cheer up Fred it’s the House summer party next week. Danny unerringly interrupted my German reverie, teenage boys always know when other teenage boys are fantasising; we’re sensitive like that; and sore, sometimes.

Carol Budge and all the fifth form dolly birds will be ready and waiting for us all night long, it’ll be mini-skirt heaven. Danny’s eyes rolled lasciviously as he said this…

Yeah ready and waiting for that one last kiss right at the end of the very last dance!

Go to a show you hope she goes

Is this the one where we have an official partner from the Girls School?

No, its the summer party you just have to take your chances, but it’s a summer night and you know girls…

I’ve got nothing to say but it’s O.K.

That’s OK, Carol said she’d dance with me.

Is that lazy bastard Ted Legge still in Bed?

Good morning good morning

Still in bed, Ted? CLASS IN FIVE!!!

Beatles on again if you don’t get up

GOOD MORNING GOOD MORNING

Sorry Danny, gotta go. I’ve got revision in the science block…