Becky Bananas: This Is Your Life

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Becky Bananas: This Is Your Life
Jean Ure

A standout title in Jean Ure’s acclaimed series of humorous, delightful and poignant stories written in the form of diaries and letters which make them immediately accessible to children.Becky Bananas is eleven years, nine months, three days and fourteen hours old and her great ambitions are:•To visit the world-famous Wonderland theme park•To star on the TV programme This Is Your Life•To become a famous dancer•And to be twelveA poignant and heartwarming story of Becky Bananas, who has leukaemia.“It’s always sad having to say goodbye to someone you love. But I wouldn’t have missed knowing someone like Becky for the world!” Jean Ure

For Ann-Janine, with love and gratitude and in the hope that we may be able to work together again one of these days

Contents

Cover (#ued85d746-2f86-5c99-ab89-39df40c838d1)

Title Page (#ua140379b-37fb-5972-b960-faedcec9a355)

1 “This is Your Life!” (#u11facf3c-d712-5d7f-9bf1-c6fc82b9118b)

2 My Goal (#u0640364f-f83e-5fed-adce-c841bbd76d47)

3 Me and My Favourite Things (#u724f1840-d541-596d-ac32-9d9c42ff9349)

4 “Here’s Looking at You, Kid!” (#u962c44ca-7715-5827-8fc6-bcf538176bee)

5 Bow Bells (#ua3595dca-edbb-519e-93a8-ec635d1ed82f)

6 My Gran (#uea655628-fad4-5bbb-a7ab-a91c2f987f43)

7 Reflections (#u6071f321-abf7-5059-927b-dcead3ea5b7f)

8 My Brother Danny (#u6880f2ba-e560-5086-a21b-d45c4bdcc339)

9 My Cat Kitty (#uc169e29b-d644-5e23-87d9-6dc86767e144)

10 New School! (#u332323c3-313e-5e3c-a75f-5ecf49f700ea)

11 I Meet a Famous Author (and Write a Book …) (#u10070738-25f3-5cc2-95a0-2d15f3a1623d)

12 “Born to Dance” (#u33fdf749-a8a1-5505-9a5e-2719ba59ffc3)

13 The Bad Times (#ud6b35d35-55b2-51c7-9f91-8e1d59dfa97f)

14 Jokes! (#ua8bc890f-1e00-5751-a2a3-eede272b1691)

15 Wonderland (#u82b4a9c1-609e-50aa-99c9-876b211336e2)

Also by Jean Ure (#u19dffbd8-db14-5520-bb0d-e1a4a8949ec5)

Copyright (#ua58191fd-0d43-56cf-a313-27515fdba736)

About the Publisher (#u693ceec2-0fe2-51bc-bc94-16551e1d0bd0)

The story that follows was taken from Becky’s thoughts, and hopes, and dreams as she recorded them over the last few months; also from the conversations that she had with her family and friends, and especially Sarah and Zoë.

1. “This is Your Life!” (#ulink_f5715ecf-5546-56d2-a500-e3f8a0f282af)

Becky Bananas, this is your life!

Yes, it is. It is my life! And I have lived it for eleven and three-quarter years.

Eleven years nine months and three days, to be precise.

Eleven years nine months three days and fourteen hours, to be even more precise.

I can work it out, because I know when I was born. I was born at ten past two in the morning. Mum’s told me about it heaps of times.

“You arrived all of a sudden, in this terrible rush. It took everyone by surprise, including me!”

I can never understand how it can have taken Mum by surprise. You’d think if you had a great enormous thing like a baby kicking and battering inside you, you’d feel when it was starting to come out. I should think it would be really painful.

I’ve asked Mum about this. She says, “It was painful, but it was worth it. Every second of it!”

But she still doesn’t explain how it took her by surprise.

I said, “Didn’t you feel it was happening?” and she said, “I felt something was happening but I wasn’t quite sure what. Not until someone said ‘Push!’ and you came bursting out, all red and angry without any hair.”

Ugh! What a yukky sight.

It seems a very odd way of carrying on if you ask me. You’d think things could have been arranged a bit better. Like with worms. Or amoebas. When amoebas want babies, they just split in half so that there are two of them.

Ever so much easier. I don’t expect it hurts at all, hardly.

Not that I would want to be an amoeba. They are plain, blobby-looking creatures without any brain and they don’t really seem to do anything, as far as I can see, save flop about in the bottom of pools and suchlike. But I suppose they are happy.

Can you be happy, if you haven’t any brain?

At least you wouldn’t be unhappy, I shouldn’t think. Or scared. Or cross or lonely or saying to yourself that things aren’t fair. But then you wouldn’t be able to dance or laugh or read books, either. So on the whole I wouldn’t want to be one.

How could you cuddle a baby amoeba?

There are lots of pictures of Mum cuddling me. There’s also a picture of me completely naked, waving my arms about on a blanket.

I’ve always found that really embarrassing. If I grow up and have babies, I will never take those sorts of pictures of them.

Sometimes when my friends come round, Mum pulls out the photograph albums and shows them. She says, “Look!” and she giggles. “There’s Becky when she was only a few weeks old … like a little pink slug!”

Mum thinks it’s funny, but I can see that other people are just as embarrassed as I am. Sarah once said, “Isn’t it frightful, the way your parents come out with these terrible things?”

She meant her parents as well as Mum. Everyone’s parents. All parents. But I don’t think Mum means to say terrible things. She just can’t stop herself. It’s what comes of being an extrovert, which is a word I learned from Mrs Rowe. She said it to me last Parents’ Day. She said, “Your mother is quite an extrovert, Rebecca, isn’t she?”

I didn’t know what it meant. I asked Sarah and she said it meant that you laugh a lot and are friendly.

Deanne Warburton said it meant noisy.

It is true that Mum does laugh more than most people and also I suppose her voice is quite loud. But she can’t help it! It’s just the way she is. That’s why she’s in show business.

I love my mum. She is beautiful and funny and I am really proud of her. I don’t mind her being loud! I wouldn’t want her any different. But I do wish she wouldn’t keep showing people the picture of me as a little pink slug! I won’t ever do that to my children, if I have any. Which most probably I won’t, I don’t expect.

On the other hand, I might. You never can tell. But if I do, I won’t embarrass them.

Another of the things Mum says about me is that I was a bonny bouncing baby. “Oh, you were such a bonny bouncing baby!”

She’s got this story about how one time I bounced so high I almost managed to bounce right out of my playpen.

She says, “I used to think you’d end up being a pole vaulter in the Olympics!”

If ever they decide to do one of those This is Your Life programmes about me, like for instance when I am a famous dancer, Mum will be able to come on and tell all the people that are watching about me bouncing out of my playpen. She’d like that.

I’m not sure that I would. I think I might find it a bit embarrassing. But I suppose if you are on This is Your Life you can’t always choose what people say about you. More’s the pity!