WASHING-MACHINES. DIRT, it said, WILL DISAPPEAR LIKE MAGIC. George didn’t know
whether Grandma was automatic or not, but she was certainly a dirty old woman.
‘So she’d better have it all,’ he said, tipping in the whole boxful.
Then there was a big tin of WAXWELL FLOOR POLISH. IT REMOVES FILTH AND FOUL
MESSES FROM YOUR FLOOR AND LEAVES EVERYTHING SHINY BRIGHT, it said. George
scooped the orange-coloured waxy stuff out of the tin and plonked it into the
pan.
There was a round cardboard carton labelled FLEA POWDER FOR DOGS. KEEP WELL AWAY
FROM THE DOG’S FOOD, it said, BECAUSE THIS POWDER, IF EATEN, WILL MAKE THE DOG
EXPLODE. ‘Good,’ said George, pouring it all into the saucepan.
He found a box of CANARY SEED on the shelf. ‘Perhaps it’ll make the old bird
sing,’ he said, and in it went.
Next, George explored the box with shoe-cleaning materials — brushes and tins
and dusters. Well now, he thought, Grandma’s medicine is brown, so my medicine
must also be brown or she’ll smell a rat. The way to colour it, he decided,
would be with BROWN SHOE-POLISH. The large tin he chose was labelled DARK TAN.
Splendid. He scooped it all out with an old spoon and plopped it into the pan.
He would stir it up later.
On his way back to the kitchen, George saw a bottle of GIN standing on the
sideboard. Grandma was very fond of gin. She was allowed to have a small nip of
it every evening. Now he would give her a treat. He would pour in the whole
bottle. He did.
Back in the kitchen, George put the huge saucepan on the table and went over to
the cupboard that served as a larder. The shelves were bulging with bottles and
jars of every sort. He chose the following and emptied them one by one into the
saucepan:
A TIN OF CURRY POWDER
A TIN OF MUSTARD POWDER
A BOTTLE OF ‘EXTRA HOT’ CHILLI SAUCE
A TIN OF BLACK PEPPERCORNS
A BOTTLE OF HORSERADISH SAUCE
‘There!’ he said aloud. ‘That should do it!’
‘George!’ came the screechy voice from the next room. ‘Who are you talking to in
there? What are you up to?’
‘Nothing, Grandma, absolutely nothing,’ he called back.
‘Is it time for my medicine yet?’
‘No, Grandma, not for about half an hour.’
‘Well, just see you don’t forget it.’
‘I won’t, Grandma,’ George answered. ‘I promise I won’t.’
Animal Pills
At this point, George suddenly had an extra good wheeze. Although the medicine
cupboard in the house was forbidden ground, what about the medicines his father
kept on the shelf in the shed next to the henhouse? The animal medicines?
What about those?
Nobody had ever told him he mustn’t touch them.
Let’s face it, George said to himself, hair-spray and shaving-cream and
shoe-polish are all very well and they will no doubt cause some splendid
explosions inside the old geezer, but what the magic mixture now needs is a
touch of the real stuff, real pills and real tonics, to give it punch and
muscle.
George picked up the heavy three-quarters full saucepan and carried it out of
the back door. He crossed the farmyard and headed straight for the shed
alongside the henhouse. He knew his father wouldn’t be there. He was out
haymaking in one of the meadows.
George entered the dusty old shed and put the saucepan on the bench. Then he
looked up at the medicine shelf. There were five big bottles there. Two were
full of pills, two were full of runny stuff and one was full of powder.
‘I’ll use them all,’ George said. ‘Grandma needs them. Boy, does she need them!’
The first bottle he took down contained an orange-coloured powder. The label
said, FOR CHICKENS WITH FOUL PEST, HEN GRIPE, SORE BEAKS, GAMMY LEGS,
COCKERELITIS, EGG TROUBLE, BROODINESS OR LOSS OF FEATHERS. MIX ONE SPOONFUL ONLY
WITH EACH BUCKET OF FEED.
‘Well,’ George said aloud to himself as he tipped in the whole bottleful, ‘the
old bird won’t be losing any feathers after she’s had a dose of this.’
The next bottle he took down had about five hundred gigantic purple pills in it.
FOR HORSES WITH HOARSE THROATS, it said on the label. THE HOARSE-THROATED HORSE
SHOULD SUCK ONE PILL TWICE A DAY.
‘Grandma may not have a hoarse throat,’ George said, ‘but she’s certainly got a
sharp tongue. Maybe they’ll cure that instead.’ Into the saucepan went the five
hundred gigantic purple pills.
Then there was a bottle of thick yellowish liquid. FOR COWS, BULLS AND BULLOCKS,
the label said. WILL CURE COW POX, COW MANGE, CRUMPLED HORNS, BAD BREATH IN
BULLS, EARACHE, TOOTHACHE, HEADACHE, HOOFACHE, TAILACHE AND SORE UDDERS.
‘That grumpy old cow in the living-room has every one of those rotten
illnesses,’ George said. ‘She’ll need it all.’ With a slop and a gurgle, the
yellow liquid splashed into the now nearly full saucepan.
The next bottle contained a brilliant red liquid. SHEEPDIP, it said on the
label. FOR SHEEP WITH SHEEPROT AND FOR GETTING RID OF TICKS AND FLEAS. MIX ONE
SPOONFUL IN ONE GALLON OF WATER AND SLOSH IT OVER THE SHEEP. CAUTION, DO NOT
MAKE THE MIXTURE ANY STRONGER OR THE WOOL WILL FALL OUT AND THE ANIMAL WILL BE
NAKED.
‘By gum,’ said George, ‘how I’d love to walk in and slosh it all over old
Grandma and watch the ticks and fleas go jumping off her. But I can’t. I
mustn’t. So she’ll have to drink it instead.’ He poured the bright red medicine
into the saucepan.
The last bottle on the shelf was full of pale green pills. PIG PILLS, the label
announced. FOR PIGS WITH PORK PRICKLES, TENDER TROTTERS, BRISTLE BLIGHT AND
SWINE SICKNESS. GIVE ONE PILL PER DAY. IN SEVERE CASES TWO PILLS MAY BE GIVEN,
BUT MORE THAN THAT WILL MAKE THE PIG ROCK AND ROLL.
‘Just the stuff, said George, ‘for that miserable old pig back there in the
house. She’ll need a very big dose.’ He tipped all the green pills, hundreds and
hundreds of them, into the saucepan.
There was an old stick lying on the bench that had been used for stirring paint.
George picked it up and started to stir his marvellous concoction. The mixture
was as thick as cream, and as he stirred and stirred, many wonderful colours
rose up from the depths and blended together, pinks, blues, greens, yellows and
browns.
George went on stirring until it was all well mixed, but even so there were
still hundreds of pills lying on the bottom that hadn’t melted. And there was
his mother’s splendid powder-puff floating on the surface. ‘I shall have to boil
it all up,’ George said. ‘One good quick boil on the stove is all it needs.’ And
with that he staggered back towards the house with the enormous heavy saucepan.
On the way, he passed the garage, so he went in to see if he could find any
other interesting things. He added the following:
Half a pint of ENGINE OIL — to keep Grandma’s engine going smoothly.
Some ANTI-FREEZE — to keep her radiator from freezing up in winter.
A handful of GREASE — to grease her creaking joints.
Then back to the kitchen.
The Cook-up
In the kitchen, George put the saucepan on the stove and turned up the gas flame
underneath it as high as it would go.
‘George!’ came the awful voice from the next room. ‘It’s time for my medicine!’
‘Not yet, Grandma,’ George called back. ‘There’s still twenty minutes before
eleven o’clock.’
‘What mischief are you up to in there now?’ Granny screeched. ‘I hear noises.’
George thought it best not to answer this one. He found a long wooden spoon in a
kitchen drawer and began stirring hard. The stuff in the pot got hotter and
hotter.
Soon the marvellous mixture began to froth and foam. A rich blue smoke, the
colour of peacocks, rose from the surface of the liquid, and a fiery fearsome
smell filled the kitchen. It made George choke and splutter. It was a smell
unlike any he had smelled before. It was a brutal and bewitching smell, spicy
and staggering, fierce and frenzied, full of wizardry and magic. Whenever he got
a whiff of it up his nose, firecrackers went off in his skull and electric
prickles ran along the backs of his legs. It was wonderful to stand there
stirring this amazing mixture and to watch it smoking blue and bubbling and
frothing and foaming as though it were alive. At one point, he could have sworn
he saw bright sparks flashing in the swirling foam.
And suddenly, George found himself dancing around the steaming pot, chanting
strange words that came into his head out of nowhere:
‘Fiery broth and witch’s brew
Foamy froth and riches blue
Fume and spume and spoondrift spray
Fizzle swizzle shout hooray
Watch it sloshing, swashing, sploshing
Hear it hissing, squishing, spissing