Danny the Champion of the World

'He imprisons them in glass bottles and screws the tops down tight,' my father said. 'He has thousands of these bottles in his cave.'

'Does he catch bad dreams as well as good ones?'

'Yes,' my father said. 'He catches both. But he only uses the good ones in his powders.'

'What does he do with the bad ones?'

'He explodes them.'

It is impossible to tell you how much I loved my father. When he was sitting close to me on my bunk I would reach out and slide my hand into his, and then he would fold his long fingers around my fist, holding it tight.

'What does The BFG do with his powders after he has made them?' I asked.

'In the dead of night,' my father said, 'he goes prowling through the villages searching for houses where children are asleep. Because of his great height he can reach windows that are one and even two flights up, and when he finds a room with a sleeping child, he opens his suitcase...'

'His suitcase?' I said.

'The BFG always carries a suitcase and a blowpipe,' my father said. 'The blowpipe is as long as a lamp-post. The suitcase is for the powders. So he opens the suitcase and selects exactly the right powder... and he puts it into the blowpipe... and he slides the blowpipe in through the open window... and poof... he blows in the powder... and the powder floats around the room... and the child breathes it in...'

'And then what?' I asked.

'And then, Danny, the child begins to dream a marvellous and fantastic dream... and when the dream reaches its most marvellous and fantastic moment... then the magic powder really takes over... and suddenly the dream is not a dream any longer but a real happening... and the child is not asleep in bed... he is fully awake and is actually in the place of the dream and is taking part... in the whole thing... I mean really taking part... in real life. More about that tomorrow. It's getting late. Good-night, Danny. Go to sleep.'

My father kissed me and then he turned down the wick of the little paraffin lamp until the flame went out. He seated himself in front of the wood stove, which now made a lovely red glow in the dark room.

'Dad,' I whispered.

'What is it?'

'Have you ever actually seen The Big Friendly Giant?'

'Once,' my father said. 'Only once.'

'You did! Where?'

'I was out behind the caravan,' my father said, 'and it was a clear moonlit night, and I happened to look up and suddenly I saw this tremendous tall person running along the crest of the hill. He had a queer long-striding lolloping gait and his black cloak was streaming out behind him like the wings of a bird. There was a big suitcase in one hand and a blowpipe in the other, and when he came to the high hawthorn hedge at the end of the field, he just strode over it as though it wasn't there.'

'Were you frightened, Dad?'

'No,' my father said. 'It was thrilling to see him, and a little eerie,

but I wasn't frightened. Go to sleep now. Good-night.'

3

Cars and Kites and Fire-balloons

My father was a fine mechanic. People who lived miles away used to bring their cars to him for repair rather than take them to their nearest garage. He loved engines. 'A petrol engine is sheer magic,' he said to me once. 'Just imagine being able to take a thousand different bits of metal... and if you fit them all together in a certain way... and then if you feed them a little oil and petrol... and if you press a little switch... suddenly those bits of metal will all come to life... and they will purr and hum and roar... they will make the wheels of a motor-car go whizzing round at fantastic speeds...'

It was inevitable that I, too, should fall in love with engines and cars. Don't forget that even before I could walk, the workshop had been my play-room, for where else could my father have put me so that he could keep an eye on me all day long? My toys were the greasy cogs and springs and pistons that lay around all over the place, and these, I can promise you, were far more fun to play with than most of the plastic stuff children are given these days.

So almost from birth, I began training to be a mechanic.

But now that I was five years old, there was the problem of school to think about. It was the law that parents must send their children to school at the age of five, and my father knew about this.

We were in the workshop, I remember, on my fifth birthday, when the talk about school started. I was helping my father to fit new brake linings to the rear wheel of a big Ford when suddenly he said to me, 'You know something interesting, Danny? You must be easily the best five-year-old mechanic in the world.'

This was the greatest compliment he had ever paid me. I was enormously pleased.