Becky Bananas: This Is Your Life

It said in a book I read that if you want something badly enough you’ll get it, but only if you keep it in front of you the whole time, like a vision, and “work steadily towards it”. That is what I am doing. I am keeping Wonderland in front of me and I am working towards it.

I told this to Uncle Eddy and he squeezed my hand and said, “That’s my girl! Go for it!”

I am going for it. Definitely, absolutely, and without question. I AM GOING TO WONDERLAND. And maybe Sarah could come with us. That would be fun!

It would be lovely if Zoë could come as well, but I know her Mum couldn’t afford it and I don’t think she’d let us pay because she’s what Mum calls “proud”. That means she doesn’t like accepting charity, even for Zoë. But I could always get Mum to ask. It would be brilliant if Zoë could come! She would be so excited and we could keep it in front of us together. That would be like double determination, and then we would be bound to go.

If only one of them could come, it would have to be Zoë, because although Sarah is my oldest friend, and my best friend, Zoë is my special friend. And Sarah could go to Wonderland any time she wanted, so for her it wouldn’t be such a treat.

I think it is ever so unfair that some people are rich and some people are poor. Like it is unfair that some people are born ugly and some people are born beautiful, and some are born stupid while others are born clever.

I know what Uncle Eddy would say. He would say, “That’s the way the cookie crumbles, kiddo.”

He is always using these quaint and colourful expressions. Sometimes I try using them in essays, but Mrs Rowe just puts big exclamation marks by them.

All I can say is that whoever crumbles the cookies doesn’t make a very good job of it, what with big heaps here, and little heaps there, and even occasionally just crumbs.

Even sometimes nothing at all.

Being born, I must say, is a very strange and unsatisfactory experience. Why is it, for instance, that no one can ever remember it? You would think you would remember such an amazing event. For nine whole months you live in the dark, all warm and safe and tucked away, with nothing bad happening to you, and then quite suddenly you’re pushed out into the world in really a very brutal rough fashion, like being squeezed headfirst out of a tube, gasping for breath and wondering whatever can be going on.

I would think it must be quite frightening. Maybe that is why you don’t remember it. Maybe it is so terrible that your brain seals it away in a little corner, never to be thought of again.

It is spooky, when you think about it. All these poor defenceless little babies being expelled from the womb with absolutely no idea what the future is going to hold. Some people, if they knew what was going to happen to them, might not want to be born at all.

If everyone was allowed to look into their future before they were born, then they could decide whether they liked it or not, and if they didn’t then they wouldn’t have to come, and that way perhaps there wouldn’t be any more awful things such as illness and accidents and starvation.

Zoë told me that she believes everyone who dies is born again as someone else. She said, “You don’t really die, because you always come back again.” She told me that she read this somewhere and she most firmly believes it.

It is a nice thought but I don’t understand how it can be, since the population of the world is getting bigger all the time. For example, there were probably only about – oh, I don’t know! – about five hundred people, maybe, before the Stone Age, whereas now there are about five hundred million, I should think. Five hundred billion. Five hundred trillion. So where have all the extra people come from?

It doesn’t really make any sense, though I suppose it would be a comfort to think that you weren’t just going to disappear.

I asked Zoë, if you did come back, whether you would come as someone quite different or as just another version of yourself, and she said she’d thought about this and she reckoned you’d come back as another version of yourself. She said this would account for people sometimes claiming to remember being alive in another age.

That is true. People do make these claims. Like there was this woman who could remember being an Egyptian slave and could even speak ancient Egyptian.

I think there may be something in it but that it is not quite as simple as Zoë makes out. On the other hand, if that is what she wants to believe, it would be unkind to spoil it for her by asking too many questions. We all have to find our own things to believe in. That is what Gran said and I think it is true.

What I believe is that even if I have been someone else before and am going to be someone different in the future, it is me as I am now that is important.

And me as I am now is going to go to Wonderland! That is my big, immediate goal. To be twelve years old and go to Wonderland.

I am really determined about it.

3. Me and My Favourite Things (#ulink_cc38ca61-83de-5bae-90e1-b00ad9fe52bf)

You were born Rebecca Banaras, but everyone

calls you Becky Bananas.

It was Sarah started calling me that. The first day I was at Oakfield, out in the playground at break.

“Bananas?” she said. “Is that really your name?” And before I could tell her that it wasn’t, she’d gone and shrieked, “Becky Bananas!” and got everyone giggling.

I didn’t think then that I was going to like her very much. But now she’s my best friend and we do everything together. Well, almost everything. There are some things I can only do with Zoë, and that’s why Zoë is my special friend. But for school and home, it’s me and Sarah. We get on really well.

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!

List of my Favourite Things

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.