Princess Eugenie has shared a sweet memory from her childhood for a cause close to her heart.
The 27-year-old has revealed that her mum Sarah, Duchess of York would sing The Monkees’ “Daydream Believer” in an attempt to soothe her car sickness as a child.
“Growing up, I used to get really car sick and we used to go on all these trips and journeys,” the younger daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson explains.
“When we were coming to the last moment of getting there I’d be like, ‘How long ’til we get there?’ and everyone in the car would be like, ‘It’s just around the corner’.”
“And then I’d get really sick and they’d turn the song on and they’d say, ‘Cheer up sleepy Jean’.”
“My mum sang it, all my friends, everyone.”
She adds: “It’s amazing how a memory is completely connected to something, and where it takes you. Just then, I’ve gone back to my feeling sick in a car, to feeling elated that they’re singing to me about being sleepy.”
Sarah holds onto her daughter on her first day at Upton House School In Windsor.
The mother-daughter duo are pictured cuddling at a horse show in the south of England.
Eugenie shared the lovely story for the ‘End the Silence’ campaign by Hope and Homes for Children, which aims to raise much-needed funds for children growing up in orphanages without the noise of family, love or music.
She joins the likes of Elton John, Demi Lovato, Ed Sheeran, Noel Gallagher and Duran Duran in sharing her music memory.
“A child growing up without music, a child not being able to even enjoy that with someone let alone listening to it, it’s just something that should never happen,” Eugenie says.
“No child should be silent.”
Eugenie and Sarah recently made an emotional visit to the Teenage Cancer Trust-funded facility at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool.
As honorary patrons of the trust, the mother-daughter duo were on site to celebrate the unit’s second birthday.
“I think it’s so important to come here and learn,” Eugenie said of the visit. “To come and experience that from as a teenager, when I was 18, but also to hear all the amazing things these units have done for teenagers and for the way you have outlook on your diagnoses.”
The mother-daughter duo are honorary patrons of the Teenage Cancer Trust-funded facility at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.
During the event, the mother and daughter spent time speaking with patients and their parents.
Sarah opened the Teenage Cancer Trust’s first specialist cancer unit in 1990.
Sarah, 57, who opened the Teenage Cancer Trust’s first specialist cancer unit in 1990 and has since attended almost all of the charity’s new unit openings, delivered an impassioned speech at the event.
“Young adults, or sufferers from teenage cancer, it was you all who taught me so much,” she said as she addressed both patients and their parents. “You taught me forgiveness, you taught me kindness, you taught me never to give up, courage in facing adversity.”
The pair also spent time speaking with a handful of patients who had been undergoing treatment for various types of cancer.
