your eyes pop out of their sockets . . .’
George wanted to run away, but his feet seemed stuck to the floor.
‘We know how to make your nails drop off and teeth grow out of your fingers
instead.’
George began to tremble. It was her face that frightened him most of all, the
frosty smile, the brilliant unblinking eyes.
‘We know how to have you wake up in the morning with a long tail coming out from
behind you.’
‘Grandma!’ he cried out. ‘Stop!’
‘We know secrets, my dear, about dark places where dark things live and squirm
and slither all over each other . . .’
George made a dive for the door.
‘It doesn’t matter how far you run,’ he heard her saying, ‘you won’t ever get
away . . .’
George ran into the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.
The Marvellous Plan
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! Ho-hum! 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!’
George Begins to Make the Medicine
George took an enormous saucepan out of the cupboard and placed it on the
kitchen table.
‘George!’ came the shrill voice from the next room. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing, Grandma,’ he called out.
‘You needn’t think I can’t hear you just because you closed the door! You’re
rattling the saucepans!’
‘I’m just tidying the kitchen, Grandma.’
Then there was silence.
George had absolutely no doubts whatsoever about how he was going to make his
famous medicine. He wasn’t going to fool about wondering whether to put in a
little bit of this or a little bit of that. Quite simply, he was going to put in
EVERYTHING he could find. There would be no messing about, no hesitating, no
wondering whether a particular thing would knock the old girl sideways or not.
The rule would be this: whatever he saw, if it was runny or powdery or gooey, in
it went.
Nobody had ever made a medicine like that before. If it didn’t actually cure
Grandma, then it would anyway cause some exciting results. It would be worth
watching.
George decided to work his way round the various rooms one at a time and see
what they had to offer.
He would go first to the bathroom. There are always lots of funny things in a
bathroom. So upstairs he went, carrying the enormous two-handled saucepan before
him.
In the bathroom, he gazed longingly at the famous and dreaded medicine cupboard.
But he didn’t go near it. It was the only thing in the entire house he was
forbidden to touch. He had made solemn promises to his parents about this and he
wasn’t going to break them. There were things in there, they had told him, that
could actually kill a person, and although he was out to give Grandma a pretty
fiery mouthful, he didn’t really want a dead body on his hands. George put the
saucepan on the floor and went to work.
Number one was a bottle labelled GOLDEN GLOSS HAIR SHAMPOO. He emptied it into
the pan. ‘That ought to wash her tummy nice and clean,’ he said.
He took a full tube of TOOTHPASTE and squeezed out the whole lot of it in one
long worm. ‘Maybe that will brighten up those horrid brown teeth of hers,’ he
said.
There was an aerosol can of SUPERFOAM SHAVING SOAP belonging to his father.
George loved playing with aerosols. He pressed the button and kept his finger on
it until there was nothing left. A wonderful mountain of white foam built up in
the giant saucepan.
With his fingers, he scooped out the contents of a jar of VITAMIN ENRICHED FACE
CREAM.
In went a small bottle of scarlet NAIL VARNISH. ‘If the toothpaste doesn’t clean
her teeth,’ George said, ‘then this will paint them as red as roses.’
He found another jar of creamy stuff labelled HAIR REMOVER. SMEAR IT ON YOUR
LEGS, it said, AND ALLOW TO REMAIN FOR FIVE MINUTES. George tipped it all into
the saucepan.
There was a bottle with yellow stuff inside it called DISHWORTH’S FAMOUS
DANDRUFF CURE. In it went.
There was something called BRILLIDENT FOR CLEANING FALSE TEETH. It was a white
powder. In that went, too.
He found another aerosol can, NEVERMORE PONKING DEODORANT SPRAY, GUARANTEED, it
said, TO KEEP AWAY UNPLEASANT BODY SMELLS FOR A WHOLE DAY. ‘She could use plenty
of that,’ George said as he sprayed the entire canful into the saucepan.
LIQUID PARAFFIN, the next one was called. It was a big bottle. He hadn’t the
faintest idea what it did to you, but he poured it in anyway.
That, he thought, looking around him, was about all from the bathroom.
On his mother’s dressing-table in the bedroom, George found yet another lovely
aerosol can. It was called HELGA’S HAIRSET. HOLD TWELVE INCHES AWAY FROM THE
HAIR AND SPRAY LIGHTLY. He squirted the whole lot into the saucepan. He did
enjoy squirting these aerosols.
There was a bottle of perfume called FLOWERS OF TURNIPS. It smelled of old
cheese. In it went.
And in, too, went a large round box of POWDER. It was called PINK PLASTER. There
was a powder-puff on top and he threw that in as well for luck.
He found a couple of LIPSTICKS. He pulled the greasy red things out of their
little cases and added them to the mixture.
The bedroom had nothing more to offer, so George carried the enormous saucepan
downstairs again and trotted into the laundry-room where the shelves were full
of all kinds of household items.
The first one he took down was a large box of SUPERWHITE FOR AUTOMATIC