a banana

I really don't like bananas, and I particularly don't like the smell of bananas, so finding an unzipped banana on the edge of the kitchen counter is not the best thing in the world.  To be sure, I've occasionally enjoyed a sliced banana hidden in some custard (a very English admission) - but when I think about it, I was, at school - where it was a much served dessert - given to leaving the chunks of sweet starchy stuff on the edge of my plate (unless forced to eat them for the inexplicable good of "starving children in Africa."  My worst banana encounter happened in Sulawesi - one of Indonesia's bigger islands - when, about to catch a bus from the Torajan highlands to Ujung Pandang, a young local man chopped down a little, fruit-bearing banana tree and presented me with the whole head of the plant - in other words, the biggest bunch of bananas I'd ever seen.  The bus ride was eight hours or so (with just one tape of Indonesian pop music in the bus's cassette player, which lasted as an earworm for some weeks), but thankfully, this was long enough for me to give away all the bananas ...