More About Boy

by Roald Dahl

  One of them, who was taken out in the end was a horrid little girl who was disgustingly rude to her parents and also thoroughly disobedient. Her name was Miranda Mary Piker. And I remember she fell into a machine that made peanut-brittle. And at the end of it all the Oompa-Loompas sang this song (which never appeared in the book):

  Oh Miranda Mary Piker

  Now could anybody like her,

  Such a rude and disobedient little kid.

  So we said why don’t we fix her

  In the peanut-brittle mixer.

  Then we’re sure to like her better than we did.

  Soon this child who was so vicious

  Will have gotten quite delicious,

  And her father will have surely understood,

  That instead of saying, ‘Miranda, oh the beast I

  cannot stand her’,

  He’ll be saying, ‘Oh, how luscious and how good!’

  * * *

  These lucky characters did make it into the final draft of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

  * * *

  VERUCA SALT

  MIKE TEAVEE

  AUGUSTUS GLOOP

  VIOLET BEUREGUARDE

  * * *

  Corkers

  There were about thirty or more masters at Repton and most of them were amazingly dull and totally colourless and completely uninterested in boys. But Corkers, an eccentric old bachelor, was neither dull nor colourless. Corkers was a charmer, a vast ungainly man with drooping bloodhound cheeks and filthy clothes. He wore creaseless flannel trousers and a brown tweed jacket with patches all over it and bits of dried food on the lapels. He was meant to teach us mathematics, but in truth he taught us nothing at all and that was the way he meant it to be. His lessons consisted of an endless series of distractions all invented by him so that the subject of mathematics would never have to be discussed. He would come lumbering into the classroom and sit down at his desk and glare at the class. We would wait expectantly, wondering what was coming next.

  ‘Let’s have a look at the crossword puzzle in today’s Times,’ he would say, fishing a crumpled newspaper out of his jacket pocket. ‘That’ll be a lot more fun than fiddling around with figures. I hate figures. Figures are probably the dreariest things on this earth.’

  ‘Then why do you teach mathematics, sir?’ somebody asked him.

  ‘I don’t,’ he said, smiling slyly. ‘I only pretend to teach it.’

  * * *

  Major Noel Strickland (also known as ‘Strickers’ or ‘Corkers’).

  * * *

  Corkers would proceed to draw the framework of the crossword on the blackboard and we would all spend the rest of the lesson trying to solve it while he read out the clues. We enjoyed that.

  The only time I can remember him vaguely touching upon mathematics was when he whisked a square of tissue-paper out of his pocket and waved it around. ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘This tissue-paper is one-hundredth of an inch thick. I fold it once, making it double. I fold it again, making it four thicknesses. Now then, I will give a large bar of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut Milk Chocolate to any boy who can tell me, to the nearest twelve inches, how thick it will be if I fold it fifty times.’

  We all stuck up our hands and started guessing. ‘Twenty-four inches, sir’ … ‘Three feet, sir’ … ‘Five yards, sir’ … ‘Three inches, sir.’

  ‘You’re not very clever, are you,’ Corkers said. ‘The answer is the distance from the earth to the sun. That’s how thick it would be.’ We were enthralled by this piece of intelligence and asked him to prove it on the blackboard, which he did.

  Another time, he brought a two-foot-long grass-snake into class and insisted that every boy should handle it in order to cure us for ever, as he said, of a fear of snakes. This caused quite a commotion.

  * * *

  Here’s another of Roald Dahl’s favourite facts:

  ‘You each have or had four grandparents. Taking each generation as thirty years you can easily prove that back in the fifteenth century you had about eight million direct ancestors. This was more that the entire population of Britain at that time. Therefore, everyone was your own direct ancestor. Chaucer and Shakespeare must have been one of your great great grandparents. And I’ve never been able to find out why this isn’t really true although the arithmetic proves it.’

  * * *

  I cannot remember all the other thousands of splendid things that old Corkers cooked up to keep his class happy, but there was one that I shall never forget which was repeated at intervals of about three weeks throughout each term. He would be talking to us about this or that when suddenly he would stop in mid-sentence and a look of intense pain would cloud his ancient countenance. Then his head would come up and his great nose would begin to sniff the air and he would cry aloud, ‘By God! This is too much! This is going too far! This is intolerable!’

  We knew exactly what was coming next, but we always played along with him. ‘What’s the matter, sir? What’s happened? Are you all right, sir? Are you feeling ill?’

  Up went the great nose once again, and the head would move slowly from side to side and the nose would sniff the air delicately as though searching for a leak of gas or the smell of something burning. ‘This is not to be tolerated!’ he would cry. ‘This is unbearable!’

  ‘But what’s the matter, sir?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what’s the matter,’ Corkers would shout. ‘Somebody’s farted!’

  ‘Oh no, sir!’ … ‘Not me, sir!’ … ‘Nor me, sir!’ … ‘It’s none of us, sir!’

  At this point, he would rise majestically to his feet and call out at the top of his voice, ‘Use door as fan! Open all windows!’

  This was the signal for frantic activity and everyone in the class would leap to his feet. It was a well-rehearsed operation and each of us knew exactly what he had to do. Four boys would man the door and begin swinging it back and forth at great speed. The rest would start clambering about on the gigantic windows which occupied one whole wall of the room, flinging the lower ones open, using a long pole with a hook on the end to open the top ones, and leaning out to gulp the fresh air in mock distress. While this was going on, Corkers himself would march serenely out of the room, muttering, ‘It’s the cabbage that does it! All they give you is disgusting cabbage and Brussels sprouts and you go off like fire-crackers!’ And that was the last we saw of Corkers for the day.

  * * *

  The school shop at Repton was known as ‘the Grubber’. Recognize the name? Roald Dahl used it for the sweetshop in The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me. But unlike the shop in the story, the Grubber at Repton sold everything from sweets to cricket shoes.

  * * *

  * * *

  The boys at Repton were allowed to cook for themselves – and here are just some of the letters in which Roald Dahl describes what he liked to eat …

  * * *

  * * *

  Mr and Mrs Jenkyns with their family and the boys from Priory House. Roald Dahl is on the far right of the second row from the front.

  * * *

  Fagging

  I spent two long years as a Fag at Repton, which meant I was the servant of the studyholder in whose study I had my little desk. If the studyholder happened to be a House Boazer, so much the worse for me because Boazers were a dangerous breed. During my second term, I was unfortunate enough to be put into the study of the Head of the House, a supercilious and obnoxious seventeen-year-old called Carleton. Carleton always looked at you right down the length of his nose, and even if you were as tall as him, which I happened to be, he would tilt his head back and still manage to look at you down the length of his nose. Carleton had three Fags in his study and all of us were terrified of him, especially on Sunday mornings, because Sunday was study-cleaning time. All the Fags in all the studies had to take off their jackets, roll up their sleeves, fetch buckets and floor-cloths and get down to cleaning out their studyholder’s study. And when I say cleaning out, I mean practically sterilizing the
place. We scrubbed the floor and washed the windows and polished the grate and dusted the ledges and wiped the picture-frames and carefully tidied away all the hockey-sticks and cricket-bats and umbrellas.

  * * *

  Can you find Roald Dahl’s name on the register for 1930?

  * * *

  All that Sunday morning we had been slogging away cleaning Carleton’s study, and then, just before lunch Carleton himself strode into the room and said, ‘You’ve had long enough.’

  * * *

  ‘Why, you lazy good-for-nothing brute!’ Aunt Spiker shouted.

  ‘Beat him!’ cried Aunt Sponge.

  ‘I certainly will!’ Aunt Spiker snapped. She glared at James, and James looked back at her with large frightened eyes.

  (James and the Giant Peach)

  * * *

  ‘Yes, Carleton,’ the three of us murmured, trembling. We stood back, breathless from our exertions, compelled as always to wait and watch the dreadful Carleton while he performed the ritual of inspection. First of all, he would go to the drawer of his desk and take out a pure-white cotton glove which he slid with much ceremony on to his right hand. Then, taking as much care and time as a surgeon in an operating theatre, he would move slowly round the study, running his white-gloved fingers along all the ledges, along the tops of the picture-frames, over the surfaces of the desks, and even over the bars of the fire-grate. Every few seconds, he would hold those white fingers up close to his face, searching for traces of dust, and we three Fags would stand there watching him, hardly daring to breathe, waiting for the dreaded moment when the great man would stop and shout, ‘Ha! What’s this I see?’ A look of triumph would light up his face as he held up a white finger which had on it the tiniest smudge of grey dust, and he would stare at us with his slightly popping pale blue eyes and say, ‘You haven’t cleaned it, have you? You haven’t bothered to clean my study properly.’

  To the three of us Fags who had been slaving away for the whole of the morning, these words were simply not true. ‘We’ve cleaned every bit of it, Carleton,’ we would answer. ‘Every little bit.’

  ‘In that case why has my finger got dust on it?’ Carleton would say, tilting his head back and gazing at us down the length of his nose. ‘This is dust, isn’t it?’

  We would step forward and peer at the white-gloved forefinger and at the tiny smidgin of dust that lay on it, and we would remain silent. I longed to point out to him that it was an actual impossibility to clean a much-used room to the point where no speck of dust remained, but that would have been suicide.

  * * *

  A Fag was a younger boy who acted as a servant to an older boy at an independent school. Fagging was abolished towards the end of the twentieth century.

  * * *

  ‘Do any of you dispute the fact that this is dust?’ Carleton would say, still holding up his finger. ‘If I am wrong, do tell me.’

  ‘It isn’t much dust, Carleton.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you whether it was much dust or not much dust,’ Carleton would say. ‘I simply asked you whether or not it was dust. Might it, for example, be iron filings or face powder instead?’

  ‘No, Carleton.’

  ‘Or crushed diamonds, maybe?’

  ‘No, Carleton.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘It’s … it’s dust, Carleton.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Carleton would say. ‘At last you have admitted that you failed to clean my study properly. I shall therefore see all three of you in the changing-room tonight after prayers.’

  The rules and rituals of fagging at Repton were so complicated that I could fill a whole book with them. A House Boazer, for example, could make any Fag in the House do his bidding. He could stand anywhere he wanted to in the building, in the corridor, in the changing-room, in the yard, and yell ‘Fa-a-ag!’ at the top of his voice and every Fag in the place would have to drop what he was doing and run flat out to the source of the noise. There was always a mad stampede when the call of ‘Fa-a-ag!’ echoed through the House because the last boy to arrive would invariably be chosen for whatever menial or unpleasant task the Boazer had in mind.

  * * *

  Roald Dahl was made ‘Tip Fag’ – whose job was to supervise the other Fags in Priory House – after only two terms at the school.

  * * *

  During my first term, I was in the changing-room one day just before lunch scraping the mud from the soles of my studyholder’s football boots when I heard the famous shout of ‘Fa-a-ag!’ far away at the other end of the House.

  I dropped everything and ran. But I got there last, and the Boazer who had done the shouting, a massive athlete called Wilberforce, said, ‘Dahl, come here.’

  The other Fags melted away with the speed of light and I crept forward to receive my orders. ‘Go and heat my seat in the bogs,’ Wilberforce said. ‘I want it warm.’

  * * *

  The school-porter, Mr Pople, conducted an extraordinary ceremony at Repton …

  ‘There were six lavatories in the school, numbered on their doors from one to six. Mr Pople, standing at the end of the long corridor, would have in the palm of his hand six small brass discs, each with a number on it, one to six. There was absolute silence as he allowed his eye to travel down the two lines of stiffly standing boys. Then he would bark out a name, “Arkle!” In this manner, six boys selected at Mr Pople’s whim were dispatched to the lavatories to do their duty. Nobody asked them if they might or might not be ready to move their bowels at seven-thirty in the morning before breakfast. They were simply ordered to do so.’

  (How I Became a Writer)

  * * *

  I hadn’t the faintest idea what any of this meant, but I already knew better than to ask questions of a Boazer. I hurried away and found a fellow Fag who told me the meaning of this curious order. It meant that the Boazer wished to use the lavatory but that he wanted the seat warmed for him before he sat down. The six House lavatories, none with doors, were situated in an unheated outhouse and on a cold day in winter you could get frostbite out there if you stayed too long. This particular day was icy-cold, and I went out through the snow into the outhouse and entered number onelavatory, which I knew was reserved for Boazers only. I wiped the frost off the seat with my handkerchief, then I lowered my trousers and sat down. I was there a full fifteen minutes in the freezing cold before Wilberforce arrived on the scene.

  ‘Have you got the ice off it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Wilberforce.’

  ‘Is it warm?’

  ‘It’s as warm as I can get it, Wilberforce,’ I said.

  ‘We shall soon find out,’ he said. ‘You can get off now.’

  I got off the lavatory seat and pulled up my trousers. Wilberforce lowered his own trousers and sat down. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘Very good indeed.’ He was like a winetaster sampling an old claret. ‘I shall put you on my list,’ he added.

  I stood there doing up my fly-buttons and not knowing what on earth he meant.

  ‘Some Fags have cold bottoms,’ he said, ‘and some have hot ones. I only use hot-bottomed Fags to heat my bog-seat. I won’t forget you.’

  * * *

  As a senior boy, Roald Dahl made use of Fags himself, not to warm his loo seat but usually to post some of the many letters he wrote to his mother.

  * * *

  He didn’t. From then on, all through that winter, I became Wilberforce’s favourite bog-seat warmer, and I used always to keep a paperback book in the pocket of my tail-coat to while away the long bog-warming sessions. I must have read the entire works of Dickens sitting on that Boazer’s bog during my first winter at Repton.

  * * *

  That Awful Cold Bath

  Seniority (the number of terms you have been at school) was tremendously important. It was a crime for a boy to be ‘sidey’ (cheeky) to another boy who was a year or two senior to him. Once during my third year when I was sixteen, I was ‘sidey’ to a boy called W. W. Gregson who was seventeen. W. W. G
regson was a Studyholder. I wasn’t but I was no longer a Fag. I was a Second, as they called it. W. W. Gregson didn’t like me being ‘sidey’ to him, so he rounded up half-a-dozen other studyholders of his own age and they hunted me down. I ran into the yard where they cornered me and grabbed hold of my arms and legs and carried me bodily back into the ‘house’. In the changing-room they held me down while one of them filled a bath brimful of icy cold water, and into this they dropped me, clothes and all and held me there for several agonising minutes.

  ‘Push his head under!’ cried W. W. Gregson. ‘That’ll teach him to keep his mouth shut!’ They pushed my head under many times, and I choked and spluttered and half-drowned, and when at last they released me and I crawled out of the bath, I didn’t have any dry clothes to change into. But another Second of my age, whose name was Ashton, came to my rescue and produced a spare suit. I have been grateful to Ashton ever since for this act of mercy.

  W. W. Gregson, my tormentor, came from the North Country and his family made snuff. Today one can still find the name Gregson on those little boxes of snuff they sell in tobacconists shops, even now, whenever I see one, I shiver and think of that awful cold bath.