Roald Dahl's Mischief and Mayhem

by Roald Dahl

  There. You’re done.

  Um . . . watch helplessly as your helper escapes from the desert island in the speedboat or the helicopter and leaves you stranded there.

  Cheer up! That’s a fabulous outfit. You look JUST LIKE a coconut tree. Bravo!

  Can you work out which Roald Dahl character this is?

  He is clever. How clever? Probably cleverer than all of your teachers at school and Newton and Einstein and Professor Stephen Hawking put together. THAT clever. And then some.

  He has a long handsome face.

  He has had the finest tail for miles around, until . . . Well, THAT would be giving the game away.

  He doesn’t like farmers, especially not Farmer Boggis, Farmer Bunce and Farmer Bean. And you wouldn’t either if you knew them.

  He is FANTASTIC. (Have you got it yet? Have you? HAVE YOU? Because this is officially the Biggest Clue Ever.)

  Who is he?

  The answer is here

  Terrible Tricks

  Phew! You must be exhausted after so much trickery. Grab a glass of that refreshing fizzy stuff that rots your teeth. (I’m sure your dentist will love the extra business.) Now put your feet up and relax with this FEARSOME QUIZ. Can you spot the victim of Willy Wonka’s four best tricks?

  1. Who went up a pipe?

  2. Who fell down a chute?

  3. Who was shrunk?

  4. Who became as big and round and blue as a massive blueberry?

  The answers are here. If you got all four correct, perform a celebratory rumba. If you didn’t, read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory again. It really is terribly good.

  In which Bruce Bogtrotter shows a great deal of chocolate-based bravery

  There was a small table centre stage with a chair behind it. The cook placed the cake carefully on the table. ‘Sit down, Bogtrotter,’ the Trunchbull said. ‘Sit there.’

  The boy moved cautiously to the table and sat down. He stared at the gigantic cake.

  ‘There you are, Bogtrotter,’ the Trunchbull said, and once again her voice became soft, persuasive, even gentle. ‘It’s all for you, every bit of it. As you enjoyed that slice you had yesterday so very much, I ordered cook to bake you an extra large one all for yourself.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ the boy said, totally bemused.

  ‘Thank cook, not me,’ the Trunchbull said.

  ‘Thank you, cook,’ the boy said.

  The cook stood there like a shrivelled bootlace, tight-lipped, implacable, disapproving. She looked as though her mouth was full of lemon juice.

  ‘Come on then,’ the Trunchbull said. ‘Why don’t you cut yourself a nice thick slice and try it?’

  ‘What? Now?’ the boy said, cautious. He knew there was a catch in this somewhere, but he wasn’t sure where. ‘Can’t I take it home instead?’ he asked.

  ‘That would be impolite,’ the Trunchbull said, with a crafty grin. ‘You must show cookie here how grateful you are for all the trouble she’s taken.’

  The boy didn’t move.

  ‘Go on, get on with it,’ the Trunchbull said. ‘Cut a slice and taste it. We haven’t got all day.’

  The boy picked up the knife and was about to cut into the cake when he stopped. He stared at the cake. Then he looked up at the Trunchbull, then at the tall stringy cook with her lemon-juice mouth. All the children in the hall were watching tensely, waiting for something to happen. They felt certain it must. The Trunchbull was not a person who would give someone a whole chocolate cake to eat just out of kindness. Many were guessing that it had been filled with pepper or castor-oil or some other foul-tasting substance that would make the boy violently sick. It might even be arsenic and he would be dead in ten seconds flat. Or perhaps it was a booby-trapped cake and the whole thing would blow up the moment it was cut, taking Bruce Bogtrotter with it. No one in the school put it past the Trunchbull to do any of these things.

  ‘I don’t want to eat it,’ the boy said.

  ‘Taste it, you little brat,’ the Trunchbull said. ‘You’re insulting the cook.’

  Very gingerly the boy began to cut a thin slice of the vast cake. Then he levered the slice out. Then he put down the knife and took the sticky thing in his fingers and started very slowly to eat it.

  ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ the Trunchbull asked.

  ‘Very good,’ the boy said, chewing and swallowing.

  He finished the slice.

  ‘Have another,’ the Trunchbull said.

  ‘That’s enough, thank you,’ the boy murmured.

  ‘I said have another,’ the Trunchbull said, and now there was an altogether sharper edge to her voice. ‘Eat another slice! Do as you are told!’

  ‘I don’t want another slice,’ the boy said.

  Suddenly the Trunchbull exploded. ‘Eat!’ she shouted, banging her thigh with the riding-crop. ‘If I tell you to eat, you will eat! You wanted cake! You stole cake! And now you’ve got cake! What’s more, you’re going to eat it! You do not leave this platform and nobody leaves this hall until you have eaten the entire cake that is sitting there in front of you! Do I make myself clear, Bogtrotter? Do you get my meaning?’

  The boy looked at the Trunchbull. Then he looked down at the enormous cake.

  ‘Eat! Eat! Eat!’ the Trunchbull was yelling.

  Very slowly the boy cut himself another slice and began to eat it.

  Matilda was fascinated. ‘Do you think he can do it?’ she whispered to Lavender.

  ‘No,’ Lavender whispered back. ‘It’s impossible. He’d be sick before he was halfway through.’

  The boy kept going. When he had finished the second slice, he looked at the Trunchbull, hesitating.

  ‘Eat!’ she shouted. ‘Greedy little thieves who like to eat cake must have cake! Eat faster boy! Eat faster! We don’t want to be here all day! And don’t stop like you’re doing now! Next time you stop before it’s all finished you’ll go straight into The Chokey and I shall lock the door and throw the key down the well!’

  The boy cut a third slice and started to eat it. He finished this one quicker than the other two and when that was done he immediately picked up the knife and cut the next slice. In some peculiar way he seemed to be getting into his stride.

  Matilda, watching closely, saw no signs of distress in the boy yet. If anything, he seemed to be gathering confidence as he went along. ‘He’s doing well,’ she whispered to Lavender.

  ‘He’ll be sick soon,’ Lavender whispered back. ‘It’s going to be horrid.’

  When Bruce Bogtrotter had eaten his way through half of the entire enormous cake, he paused for just a couple of seconds and took several deep breaths.

  The Trunchbull stood with hands on hips, glaring at him. ‘Get on with it!’ she shouted. ‘Eat it up!’

  Suddenly the boy let out a gigantic belch which rolled around the Assembly Hall like thunder. Many of the audience began to giggle.

  ‘Silence!’ shouted the Trunchbull.

  The boy cut himself another thick slice and started eating it fast. There were still no signs of flagging or giving up. He certainly did not look as though he was about to stop and cry out, ‘I can’t, I can’t eat any more! I’m going to be sick!’ He was still in there running.

  And now a subtle change was coming over the two hundred and fifty watching children in the audience. Earlier on, they had sensed impending disaster. They had prepared themselves for an unpleasant scene in which the wretched boy, stuffed to the gills with chocolate cake, would have to surrender and beg for mercy and then they would have watched the triumphant Trunchbull forcing more and still more cake into the mouth of the gasping boy.

  Not a bit of it. Bruce Bogtrotter was three-quarters of the way through and still going strong. One sensed that he was almost beginning to enjoy himself. He had a mountain to climb and he was jolly well going to reach the top or die in the attempt. W
hat is more, he had now become very conscious of his audience and of how they were all silently rooting for him. This was nothing less than a battle between him and the mighty Trunchbull.

  Suddenly someone shouted, ‘Come on, Brucie! You can make it!’

  The Trunchbull wheeled round and yelled, ‘Silence!’ The audience watched intently. They were thoroughly caught up in the contest. They were longing to start cheering but they didn’t dare.

  ‘I think he’s going to make it,’ Matilda whispered.

  ‘I think so too,’ Lavender whispered back. ‘I wouldn’t have believed anyone in the world could eat the whole of a cake that size.’

  ‘The Trunchbull doesn’t believe it either,’ Matilda whispered. ‘Look at her. She’s turning redder and redder. She’s going to kill him if he wins.’

  The boy was slowing down now. There was no doubt about that. But he kept pushing the stuff into his mouth with the dogged perseverance of a long-distance runner who has sighted the finishing-line and knows he must keep going. As the very last mouthful disappeared, a tremendous cheer rose up from the audience, and children were leaping on to their chairs and yelling and clapping and shouting, ‘Well done, Brucie! Good for you, Brucie! You’ve won a gold medal, Brucie!’

  The Trunchbull stood motionless on the platform.Her great horsy face had turned the colour of molten lava and her eyes were glittering with fury. She glared at Bruce Bogtrotter, who was sitting on his chair like some huge overstuffed grub, replete, comatose, unable to move or to speak. A fine sweat was beading his forehead but there was a grin of triumph on his face.

  Suddenly the Trunchbull lunged forward and grabbed the large empty china platter on which the cake had rested. She raised it high in the air and brought it down with a crash right on the top of the wretched Bruce Bogtrotter’s head and pieces flew all over the platform.

  The boy was by now so full of cake he was like a sackful of wet cement and you couldn’t have hurt him with a sledge-hammer. He simply shook his head a few times and went on grinning.

  ‘Go to blazes!’ screamed the Trunchbull and she marched off the platform followed closely by the cook.

  This is not a trick but a very scientific chocolate-based experiment, because EVERYONE needs a break from mischief now and again.

  TODAY, READER,YOU ARE BRUCE BOGTROTTER.

  Go on, admit it. You’ve always wondered what it would be like to be Bruce Bogtrotter, haven’t you? I bet, deep down, you think that YOU could eat that enormous chocolate cake too. And in probably half the time. So make your own chocolate cake and EAT IT ALL.*

  * Or if adults throw up their hands in horror and start screeching about calorific content and other REALLY DULL nutritional stuff and threatening you with healthy steamed vegetables, then invite a few friends to your home and make a dinner party of it instead. (At least that way you won’t be sick.)

  In which George decides to make his very own magic medicine to treat his horrid grandma.

  George sat himself down at the table in the kitchen. He was shaking a little. Oh, how he hated Grandma! He really hated that horrid old witchy woman. And all of a sudden he had a tremendous urge to do something about her. Something whopping. Something absolutely terrific. A real shocker. A sort of explosion. He wanted to blow away the witchy smell that hung about her in the next room. He may have been only eight years old but he was a brave little boy. He was ready to take this old woman on.

  ‘I’m not going to be frightened by her,’ he said softly to himself. But he was frightened. And that’s why he wanted suddenly to explode her away.

  Well . . . not quite away. But he did want to shake the old woman up a bit.

  Very well, then.What should it be, this whopping terrific exploding shocker for Grandma?

  He would have liked to put a firework banger under her chair but he didn’t have one.

  He would have liked to put a long green snake down the back of her dress but he didn’t have a long green snake.

  He would have liked to put six big black rats in the room with her and lock the door but he didn’t have six big black rats.

  As George sat there pondering this interesting problem, his eye fell upon the bottle of Grandma’s brown medicine standing on the sideboard. Rotten stuff it seemed to be. Four times a day a large spoonful of it was shovelled into her mouth and it didn’t do her the slightest bit of good. She was always just as horrid after she’d had it as she’d been before.

  The whole point of medicine, surely, was to make a person better. If it didn’t do that, then it was quite useless.

  So-ho! thought George suddenly. Ah-ha! Hohum! I know exactly what I’ll do. I shall make her a new medicine, one that is so strong and so fierce and so fantastic it will either cure her completely or blow off the top of her head. I’ll make her a magic medicine, a medicine no doctor in the world has ever made before.

  George looked at the kitchen clock. It said five past ten. There was nearly an hour left before Grandma’s next dose was due at eleven.

  ‘Here we go, then!’ cried George, jumping up from the table. ‘A magic medicine it shall be!’

  ‘So give me a bug and a jumping flea,

  Give me two snails and lizards three,

  And a slimy squiggler from the sea,

  And the poisonous sting of a bumblebee,

  And the juice from the fruit of the ju-jube

  tree,

  And the powdered bone of a wombat’s

  knee.

  And one hundred other things as well

  Each with a rather nasty smell.

  I’ll stir them up, I’ll boil them long,

  A mixture tough, a mixture strong.

  And then, heigh-ho, and down it goes,

  A nice big spoonful (hold your nose)

  Just gulp it down and have no fear.

  “How do you like it, Granny dear?”

  Will she go pop? Will she explode?

  Will she go flying down the road?

  Will she go poof in a puff of smoke?

  Start fizzing like a can of Coke?

  Who knows? Not I. Let’s wait and see.

  (I’m glad it’s neither you nor me.)

  Oh Grandma, if you only knew

  What I have got in store for you!’

  It’s a well-known fact that grown-ups adore eating vegetables nearly as much as they adore making younger people eat vegetables. So they are bound to LOVE this delightful pie. Why not rustle one up at the weekend, feed it to the grown-ups of your choice and THEN get them to guess what’s in it?

  PS If they make lots of weird noises like BLEURGH and EEUCH, tell them that it’s good for them and not to whine. Just like they tell you.

  YOU WILL NEED:

  One spoonful of butter or margarine or posh spread made from olives

  One pie dish

  One rolling pin

  One packet of puff pastry

  One bag of Brussels sprouts

  One bar of very dark chocolate

  One egg

  One oven

  One group of grown-ups, preferably the healthy sort

  OPTIONAL INGREDIENTS:

  Cabbage, Marmite, chocolate sprinkles, syrup, baked beans, puréed pumpkin, jam, tinned carrots and sardines. Mmm.

  Rub the butter, margarine or posh spread made from olives into your pie dish.

  Roll out two circles of pastry. Put one of them into your pie dish.

  Put the Brussels sprouts into the pie dish.

  Break the chocolate up into squares and put that in too.

  Add as many of the optional ingredients as you like.

  Place the other circle of pastry on top of the pie dish and seal the pastry round the edges by pinching them together.

  Paint the top of the pie with beaten egg, just to make it look super appeti
zing when it’s cooked.

  Ask an adult to help you pop it in the oven. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour at 375º F or moderate oven.

  In which Roald Dahl swaps tobacco for something EVEN SMELLIER.

  One day, we all went in our little motor-boat to an island we had never been to before, and for once the ancient half-sister and the manly lover decided to come with us. We chose this particular island because we saw some goats on it. They were climbing about on the rocks and we thought it would be fun to go and visit them. But when we landed, we found that the goats were totally wild and we couldn’t get near them. So we gave up trying to make friends with them and simply sat around on the smooth rocks in our bathing costumes, enjoying the lovely sun.

  The manly lover was filling his pipe. I happened to be watching him as he very carefully packed the tobacco into the bowl from a yellow oilskin pouch. He had just finished doing this and was about to light up when the ancient half-sister called on him to come swimming. So he put down the pipe and off he went.

  I stared at the pipe that was lying there on the rocks. About twelve inches away from it, I saw a little heap of dried goat’s droppings, each one small and round like a pale brown berry, and at that point, an interesting idea began to sprout in my mind. I picked up the pipe and knocked all the tobacco out of it. I then took the goat’s droppings and teased them with my fingers until they were nicely shredded. Very gently I poured these shredded droppings into the bowl of the pipe, packing them down with my thumb just as the manly lover always did it. When that was done, I placed a thin layer of real tobacco over the top. The entire family was watching me as I did this. Nobody said a word, but I could sense a glow of approval all round. I replaced the pipe on the rock, and all of us sat back to await the return of the victim. The whole lot of us were in this together now, even my mother. I had drawn them into the plot simply by letting them see what I was doing. It was a silent, rather dangerous family conspiracy.