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      Oh, she was such a bonny bouncing baby!

      Poor Mum. Sometimes when I’m tempted to feel sorry for myself, I start thinking about Mum and feel sorry for her, instead. All that pain when I was being born, and what was the point of it? Just a waste of effort, really. That’s what I would think.

      I’ve made her cry, I know I have. I’ve heard her crying, when she doesn’t know I was there. I can’t bear for Mum to be unhappy! But when I’ve tried talking to her about it, like one time I said about it being a waste of effort, it made her really upset. She said, “Becky, you must never, ever think like that! What a dreadful thing to say! It was the most wonderful day of my life, the day I had you.”

      She didn’t know how things were going to turn out. People don’t, when you have babies.

      Like Violet, Gran’s best friend, who used to teach me dancing and who had this son called Bobby that was Down’s syndrome. I remember once I was at Gran’s and Gran and Violet were talking, and Violet suddenly burst out, “I wouldn’t change my Bobby for the world!”

      I suppose if you have a baby, you love it no matter what. Even if it’s got two heads or is brain-damaged. It’s still your baby. But it would be ever so much better if things didn’t happen like brain damage and Down’s syndrome and such. Not till you’re really old, and then perhaps it wouldn’t matter quite so much. I think God should have arranged it so that everyone is allowed to live to be at least forty. I don’t think you would mind so much then.

      I am going to live to be a hundred. Ha! That will surprise them. Except that nobody will be here by then. Only Danny. And he will be ninety-three!!!

      What will the date be when I am a hundred? It will be … 2086! And I will get a telegram from the Queen.

      No, I won’t, because the Queen won’t still be alive. And I don’t think Prince Charles will, either. I don’t know how old he is but I think he must be older than Mum. So it won’t be King Charles III. And it won’t be William V, because Wills is sixteen and that would make him 103 and practically no one lives to be 103. And it won’t be King Henry, I shouldn’t think, because Harry would be 100 and I bet there’s never been a king that’s 100. But whoever it is, they will send me a telegram!

      I wonder what they say when they send telegrams?

      The only trouble is, you couldn’t really have much fun if you were a hundred. You wouldn’t be able to play games or go to parties or visit Wonderland. You’d just sit about in a chair all day wearing false teeth.

      Yeeuch! I can’t stand false teeth. There’s this old woman I saw once that had taken hers out and put them in a glass of water by the side of her bed.

      Ugh. It made me feel really sick. I don’t ever want to have false teeth.

      Maybe I won’t live to be a hundred. Maybe I’ll just live to about … forty. That’s probably long enough.

      I once heard Mum say to her friend Anna when they were speaking on the telephone that she was going to hold a big party when she was forty. She said it was going to be a special farewell party.

      “Farewell to my lost youth … before I go into my zimmer frame.”

      Zimmer frames are what old people use to help them walk.

      But you have to be really old for that. I can’t imagine Mum being really old. I can’t imagine her having grey hair and wrinkles.

      Mum says that she can’t, either, so I expect she will have a face-lift and dye her hair. That is what people in show business quite often do. They also, sometimes, have their noses altered or their boobs made bigger, to make themselves look more beautiful.

      Gran used to say, “We didn’t do that in my day,” but Mum said, “Go on! I bet you wore falsies.”

      I thought she meant false teeth. It was ages before I discovered that falsies were special padded bras to make people think you had big boobs when in fact you only had small ones, though personally I can’t think why anyone would want big boobs. I would think they must be quite heavy and get in the way, I mean if you’re running or dancing, or anything. Surely they would wobble up and down? And if you were doing a pirouette, for instance, they would probably spin round faster than your head and unbalance you.

      I wouldn’t want to have big boobs. Sarah says it’s men that like them and that’s the reason women go and get them made huge. Just to please men.

       Weird.

      I bet in a hundred years’ time people will be able to order bits of body from catalogues, like nowadays you can order clothes and things. They’ll have these sections saying “Noses” or “Boobs” or “Ears”, and all these different shapes and sizes.

      All you’ll have to do is pick out the ones you think will suit you and fill in an order form saying how many you want and when you want them fitted. Only by then things will be so advanced that you won’t have to have an operation and be cut open, they will be able to change your shape simply by pointing some sort of ray gun at you which will make your body go like gloop.

      Some people will even be able to do it for themselves, I shouldn’t be surprised. They will have their own personal ray guns. They will wake up in the morning and think, “I don’t like this nose. I am sick of this nose. I think I will make a new one.” Or if they are going on holiday, for instance, they will be able to use the gun for taking away all the bits of flab round their tummies so that they can wear their nice new bikinis and be attractive to men. Just zap! with the gun and all the flab will be melted.

      Mum is always going on about flab. She hasn’t got any, really. Not for an ordinary person. I mean, an ordinary showbiz person. I expect if she were a dancer she would have to do a bit of toning up. I fortunately do not have problems with fatness, though Mum says I have now lost too much weight and must start to put it on again. She is threatening to feed me on nothing but pasta and chips!!! I have told her I will end up like a beach ball but she says, “That will be the day.”

      When

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