Danny The Champion of the World
Roald Dahl
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Danny The Champion Of The World
A few years ago, author Roald Dahl wrote a book which was to change the lives of millions of readers. It is about a boy and his father who happened to be a pheasant hunter.
1935
At the edge of a woods, there was a petrol pumping station which Danny's father owned. Next to that was an old gyspy vardo which they lived in.
Every night, Danny's father told him stories about the pheasants that lived a few miles down the road in a well known place called Hazell's woods, named after a rich fat publican who was the owner of the estate which the woods were located at.
One night, Danny awoke at 2:10 in the morning and saw that his father was not in his bed where he should be. He figured that his father was at Hazell's wood. Riding an Austin Martin, he drove to Hazell's wood. A Police car flashed its lights. Danny drove the car through a gap in the hedge and the Police drove past him.
He found his father in the woods with a sprained ankle. "I sprained my ankle. You will have to help me get to the car." Danny supported his father using his shoulders and then drove the car back to the gas station.
Back at the gypsy vardo, Danny asked his father about hunting pheasants. "You must have taken a shotgun with you, yeah?" Danny's father said, "No no. Every estate owner and their guards would hear something like that. There is a secret, wait for it. Raisins. Pheasants love raisins.
One secret is called the horsehair stopper. Get a hair from the tail of a horse, careful that the horse doesn't kick you! Then cut the hairs into half inch lengths and thread them through a raisin. Go to a forest and throw them on the ground. The pheasant eats this and because of the irritation the horsehair causes, the pheasant will stand pumping its neck up and down and will not move. You can even spray a garden hose on it, and it will not move.
Another trick is to put some raisins at the bottom of a paper cone and coat the sides of the cone with honey. The pheasant will go for the raisin at the bottom of the cone and wind up with a paper cone over its head.
The time for the upcoming Annual Pheasant Hunt had arrived. All the rich fat hogs would be at Hazell's wood poaching, Danny's father explained. The rich all drunk go out there to hunt pheasants that have been fattened all year and are sluggish. Then they hire handlers to beat the grass in which the pheasants are hiding, and the rich shoot the pheasants that are flying. Boom!
Danny asked about using sleeping pills to drug the raisins. Danny's father thought that was a brilliant idea and summoned Doctor Spencer.
Doctor Spenser was the local doctor who attended to the needs of the community. On a visit to the gypsy vardo where Danny and his father were living, the doctor after giving them a basic physical check up said, "I can get you all the sleeping pills you need."
The day of the great pheasant hunt arrived and Danny awoke expecting his father to be up and ready to hunt some pheasants, using the drugged raisins. However, he saw Doctor Spenser at the front yard of the vardo. Also there was Sgt Samways the Police Officer who was in the Police car that night. It seemed that Danny's father had unexpected died a couple of hours earlier.
Danny was to be remanded to a borstal.
Danny's father awoke to a Spring morning that was shimmering and bright. He recognized the river bank where his gas station was, but instead, the gas station was gone as if he was visiting that land in a form when it was younger, in the distant past before the gas station was built. He looked up and up in the sky over the river, he saw heavenly pheasant in the sky in which its tail stretched forever and ever.
Production notes: This will be a loosely abridged adaptation with no attempt to be faithful to the story.
