The Great Automatic Grammatizator and Other Stories Read online

  ROALD DAHL

  The Great Automatic Grammatizator and Other Stories

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Introduction

  The Great Automatic Grammatizator

  Mrs Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat

  The Butler

  Man from the South

  The Landlady

  Parson’s Pleasure

  The Umbrella Man

  Katina

  The Way up to Heaven

  Royal Jelly

  Vengeance Is Mine Inc.

  Taste

  Neck

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  The Great Automatic Grammatizator and Other Stories

  Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Wales of Norwegian parents. He was educated in England before starting work for the Shell Oil Company in Africa. He began writing after a ‘monumental bash on the head’ sustained as an RAF fighter pilot during the Second World War. Roald Dahl is one of the most successful and well known of all children’s writers. His books, which are read by children the world over, include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Magic Finger, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Fantastic Mr Fox, Matilda, The Twits, The BFG and The Witches, winner of the 1983 Whitbread Award. Roald Dahl died in 1990 at the age of seventy-four.

  Books by Roald Dahl

  BOY: TALES OF CHILDHOOD

  CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

  CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR

  DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD

  GEORGE’S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE

  GOING SOLO

  JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH

  MATILDA

  THE WITCHES

  For younger readers

  THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE

  ESIO TROT

  FANTASTIC MR FOX

  THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME

  THE MAGIC FINGER

  THE TWITS

  Picture books

  DIRTY BEASTS (with Quentin Blake)

  THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE (with Quentin Blake)

  THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME (with Quentin Blake)

  THE MINPINS (with Patrick Benson)

  REVOLTING RHYMES (with Quentin Blake)

  Plays

  THE BFG: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood)

  CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: A PLAY (Adapted by Richard George)

  DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood)

  FANTASTIC MR FOX: A PLAY (Adapted by Sally Reid)

  JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH: A PLAY (Adapted by Richard George)

  THE TWITS: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood)

  THE WITCHES: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood)

  Teenage fiction

  THE GREAT AUTOMATIC GRAMMATIZATOR AND OTHER STORIES

  RHYME STEW

  SKIN AND OTHER STORIES

  THE VICAR OF NIBBLESWICKE

  THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR AND SIX MORE

  Collections

  THE ROALD DAHL TREASURY

  SONGS AND VERSE

  Introduction

  ‘Would you mind,’ asked Liz Attenborough, the Children’s Publisher at Penguin Books, ‘looking at the complete collection of Roald Dahl’s adult stories and suggesting some for a possible collection for teenagers?’ What better excuse could anyone have for revisiting favourite books and being able to call it ‘work’!

  As I re-read, I experienced again surprise, shock and amazement; I still caught my breath in the middle of stories and I was moved by the sensitivity – yes, I do mean sensitivity (a word not often used in connection with Dahl’s writing) of stories such as Katina.

  The heavy hardback volume of Roald Dahl’s collected short stories sat around in my home for several weeks and no one visited without commenting on it. As soon as a collection for young adults was mentioned, they offered advice: ‘You MUST include …’, or a memory: ‘I remember at school when we used to nick a copy of Kiss Kiss from the English cupboard to read aloud in the loos at lunchtime.’ I visited secondary schools and was received with enthusiasm and more advice. If all my friends and all the young readers had had their way, this book would be a much fatter one. Instead, if you come to it remembering your earlier enjoyment of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, Matilda and others, you will have much to enjoy now and still more to look forward to later.

  Roald Dahl the writer and the man needs no introduction from me, for in Boy and Going Solo he invited his readers into his life. Somehow, through his extraordinary stories he belongs to us, rather as families do, for in some curious way he became part of our lives. He loved books and really wanted children and young people ‘to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted’. He said, ‘Books shouldn’t be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage. If you are going to get anywhere in life you have to read a lot of books.’

  Roald Dahl’s work is not always liked by adults but has long been loved by young people and has switched many of them on to books. I think the stories in this book have all the right ingredients: the fun, excitement and wonder that Dahl mentioned, originality, horror, ingenuity, a touch of the macabre, unexpected twists and turns and much more besides – read on and enjoy!

  Wendy Cooling, 1996

  The Great Automatic Grammatizator

  ‘Well, Knipe, my boy. Now that it’s finished, I just called you in to tell you I think you’ve done a fine job.’

  Adolph Knipe stood still in front of Mr Bohlen’s desk. There seemed to be no enthusiasm in him at all.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Bohlen.’

  ‘Did you see what the papers said this morning?’

  ‘No, sir, I didn’t.’

  The man behind the desk pulled a folded newspaper towards him, and began to read: ‘The building of the great automatic computing engine, ordered by the government some time ago, is now complete. It is probably the fastest electronic calculating machine in the world today. Its function is to satisfy the ever-increasing need of science, industry, and administration for rapid mathematical calculation which, in the past, by traditional methods, would have been physically impossible, or would have required more time than the problems justified. The speed with which the new engine works, said Mr John Bohlen, head of the firm of electrical engineers mainly responsible for its construction, may be grasped by the fact that it can provide the correct answer in five seconds to a problem that would occupy a mathematician for a month. In three minutes, it can produce a calculation that by hand (if it were possible) would fill half a million sheets of foolscap paper. The automatic computing engine uses pulses of electricity, generated at the rate of a million a second, to solve all calculations that resolve themselves into addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. For practical purposes there is no limit to what it can do …’

  Mr Bohlen glanced up at the long, melancholy face of the younger man. ‘Aren’t you proud, Knipe? Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Of course, Mr Bohlen.’

  ‘I don’t think I have to remind you that your own contribution, especially to the original plans, was an important one. In fact, I might go so far as to say that without you and some of your ideas, this project might still be on the drawing-boards today.’

  Adolph Knipe moved his feet on the carpet, and he watched the two small white hands of his chief, the nervous fingers playing with a paperclip, unbending it, straightening out the hairpin curves. He didn’t like the man’s hands. He didn’t like his face either, with the tiny mouth and the nar