“What did you say to him?” I ask.
My mother was standing in the kitchen, making a noise like a boiling kettle. “That cat is a menace!” she shrieked. “A FURRY MENACE!”
Outside my window, the moon is a silver coin. And I think to myself: Some children have ordinary fathers. But me? I hit the jackpot.
Most children, I suppose, have ordinary fathers. Fathers who wear grey suits and carry briefcases and smell of boiled potatoes and worry. But not me. No, no, no. My father is quite different. My father is FANTASTIC. my dad is fantastic roald dahl pdf
And that, you see, is why my father is fantastic. He does not fight monsters with swords or shouting. He fights them with whispers, with nonsense, with un-boiled eggs and knitted socks.
Most fathers would say, “Don’t be silly, there’s no such thing.” Not my father. My father takes a torch, lies down on the carpet, and slides under the bed.
But that was only the beginning.
“That’s impossible,” I said.
But the very best thing—the most fantastic thing of all—is what he does with the monsters.
You see, I have a monster under my bed. His name is Grumblegut. He has three eyes, seventeen teeth, and a breath that smells like old cheese and thunder. Every night at 11:17, he tries to grab my ankles. “What did you say to him
“My dear child,” he replied, “impossible is just a word invented by people who have never tried to un-boil an egg.”
And when I say fantastic, I do not mean the sort of fantastic you say when someone gives you a new pencil case. I mean FAN-TAS-TIC with capital letters, like a giant walking through a forest.