The Missing Golden Ticket and Other Splendiferous Secrets (16 page)

Point 4 is crucial. Roald Dahl spent many months writing
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
and, as you know, there was a first draft, then a second, then a third, and so on. Some bits were added in, other bits taken out. With each rewrite, the story would get better and better.

“One Christmas, when I was about nine or ten, I had been given a fine Meccano set as my main present, and I decided I would make a device that was capable of ‘bombing’ from the air the pedestrians using the public footpath across our land.

“Briefly my plan was as follows: I would stretch a wire all the way from the high roof of our house to the old garage on the other side of the footpath. Then I would construct
from my Meccano a machine that would hang from the wire by a grooved wheel and this machine would hopefully run down the wire at great speed dropping its bombs on the unwary walkers underneath.

“Next morning, filled with the enthusiasm that grips all great inventors, I climbed on to the roof of our house by the skylight and wrapped one end of the long roll of wire around a chimney. I threw the rest of the wire into the garden below and went back down myself through the skylight. I carried the wire across the garden, over the fence, across the footpath, over the next fence and into our land on the other side. I now pulled the wire very tight and fixed it with a big nail to the top of the door of the old garage. So far so good.

“Next I set about constructing from the Meccano my bombing machine, or chariot as I called it. I put the wheel at the top, and then running down from the wheel I made a strong column about three feet long (a meter). At the lower end of this column, I fixed two arms that projected outwards at right angles, one on either side, and along these arms I suspended five empty Heinz soup tins. The whole thing looked something like this:

“. . . I filled all the soup tins with water. I lay flat on the roof waiting for a victim. Soon two ladies dressed in tweed skirts and jackets and each wearing a hat, came strolling up the path with a revolting little Pekinese dog on a lead. I knew I had to time this carefully, so when they were very nearly but not quite directly under the wire, I let my chariot go. Down she went, making a wonderful screeching-humming noise as the metal wheel ran down the wire and the string ran through my fingers at great speed. Bombing from a height is never easy. I had to guess when my chariot was directly over the target, and when that moment came, I jerked the string. The chariot stopped dead and the tins swung upside down and all the water tipped out. The ladies, who had halted
and looked up on hearing the rushing noise of my chariot overhead, caught the cascade of water full in their faces. It was tremendous. A bulls-eye first time. The women screamed. I lay flat on the roof so as not to be seen, peering over the edge, and I saw the women shouting and waving their arms. Then they came marching straight into our garden through the gate at the back and crossed the garden and hammered on the door. I nipped down smartly through the skylight and did a bunk.

“Later on my mother fixed me with a steely eye and told me she was confiscating my Meccano set for the rest of the holidays. But for days afterwards I experienced the pleasant warm glow that comes to all of us when we have brought off a major triumph!”

At one time,
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
was going to end very differently! This was the ending in an earlier version: