Roald Dahl's Mischief and Mayhem

by Roald Dahl

  As soon as Wolf began to feel

  That he would like a decent meal,

  He went and knocked on Grandma’s door.

  When Grandma opened it, she saw

  The sharp white teeth, the horrid grin,

  And Wolfie said, ‘May I come in?’

  Poor Grandmamma was terrified,

  ‘He’s going to eat me up,’ she cried.

  And she was absolutely right.

  He ate her up in one big bite.

  But Grandmamma was small and tough,

  And Wolfie wailed, ‘That’s not enough!

  ‘I haven’t yet begun to feel

  ‘That I have had a decent meal!’

  He ran around the kitchen yelping,

  ‘I’ve got to have another helping!’

  Then added with a frightful leer,

  ‘I’m therefore going to wait right here

  ‘Till Little Miss Red Riding Hood

  ‘Comes home from walking in the wood.’

  He quickly put on Grandma’s clothes.

  (Of course he hadn’t eaten those.)

  He dressed himself in coat and hat.

  He put on shoes and after that

  He even brushed and curled his hair,

  Then sat himself in Grandma’s chair.

  In came the little girl in red.

  She stopped. She stared. And then she said,

  ‘What great big ears you have, Grandma.’

  ‘All the better to hear you with,’ the Wolf replied.

  ‘What great big eyes you have, Grandma,’

  said Little Red Riding Hood.

  ‘All the better to see you with,’ the Wolf replied.

  He sat there watching her and smiled.

  He thought, I’m going to eat this child.

  Compared with her old Grandmamma

  She’s going to taste like caviare.

  Then Little Red Riding Hood said, ‘But Grandma, what a lovely great big furry coat you have on.’

  ‘That’s wrong!’ cried Wolf. ‘Have you forgot

  ‘To tell me what BIG TEETH I’ve got?

  ‘Ah well, no matter what you say,

  ‘I’m going to eat you anyway.’

  The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers.

  She whips a pistol from her knickers.

  She aims it at the creature’s head

  And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead.

  A few weeks later, in the wood,

  I came across Miss Riding Hood.

  But what a change! No cloak of red,

  No silly hood upon her head.

  She said, ‘Hello, and do please note

  ‘My lovely furry WOLFSKIN COAT.’

  Red riding hoods are SO century-before-last. Update your look and swap that red cape for a red hoody. Get one for your grandmamma while you’re at it. Then you can both easily trick the Wolf into thinking you’re not

  Little Red Riding Hood

  and Grandmamma at all and would be nowhere near as delicious as either of them. AND you’ll be warm. (And VERY cool at the same time.) But if you really want to avoid being eaten, it’s probably best not to live in a wooden cottage in the deep, dark woods at all. It’s the first place a wolf looks for his lunch.

  In which Mrs Twit shows Mr Twit that she has eyes EVERYWHERE.

  You can play a lot of tricks with a glass eye because you can take it out and pop it back in again any time you like. You can bet your life Mrs Twit knew all the tricks.

  One morning she took out her glass eye and dropped it into Mr Twit’s mug of beer when he wasn’t looking.

  Mr Twit sat there drinking the beer slowly. The froth made a white ring on the hairs around his mouth. He wiped the white froth on to his sleeve and wiped his sleeve on his trousers.

  ‘You’re plotting something,’ Mrs Twit said, keeping her back turned so he wouldn’t see that she had taken out her glass eye. ‘Whenever you go all quiet like that I know very well you’re plotting something.’

  Mrs Twit was right. Mr Twit was plotting away like mad. He was trying to think up a really nasty trick he could play on his wife that day.

  ‘You’d better be careful,’ Mrs Twit said, ‘because when I see you starting to plot, I watch you like a wombat.’

  ‘Oh, do shut up, you old hag,’ Mr Twit said. He went on drinking his beer, and his evil mind kept working away on the latest horrid trick he was going to play on the old woman.

  Suddenly, as Mr Twit tipped the last drop of beer down his throat, he caught sight of Mrs Twit’s awful glass eye staring up at him from the bottom of the mug. It made him jump.

  ‘I told you I was watching you,’ cackled Mrs Twit. ‘I’ve got eyes everywhere so you’d better be careful.’

  You don’t need a glass eye to play the same trick as Mrs Twit. Oh no. Here’s a much tastier alternative.

  YOU WILL NEED:

  One lychee (a fancy white fruit that looks VERY like an eyeball and tastes DELICIOUS)

  One green olive

  One raisin

  One teaspoon

  One cocktail stick or toothpick

  WHAT YOU DO:

  Using your teaspoon, hollow out the lychee until you have made an olive-sized hole.

  Put the olive into the hole.

  Now use your cocktail stick or toothpick to make a raisin-sized hole in the olive.

  Put the raisin into the hole.

  Voilà! You’ve made a joke eye! The lychee is the white of the eye, the olive the iris and the raisin the pupil.

  Now all you have to do is pop the joke eye in your unsuspecting victim’s drink and wait for them to SCREEEEEEEEEEEEAM!

  In which Mr Twit pays back Mrs Twit for putting a glass eye in his beer by hiding a Giant Skillywiggler in her bed.

  To pay her back for the glass eye in his beer, Mr Twit decided he would put a frog in Mrs Twit’s bed.

  He caught a big one down by the pond and carried it back secretly in a box.

  That night, when Mrs Twit was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, Mr Twit slipped the frog between her sheets. Then he got into his own bed and waited for the fun to begin.

  Mrs Twit came back and climbed into her bed and put out the light. She lay there in the dark scratching her tummy. Her tummy was itching. Dirty old hags like her always have itchy tummies.

  Then all at once she felt something cold and slimy crawling over her feet. She screamed.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Mr Twit said.

  ‘Help!’ screamed Mrs Twit, bouncing about. ‘There’s something in my bed!’

  ‘I’ll bet it’s that Giant Skillywiggler I saw on the floor just now,’ Mr Twit said.

  ‘That what?’ screamed Mrs Twit.

  ‘I tried to kill it but it got away,’ Mr Twit said. ‘It’s got teeth like screwdrivers!’

  ‘Help!’ screamed Mrs Twit. ‘Save me! It’s all over my feet!’

  ‘It’ll bite off your toes,’ said Mr Twit.

  Mrs Twit fainted.

  Mr Twit got out of bed and fetched a jug of cold water. He poured the water over Mrs Twit’s head to revive her. The frog crawled up from under the sheets to get near the water. It started jumping about on the pillow. Frogs love water. This one was having a good time.

  When Mrs Twit came to, the frog had just jumped on to her face. This is not a nice thing to happen to anyone in bed at night. She screamed again.

  ‘By golly it is a Giant Skillywiggler!’ Mr Twit said. ‘It’ll bite off your nose.’

  Mrs Twit leapt out of bed and flew downstairs and spent the night on the sofa. The frog went to sleep on her pillow.

  Giant Skillywigglers (and frogs) are a little hard to come by and they can REALLY muck up a matching duvet-and-pillo
wcase set. For fabulously NON-GLOOPY fun, simply pop a selection of brushes under someone’s pillow or inside their duvet cover. Any sort of brush will do – hairbrushes, toothbrushes, nailbrushes, scrubbing brushes, paintbrushes, dustpan brushes . . .

  Before bedtime, mention that you’ve heard mad hedgehogs are on the loose in the area. Then when your victim discovers the prickles in the middle of the night, they’ll think a mad hedgehog is IN THEIR BED.

  In which Charlie Bucket and Mr and Mrs Bucket and Grandpa Jo and Grandma Josephine and Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina and Willy Wonka meet ONE OF THE SCARIEST ALIENS IN THE UNIVERSE. Yikes!

  It looked more than anything like an enormous egg balanced on its pointed end. It was as tall as a big boy and wider than the fattest man. The greenish-brown skin had a shiny wettish appearance and there were wrinkles in it. About three-quarters of the way up, in the widest part, there were two large round eyes as big as tea-cups. The eyes were white, but each had a brilliant red pupil in the centre. The red pupils were resting on Mr Wonka. But now they began travelling slowly across to Charlie and Grandpa Joe and the others by the bed, settling upon them and gazing at them with a cold malevolent stare. The eyes were everything. There were no other features, no nose or mouth or ears, but the entire egg-shaped body was itself moving very very slightly, pulsing and bulging gently here and there as though the skin were filled with some thick fluid.

  At this point, Charlie suddenly noticed that the next lift was coming down. The indicator numbers above the door were flashing . . . 6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . L (for lobby). There was a slight pause. The door slid open and there, inside the second lift, was another enormous slimy wrinkled greenish-brown egg with eyes!

  Now the numbers were flashing above all three of the remaining lifts. Down they came . . . down . . . down . . . down . . . And soon, at precisely the same time, they reached the lobby floor and the doors slid open . . . five open doors now . . . one creature in each . . . five in all . . . and five pairs of eyes with brilliant red centres all watching Mr Wonka and watching Charlie and Grandpa Joe and the others.

  There were slight differences in size and shape between the five, but all had the same greenish-brown wrinkled skin and the skin was rippling and pulsing.

  For about thirty seconds nothing happened. Nobody stirred, nobody made a sound. The silence was terrible. So was the suspense. Charlie was so frightened he felt himself shrinking inside his skin. Then he saw the creature in the left-hand lift suddenly starting to change shape! Its body was slowly becoming longer and longer, and thinner and thinner, going up and up towards the roof of the lift, not straight up, but curving a little to the left, making a snake-like curve that was curiously graceful, up to the left and then curling over the top to the right and coming down again in a half-circle . . . and then the bottom end began to grow out as well, like a tail . . . creeping along the floor . . . creeping along the floor to the left . . . until at last the creature, which had originally looked like a huge egg, now looked like a long curvy serpent standing up on its tail.

  Then the one in the next lift began stretching itself in much the same way, and what a weird and oozy thing it was to watch! It was twisting itself into a shape that was a bit different from the first, balancing itself almost but not quite on the tip of its tail.

  Then the three remaining creatures began stretching themselves all at the same time, each one elongating itself slowly upward, growing taller and taller, thinner and thinner, curving and twisting, stretching and stretching, curling and bending, balancing either on the tail or the head or both, and turned sideways now so that only one eye was visible. When they had all stopped stretching and bending, this was how they finished up:

  ‘Scram!’ shouted Mr Wonka. ‘Get out quick!’

  People have never moved faster than Grandpa Joe and Charlie and Mr and Mrs Bucket at that moment. They all got behind the bed and started pushing like crazy. Mr Wonka ran in front of them shouting ‘Scram! Scram! Scram!’ and in ten seconds flat all of them were out of the lobby and back inside the Great Glass Elevator. Frantically, Mr Wonka began undoing bolts and pressing buttons. The door of the Great Glass Elevator snapped shut and the whole thing leaped sideways. They were away! And of course all of them, including the three old ones in the bed, floated up again into the air.

  By now, you must be fairly accomplished at carrying out plots, plans, japes and jokes, but this is a plan to test even the most experienced mischief-maker. You’re going to trap a Vermicious Knid. Fail and you’ll be, um . . . Well, let’s not go into that here. Succeed and you’ll be made a knight or a dame or, at the very least, a very important person with a certificate to prove it RIGHT AWAY. (Probably.)

  YOU WILL NEED:

  One spacesuit and helmet (help the environment by re-using the spacesuit and helmet from The Sticky Rocket here)

  One space rocket

  One oval gilt-edged mirror and superglue

  One butterfly net

  One good book (Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is perfect)

  One MP3 player (with speakers) loaded with some beautiful love songs

  WHAT YOU DO:

  Wearing the spacesuit and helmet, climb on-board the rocket and blast off in the direction of deep space.

  Settle down with your good book. (Luckily, the time it will take you to read Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator is EXACTLY the length of time it takes to reach deep space, at a velocity of a zillion kilometres per hour.)

  When you have reached deep space, select and play the love songs.

  Glue the mirror to the rocket’s outer wall.

  5. Wait.

  You might have to wait quite a while.

  When the Vermicious Knid sees itself in the mirror, it will be stunned by its own beauty and FREEZE!

  Quickly whip out the net from its hiding place and plonk it right over the Vermicious Knid.

  Fly back to planet Earth.

  Take the butterfly net to London, England.

  Go to Buckingham Palace. Ask to see the Queen.

  The Queen, who knows a lot about strange beings after her dealings with the BFG, will immediately invite you to afternoon tea. The Vermicious Knid, on the other hand, will be sent straight to London Zoo. Job done.

  Can you identify this HUMONGOUS character?

  He is naked apart from a sort of short skirt around his waist. (Oh, I say.)

  He is simply colossal, with a large belly, long arms and VERY big feet (so ginormous that you absolutely wouldn’t be able to find shoes to fit on the high street).

  He has tiny piggy black eyes.

  He eats human beans.

  The only person in the whole wide world who can outwit him is a sweet girl called Sophie.

  Who is he?

  The answer is here

  Can you match up the vile character with the way that Roald Dahl dispatched them?

  He was sizzled up like a sausage.

  They were ironed out upon the grass as flat and thin and lifeless as a couple of paper dolls cut out of a picture book.

  They were sentenced to a lifetime of snozzcumbers.

  They got the DREADED SHRINKS.

  She did a bunk.

  The answers are here.

  It’s the end of the book ALREADY? Wow. Doesn’t time fly when you’re gluing a rocket to a launchpad! Did you enjoy reading about the mischief and mayhem that Roald Dahl created in his fiction and in real life too? We do hope so, because this is the sort of extreme trickery that Roald Dahl was all about. He loved it when he was a schoolboy; he loved it when he was very grown-up indeed. Perhaps you love it too. Perhaps that’s why you’ve read this book. And PERHAPS you’re going to go away and create your very own mischief, right now. And mayhem, of course. Don’t forget the mayhem.

  SPOT THE MISCHIEF-MAKER

  It’s WILLY WONKA from Charlie and the Cho
colate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, of course!

  SPOT THE MISCHIEF-MAKER

  Mr Fox from Fantastic Mr Fox.

  SPOT THE MISCHIEF-MAKER

  Mrs Twit! Did you get it or are YOU a twit too?

  SPOT THE MISCHIEF-MAKER

  George Kranky from George’s Marvellous Medicine.

  SPOT THE MISCHIEF-MAKER

  It is, of course, Fleshlumpeater, one of the most loathsome giants from The BFG. (But award yourself half a point if you guessed another one of the giants. They’re all fairly big and horrid and easy to mix up.)

  GOOEY QUESTIONS

  A Whipple-Scrumptious Fudgemallow Delight

  Prince Pondicherry

  Dark brown gloss paint

  He glued the branches of the Big Dead Tree.

  TERRIBLE TRICKS

  Augustus Gloop

  Veruca Salt

  Mike Teavee

  Violet Beauregarde

  WHAT’S IN MR TWIT’S BEARD?

  IN THE BEARD:

  Dried-up scrambled egg

  Minced chicken livers

  Maggoty green cheese