What happens when you refrigerate a banana

The childhood lesson that has always stayed with me is that attempting to catch a frog in mud whilst wearing new sandals & being on the way to Sunday school, is a much lesser social crime than throwing a balled up picture of a banana at the priests housekeeper.

I was seven and I was not an angelic little girl.

I was more likely to be found hurtling across a river on the end of a stolen tow rope from my fathers garage than I was playing with dolls or baking. My mother thought Sunday School might cure me of my wild and heedless joy in the stuff of freedom and of mud. She was wrong.

My friends were boys, they all gasped in horror when I emerged from my house in a dress with combed hair that first awful Sunday. I was wearing a dress, it was floral and had straps, there were also white ankle socks and worst of all the despised sandals, all buckles and discomfort. My face was shiny clean, my mother had been insistent with the face cloth, as a result I was scowling and feeling ill used.

The boys took one look at me and to a lad burst out laughing.

"Ha ha, you're wearing a dress, will you look at those socks, frilly! ha ha"

I looked down at the socks, they made me look like bloody little Bo Peep the boys were right, I made fists and inwardly cursed my mother to high heaven, I was a laughing stock and the boys were loving it.

"Where are you going Frances, she's not making you go to the mass is she?"

"Sunday school" I muttered mutinously, my mother had been to the mass that morning, she was an eager and early church goer back then, I was neither.

"We'll walk with you." The boys stood and we all walked along the river, I had been given strict instruction to make my way to the church via pavements, not undergrowth. But the series of zig zagging paths we traversed at high speed were so much more logical, pavements went around things, we went through things.

Going through things made much more sense and was quicker, so I mentally re formed my mothers instruction until it became more like friendly advice, uninformed and impractical, but friendly and better left ignored.

The boys and I snapped twigs of branches and tossed them in the river as we walked along, we raced our sticks and threw rocks to try and sink each others little vessels. We got quite engrossed in this game and eventually of course we stopped walking towards The Church and concentrated our attention on a particularly slow part of the river. It was a large meandering section, not quite an ox bow lake but nearly, there was a lot of mud surrounding the slack water, our sticks idled turning in lazy circles. We bombed them and whooped, I was getting quite dirty but as it was an occupational hazard, I overlooked this.

One rock I threw careered wildly off course and landed with a splat on the mud flat, It caused a stealthy flash of green movement. A frog !

A huge frog, speckled with yellow, he had black shiny eyes.

"Look at the size of that frog!" I yelled at the boys "He's mine!"

I scrambled down the bank and stepped carefully onto the brown crust of mud, if I just kept my feet very flat I could probably......The frog watched me unblinkingly as I proceeded stealthily in his direction, the hated sandals were slippery on my socks, progress was painstaking. I got within grabbing distance of the frog and as the boys held their breath on the bank I reached down towards him, he made a dash for it.

I "cursed" and made a sudden grab for him and as my hands closed around his body the mercurial frog, slid deftly through my fingers. "Drat" I lunged after him, my sandals breached the crust of mud and down I went, along with the socks. The frog plopped into the river casually and swam away. I looked down at my feet with a sudden sense of everything being very wrong, the boys were also looking down at my feet.

"Ha ha ha Holy shit you're done for, your mother's going to blow a gasket."

I regarded them narrowly as they all fell about. But it was true, my feet and ankles now looked as though I was wearing a pair of khaki coloured wellington boots. I sloshed up the bank, one of the boys pulled me up.

"Your going to have to try and wash it off."

This took longer than expected and when I was finished there wasn't any significant improvement.

"I have to go, I'm late." I left the boys contemplating the rest of the morning and I ran slipping and sliding towards the church.

Everybody was inside when I arrived late, they were sitting at a long table with crayons and paper in front of them. Father Terry was not in evidence, instead there was a grey haired woman, she wore a long cardigan, had a long face and I noticed she also wore long shoes. I regarded her dispassionately, her face told me that I was unlikely to meet with her approval.

"Oh well look who is late," she trilled in a fake friendly but actually quite nasty tone of voice, "and somebody has been getting dirty on the way as well." she looked over at two immaculate blonde angels sitting crayoning industriously, they smirked and basked in her clear cut admiration. "Well you're here now Frances so sit over their and lets see if you can draw something for the Harvest Festival.

I squelched towards the table, my wet socks squeaking audibly on the fake leather insides of the hated sandals, the angels exchanged glances and giggled behind their clean hands. I scowled at them and wondered how funny they would find doing the killer death swing over my river.

I reached for a paper and a box of crayons, I was good at drawing, I thought I might be in line for some form of redemption and it would be good to sock a triumphant glance at the angels once my talent was officially recognised by widow long face. I got busy and drew some fruit, an apple an orange, some grapes, Widow long face peered over my shoulder periodically and grudgingly offered small murmurs of approval, but in a tone of voice that hinted at surprise and doubt.

I was absorbed in adding a banana when Widow long face appeared at my elbow again, I was colouring in a few black spots.

"What do you think you are doing? Put down that crayon at once you silly girl."

I froze holding the crayon, what had I done now, I scanned the room for any sign of a clue.

"I said put it down, what do you think you are doing spoiling your nice picture with all that black?"

The angels were wide eyed with delight, I looked at the crayon in my hand and looked at the picture of the banana, it looked perfectly sound to me, what was the crazy old witch talking about, bananas had black bits on them surely everyone knew that.

At that moment she reached down and swiped the crayon from my hand, whereupon she threw it forcefully into the box.

"You little madam." She said "Are going to start again, everyone else it is juice and biscuit time."

Humiliation rose in my cheeks as all the other children stood up, I looked down at my picture, it was good.

"Go and get some more paper, that one goes in the bin."

She reached towards my drawing, but I was faster than she was and I whipped it away and dodged out of my seat to the side, she hadn't expected this and I registered the look of shock on her face with a small barb of inside delight.

Aiming for recovery of power she held out her hand. "Give it to me at once."

I shook my head, she advanced angrily towards me, I considered this an act of war and I scrunched the picture into a tight ball, then as she sprang towards me I recoiled and launched the ball at her as hard as I could, it hit her squarely on the forehead and at the same time I shot under her arm and out of the door.

My mother was waiting for me on the doorstep. None of my explanations seemed to make any difference to her, but what surprised me was that she was less bothered about the state of my ruined sandals than she was about what Father Terry would think of us, particularly of her.

I didn't care what he thought one bit, my picture had been good, the old battle axe had been in the wrong what's to worry about and why was my mother getting her panties all bunched up about something that I had done, I attempted to reason with her that people shouldn't really blame mothers for the things that their daughters do and that my sandals were a disaster zone and I expected to be punished for that because it was a crime.

I underestimated the crime of social embarrassment and was kept in for a week, this seemed unfair. But in retrospect what Sunday School taught me was the most valuable lesson of my life regarding religion.

If it's about what other people think of you and less about how much you like yourself. You're better off spending Sunday catching frogs with friends who love you.