“Come on John, like that would have stopped you”
“Aye, Stu, that’s true. Come ‘ead Gabby, give us old timers a kiss”
Gabrielle laughed along with everyone else. Seemed John and Stu were craving attention tonight, and were being louder and well, more Liverpudlian then ever. She leaned over and kissed them both on the cheek. “Yer a pedophile, you are” she told him, still laughing “you know that Johnny boy”
Her birthday. So far she had been given five boxes of cereal from each of the Beatles plus Stu. John also gave her the promised spoon. It was signed, as he signed everything these days telling people that “That’ll be worth money some day, you know”
“Thank you all” she said, miming a proper accent “For this special occasion, I shall never forget it”
“You probably will” said Pete “Seen as you never remember anything after you get hangover, d‘you”
“Oh fuck off, Pete” she laughed.
“Christ,” George groaned, “Bruno is waving at us. We better get up there”
There were collective moans and sighs and complaints,, mostly coming from John, (“ Do wee have to? I’m tired. My feet hurt, I don’t want to play, Do we have to? Why do we have to? This isn’t fair”) as they trotted off towards the stage.
Gabrielle watched them all plug in and then say a few rude things in German to the crowd, and getting an appropriate roar of applause for their unruliness before they started to play. Astrid tugged in her sleeve to get her attention. “Gabrielle” she said “I got you a present, as well”
“Oh, Astrid, you didn’t have to do that.” Gabrielle giggled, she looked up at Stuart “That’s so sweet of you, you didn’t have to really” she said
“What?” he said jokingly “This is just from her, I got you Cornflakes be happy with what you got”
“Ja” Astrid said, she hit Stuart affectingly on the arm and gave him a quiet scolding look. Gabrielle hoped they didn’t start snogging again. It really was almost depressing the were so much in love. Instead Astrid slid a small package across to her. “Here, it was no trouble really. Open it, I think you’ll like it. Ja?”
“I know she’ll like it” Stuart echoed quietly
“Ja, ok” she nodded and slowly tore off the paper. It was a camera. Not a very new one, but not ancient either, and it obviously had gotten some use out of it from the way the leather strap was fraying around the edges “Oh, god, thanks!” she exclaimed sincerely, turning the camera over in her hands and looking it from all angles.
“You said you like to take pictures, and so I thought why not give you one of my old cameras, Ja?” Astrid was beaming obviously thrilled she liked the gift “I teach you some things about it, ok? You can take pictures of your Beatles too, Ja?”
Gabrielle laughed and enveloped Astrid in a warm hug “Oh, ta, so much”
A guitar made a “warrrrrgh” sound as either John or George got to close to their amplifiers. “Scuse me” John “Would the two ladies in the back of the room. The ones with all the cornflakes, could you please have Miss. Gabrielle stand up”
“What?” she placed the camera back on the table and groaned “Why do they always have to be so embarrassing”
Stuart laughed “You should know they get sick pleasure out of it by now, Gabby”
“Come on Gabby stand up” said Paul into the other microphone
“Mach Shao!” someone yelled
“We’ll fucking mach shao it in a bit mate” said Paul while John continued encouraging Gabby to stand up.
She whined and stood up pulling Astrid up with her. “Aw, thank you luv. There she is ladies and gents! And guess what…. It’s her birthday as well, give her a hand”
“Oh god”
No one clapped, they just yelled for ‘Mach Shao’.
John decided on another tactic. He yelled something in German with a great flourish of his hand. This time the crowd clapped and whistled and yelled things at her.
“There you go, Happy Birthday luv.” said John, “We’re gonna do you a song now, ‘Twist and Shout’ because it’s the only one we could manage to fit ‘Gab’ into.”
Gabrielle flopped back down in her seat, Astrid was laughing historically, presumably at what John said. It was something about her, but she didn’t want to know what, lest, she might cripple John from the knowledge of it.