Boy (1)
A message from Roald Dahl
Sometimes, a person writes a book all about his or her life. These books are normally very boring. This is not one of those books. I do not want to write everything about me.
But some things happened to me in my early life, and I did not forget them. They are not important, but I remember them fifty or sixty years later. Some things are funny. Some things are not nice. All of them are true.
CHAPTER ONE
The start
My father, Harald Dahl, was Norwegian. He came from a small town near Oslo in Norway. His father - my grandfather - had a shop in the town. People went to the shop to buy food and things for their houses. The shop had nearly everything!
At the age of fourteen, my father had an accident and badly hurt his arm. A doctor came, but he was not a good doctor. He hurt my father's arm more, and then the arm had to be cut from my father's body.
My father had only one arm, but he learned to do lots of things with it. He made one side of a fork into a knife because he wanted to cut his own food. He took his special fork everywhere with him in a little bag.
My father lived in a small town, but he wanted to see the world. He finished school and got a job on a ship. It took him to Calais in France. From there, he went to Paris. In Paris, my father met a young woman called Marie and married her.
At that time, many ships travelled across the world, and they needed fuel, food and thousands of other things. My father started a company that had all these things. The ships bought everything they needed from his company, and my father made a lot of money. He took his family to Wales because Cardiff was an important city for ships. My father and Marie had two children (a girl and a boy), but then Marie sadly died.
My father was sad, and he wanted a new wife. In 1911, he went on holiday to Norway. There, he met a young Norwegian woman called Sofie and married her. They had four more children: two girls, a boy (me, in 1916) and a third girl. Now they had a happy family with six children.
We all lived together in a big house in Wales, in a village eight miles west of Cardiff. We had chickens, cows and horses.
Our big family was very happy. But then my sister Astri got an illness, and she died. She was only seven years old. My father got a different illness, and he died, too. Maybe he did not fight his illness because he was very sad about Astri. Today, these illnesses do not often kill people. Doctors can give people something to make them better, but, in 1920, doctors could not help my family.
Now my mother had five children, a new baby and no husband. She was a young Norwegian in a strange country, and her family were all in Norway. But my mother stayed in the United Kingdom because my father wanted his children to go to school in England. "English schools are the best schools in the world," he always said.
I do not remember a lot from my earliest years, but I can remember one thing very well: my tricycle. A tricycle is a bike for small children, but it has three wheels.
My sister and I loved to ride our tricycles as fast as we could in the middle of the road. It felt good to go very fast. We could ride in the road because there were not many cars in those days.
CHAPTER TWO
The sweet shop
In 1923, I was seven years old, and I started school. Every day, my friends and I walked about a mile to school, and we went past a sweet shop. And, every day, we stopped and looked at all the wonderful sweets in their jars. Sometimes we had money, and we could buy some sweets.
But there was one problem. A bad woman worked in the shop. Her name was Mrs Pratchett.
Mrs Pratchett was a small, ugly old woman. She never smiled, and she was never friendly. She always shouted at us, "I'm watching you!" or "You have to buy something or you must go away!"
She was also very dirty. Her clothes always had egg and bread and tea from her breakfast on them. Her hands were grey and dirty, and her fingers were black. And she put these dirty hands into the jars of sweets!
Of course, this did not stop us from buying the sweets. But we did not like Mrs Pratchett.
At school, my friends and I found a small place under the floor. We kept our sweets and other special things in it. One day, we found something new there: a dead mouse!
"I have a plan," I said. "Let's put it in one of Mrs Pratchett's sweet jars. She will put her dirty hand in the jar, and she will find a dead mouse!"
"Yes!" my friends said. "We will do it today You must put the mouse in the jar, because it's your plan."
"I will ask for some yellow sweets," my friend Thwaites said. "They are at the back of the shop. Mrs Pratchett will turn and get them. Then you can quickly put the mouse in the jar with the pink sweets in it. It's the nearest one to us."
That afternoon, we walked into the shop. We were all very excited. Thwaites asked for his sweets, and Mrs Pratchett got them for him. I quickly put the mouse in the jar with the pink sweets.
Then Mrs Pratchett looked at us with her ugly little eyes.
"Only one of you is buying sweets. I don't want you all in here!" she shouted. "Go away!"
We ran outside. "Did you put it in the jar?" asked my friends.
"Of course I did!" I said.
I was happy, and my friends were happy, too.
"You were great," they said.
The next morning, we walked past the shop and saw a message on the door. The shop was closed.
We stopped. The shop was never closed at this time in the morning. We looked through the window. The jar was on the floor, and there was broken glass everywhere. The mouse was on the floor, too. But we could not see Mrs Pratchett. Something was very wrong!
"Mrs Pratchett had a shock," Thwaites said. "Shocks can hurt old people. Bad things happen to them."
"What?" we said. "What happens to them?"
"Their bodies stop, and they die," Thwaites said. Then he said to me, "You killed her."
"Me?" I said. "Why only me?"
"It was your plan," Thwaites said. "And you put the mouse in the jar."
I was a killer!
At school, I felt bad.
"I am only eight years old," I thought, because I wanted to feel better. "No little boy of eight kills anyone. It's not possible."
The teachers sent everyone outside. I waited for the police to come and take me away.
Mr Coombes, the headmaster, came outside with a woman. It was Mrs Pratchett! She was not dead! I was not a killer! The old woman looked at all the boys, and she pointed a dirty finger at Thwaites.
"That's him!" she shouted. "That's one of them!"
Everyone in the school looked at Thwaites.
"That's one, too!" she said. She pointed a finger at me. Then she pointed at our three other friends.
My four friends and I went to the headmaster's room. It smelled of tobacco. Mr Coombes was a very tall man, and in his hands he held a long, yellow cane. I was very frightened of him and his cane. Mrs Pratchett was in the room, too, because she wanted to watch!
"You," said Mr Coombes. He pointed the cane at Thwaites. "Come here."
Thwaites walked very slowly. He put his hands on the floor, and the headmaster hit his bottom with the cane. It made a loud noise. Little Thwaites flew in the air.
"Ow-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w!" he shouted.
"Harder!" shouted Mrs Pratchett.
The headmaster hit Thwaites four times. We had to watch and wait.
After all the other boys, it was me. I put my hands on the floor. I heard the noise first and felt nothing. Then I felt the cane. My bottom was on fire. I breathed out very hard, and there was no air left in my body. The second time, the cane hit me in the same place, and it hurt a lot more. After four times, it was time to go, but it was difficult to walk. My bottom was on fire, and I held it with my hands.
"Thank you, Headmaster," said Mrs Pratchett, happily. "There will not be any more dead mice in my sweet jars now."
CHAPTER THREE
Summer holidays
Summer holidays! What wonderful words. Every summer, from the age of four to seventeen years old, was wonderful. We always went to Norway for our holidays.
Norway was home for us because my family was Norwegian, and we all spoke the language.
We were always a big group of ten or more people. There were my three sisters and my very old half-sister (that is four people). There was my half-brother and me (that is six). There was my mother (seven) and someone to help (eight). Two or more friends of my very old half-sister came, too.
In those days, there were no planes. It took four days to go to our holiday in Norway. We went by train, taxi, a second train, a second taxi, ship and then in a small boat.
We always went to Oslo first. We stayed one night in a hotel and visited our mother's parents.
My grandmother was a very old woman with white hair. My grandfather was very quiet. He always sat in a chair and smoked tobacco from a very long pipe.
After the visit to my grandparents, we travelled to a little island. Its name was Tjome, and it was the best place on Earth. We went to the beach there. We swam in the sea and lay in the sun. We went to other islands in our little boat and ate fish from the sea. They were wonderful days.
I remember only one bad thing about our holidays in Norway. One year, my mother said, "We are going to the doctor. He wants to look at your nose and mouth."
"What's wrong with my nose and mouth?" I asked. I was about eight years old.
"Not a lot," my mother said. "But I think you have adenoids."
"What are adenoids?" I asked her.
"Don't worry," she said. "It's nothing."
The doctor looked up my nose and in my mouth. I did not worry, because I was too young to understand.
Someone held a bowl under my face. The doctor had a very long knife. He put it in hot water over a fire to make it clean.
"Open your mouth," said the doctor. But I did not want to.
"It will be quick," he said.
I opened my mouth. The doctor's knife went into my mouth. It moved very quickly. The doctor turned it four or five times. Something red went from my mouth into the bowl. It was a shock!
"Those are your adenoids," said the doctor. He pointed at the red things in the bowl.
The top of my mouth was on fire. I held my mother's hand. How could someone do this to me?
"You will breathe more easily now," said the doctor.
My mother and I walked home. Yes, I said walk. There was no bus or car. We walked for thirty minutes. We got home to my grandparents' house, and someone gave me a chair.
