Becky Bananas (4 page)

She’ll be one of the guests when I’m on
This is Your Life!

I don’t mind her calling me Becky Bananas. I’ve got used to it. Once I almost wrote it on an exam paper! I got as far as:

and I had to go back and change it:

We didn’t have Mrs Rowe then, which is just as well or she’d have made one of her remarks like “I see we nearly stumbled at the first hurdle, Rebecca!” She said that to Sarah once, when Sarah wrote the date wrong. She can be ever so sarcastic.

And she
always
always calls us by our full names: Rebecca, Joanna, Suzanne. It’s like she’s scared of being too friendly. She says, “You do not shorten my name. Why should I shorten yours?”

It’s hard to think how you could shorten Rowe. Sarah sometimes calls her Rosy, only not to her face. I don’t think anyone would dare call her that to her face!

She’s all right, really, Mrs Rowe. She’s very fair. She doesn’t pick on people or have favourites, like some teachers. I think she’s one of those that Gran would have said their bark is worse than their bite. I wonder if she’d be one of the guests?

She might be! When I was off school last year she came to see me, which not everybody did. When I told Sarah, Sarah pulled a face and said that if she was off school a visit from Rosy was the last thing she’d want.

“Freeze the blood in your veins, that would!”

But she was really nice and not at all sarcastic. Also, she brought me a book of ballet photographs and a get-well card with a picture of Darcey Bussell on it. I
wonder how she knew that Darcey is my ace favourite dancer???

Maybe she’s seen the photos I’ve got pinned inside my locker! But she still must have gone out and bought it specially. Not everyone would have done that. So now I think that seeming to be cold and unfeeling is just her manner, like Sarah is always laughing and making jokes so that maybe you would think she doesn’t care about things, but that would not be true. We wouldn’t be best friends if she didn’t care. For instance, she cried ever so when her favourite goldfish died.

He was called Golden Boy and it was particularly terrible and tragic as her little sister Tasha took him out of the tank when no one was looking and he squiggled through her hands and fell on the floor, and instead of putting him back she got scared and ran screaming for her mum. By the time her mum got there it was too late and he had expired (which is simply another way of saying died).

Sarah was really sad. She said that although goldfish don’t have much in the way of personality it is very upsetting to think of them suffocating on the living-room carpet. I can see that it would be. Especially if it happens to be your favourite one.

We once wrote out long lists of all our favourite things, Sarah and me. We made scrapbooks and stuck them in there, with little drawings and pictures that we’d cut from magazines. Of course we were only young then. I expect if I looked at my list now I would cringe and think “How childish”. I mean, for instance, when I was six years old my favourite food was –
jelly babies!

I wonder if it would be fun to make up a new list, now that I am more mature? I think I will!

Favourite colour – Blue. I don’t know why, but it makes me happy. It is just one of those things.

Favourite book –
Ballet Shoes
by Noel Streatfeild, even though it is old-fashioned. And my favourite character from
Ballet Shoes
is Posy, because she is the one who becomes a dancer!

Favourite ballet –
Swan Lake.
Odette is what I want to dance more than anything else! My favourite part is where she is on point, leaning back against Prince Siegfried, and he has his arms round her.

I think that is so beautiful and romantic!

Favourite TV programme –
Ask Auntie.
I have to say that because it is Mum’s programme! I like it because I like to watch Mum. I suppose if Mum wasn’t in it I might say …
General Practice.
I
really
like that.

Sarah says it’s fuddy-duddy. That is an expression she recently read in a book and now she keeps repeating it like a parrot. Everything that she thinks dull and boring is fuddy-duddy. She says that
General Practice
is for old people. It is true that there are quite a lot of old people in it, but sometimes there are children and that is interesting. Zoë likes it, too. We have thought of writing an episode together and sending it to the BBC.

Favourite Film –
Little Women.
I have seen it three times and would like to see it again, even though I always drench about ten hankies when Beth gets sick after holding poor Mrs Hummel’s baby. This is because I know that she is going to die, though she doesn’t actually do so in the film. (But I have read
Good Wives
and that is how I know.) Last time I watched it Mum got worried and said it was too upsetting for me. She would like it if I only watched things that made me laugh, not things that make me weep. I know she means well but you cannot cocoon
people. “Wrap them in cotton wool” is what Gran used to say. I don’t want to be wrapped in cotton wool. I want to watch
Little Women
again and again!

Jo of course is my favourite character. She is Sarah’s too. I think she must be everyone’s. The reason she is my favourite is because she is so full of life. And also because she is brave. Cutting off her hair and behaving like a boy at a time when girls were not supposed to behave like boys.

I wish I were as brave as Jo, but I don’t think I am. If I were, I wouldn’t choose blue as my favourite colour. I would choose … red!

I bet Jo would choose red. Red is bold and exciting. She would probably think blue is a bit boring. Uncle Eddy says it is the colour of peace and rest. That makes it sound like an old person’s colour. Does it mean that
I
am like an old person?

No! It is simply that I like blue things. Blue sky. Blue sea. Blue flowers. Forget-me-nots and pansies. Harebells, bluebells. And the little trumpety things that Mum calls periwinkles.

Favourite flower – My favourite of all flowers is sweet peas!

I love sweet peas because they are very dainty and fragile. Like butterflies. Gran used to grow them at the end of her garden. They grew up the fence that looked onto the railway line.

Sweet peas come in all beautiful colours. Pinks and mauves and whites and purples. Scarlets and lemons and even a sort of pale orange. But not, I think, blue. That is strange! Fancy having a favourite flower that doesn’t come in my favourite colour.

When I was little I called them fairy flowers. I even made up a ballet for them.

I can’t remember the steps now but I expect they were just skipping and hopping. I was only about four. I didn’t know steps like
pas de chat
or
arabesque.

Let me think of some more of my favourite things.

Favourite Animal – The cat. Mum says cats are like liquid ornaments. She says she’d rather have a cat sitting on the mantelpiece than a Ming vase. I’m not quite sure what a Ming vase is, but I know that it is something very precious and expensive.

Siamese cats are
quite
expensive.

They are also very beautiful and intelligent, and also they talk all the time, in a yowling sort of way. Also, they have blue eyes!

Kitty had green ones. She was just an ordinary cat. Not like Bella and Bimbo. They are pedigrees. But she slept on my bed and she cuddled and purred. She was my very favourite cat of all.