Becky Bananas (7 page)

When I was little and Gran used to talk about having a nice cup of Rosie, I never knew why she
called it that. Like with titfer. She would say, “Nasty cold wind out there. Not going out without me titfer.” So I always knew that Rosie was tea and titfer was hat, but it wasn’t until Uncle Eddy explained that it was rhyming slang that I really understood.

There is another one he told me which is a naughty one. When Uncle Eddy needs to go to the toilet he says, “I gotta have a gypsy’s.” That is short for “gypsy’s fiddle” and it means … piddle! I would love to say that to Mrs Rowe!!!

I wish I were bold enough. I don’t have any bottle at all. But Sarah does! I think I shall suggest it to her. If I dared her, she would do it.

Bottle is also Cockney slang. It is short for bottle and glass. I don’t know what it is supposed to rhyme with but when Uncle Eddy says that someone has no bottle he doesn’t mean what I used to think he meant when I was small.

He means that they’re not very brave. Like me. I hate myself sometimes for being so bottle-less. Like when I have to have injections and I cry. That is an example of not having any bottle.

Uncle Eddy says that he is scared of injections. He quite often has to have them when he goes abroad. He says, “They frighten the living daylights out of me!” But I think he is only saying it to be kind. I am such a crybaby!

I haven’t always been. I remember Gran had to take me to the hospital once because I fell off my bike and cut my hand and had to have stitches, and all the time they were stitching me I just, like, ground my teeth and never made a sound. Gran was ever so proud of me! She said I was brave as ninepence (ninepence is to do with olden-times money) and that I deserved to have a special treat and “something nice for tea” so she bought this beautiful pink cake with pink icing and we ate it in the kitchen with Violet and Bobby.

I’ll always remember Gran’s cake with pink icing. Cakes with pink icing mean you have bottle. I wouldn’t have any cakes with pink icing now. And I don’t think Gran would call me brave as ninepence. Gran would be
ashamed
of me.

Gran had a really hard life. I know this because
Mum told me so. But Gran faced up to things. She wouldn’t have cried just because people kept sticking needles in her. And I bet Uncle Eddy doesn’t, either. He’s not really frightened of injections. Uncle Eddy isn’t frightened of anything! He just says it to make me feel better. And to try and make me be brave.

But I can’t be brave! I’ve tried and tried and I can’t. I hate it! My body is getting to be like a pincushion, all sore and covered in holes. If they keep on like this, my blood will start leaking!

I don’t want to think about things like that.

I’m not going to think about things like that! I’m only going to think about things that make me happy.

For the first few years of your life you lived in
Samuel Street, in Bethnal Green.

W
e lived with my Gran and Uncle Eddy in Gran’s house where Mum and Uncle Eddy were brought up. The house was very little and old. It was squashed in the middle of a row of other little, old houses, all the same.

Downstairs there was a front room and a back room and a kitchen. Mum used to complain that it was dark and poky. Some people in the street had knocked down
the wall between the front room and the back room to make one large room. Mum wanted Gran to do it in her house, but Gran wouldn’t. She said, “Lose all me privacy that way.”

She had a piano in the front room which she called “a Joanna”. I don’t know why she called it that. Maybe Joanna is also Cockney slang. If you called a piano a pianner then it would rhyme, so maybe that is it.

Gran said that the Joanna was mine and I could play on it, but I wasn’t ever very good.

Later I went to Mrs Dearborn and did it properly, scales and things, but Mrs Dearborn said that although I was musical I would never make a pianist. But that was all right because I didn’t want to be a pianist, I wanted to be a dancer. Ever since I was tiny I have wanted to be a dancer. Being twelve is my
immediate
goal, but being a dancer is my Big Ambition.

Sometimes people expect me to want to be an actress, because of Mum, but I don’t think I would like that. For one thing I wouldn’t like having to learn lines. Learning steps is different: you learn with your feet. When I have done a step once, I can remember it. With lines you have to go over and over them. Mum is always grumbling about it.

And then for another thing there is
resting,
which
means being out of work sometimes for months or even years. I think with dancing that wouldn’t happen so much because if you were in a dance company you would be dancing all the time.

Of course I realise you might not be lucky enough to get into a dance company and then you would have to do something ordinary, like working in a shop or being a waitress, but that is what Mum would call “thinking negatively”. Thinking negatively is a bad thing to do. So I am not going to do it. I am only going to think positive things, such as going to Wonderland.