I just realised that I completely forgot to tell you how it went! Two weeks ago I headed off to Willoughby Public School, where my nephew Kurt is a third grader. They’ve been studying Roald Dahl lately, and Kurt had showed his class my website. His teacher got excited and invited me to come give a talk. So I whipped up a little presentation and brought along some of the rare items from my Dahl collection. The kids were great, listening attentively and asking really good questions. (Third graders do fidget a lot though!) They were really excited that I got to visit Gipsy House and meet Liccy Dahl. I gave them a collective present of some Dahl-themed board games I was given by the manufacturer, and I lent their teachers a few books and movies. A very sweet little boy had evidently been nominated as the official “thanker,” and he presented me with a card and a W.P.S. pen and coffee mug. Sweet! At the end of the hour, one little girl asked if she could email me a story she’d written about Roald Dahl. “Sure,” I said. “Your teacher can give you my email address.” That set off a chorus of “Me too! Me too!” The teacher looked at me questioningly. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” “It’s fine,” I assured her. The next day I had more than 20 emails in my Inbox. (Whoops.) Overall it was a lot of fun, and I’m really grateful that they invited me. I may have to do it again next year!

Speaking of Roald Dahl, this article about a major Anglo-Saxon treasure find in England reminded me immediately of Dahl’s story about the Mildenhall Treasure. Exciting!

The trailer for the upcoming Fantastic Mr Fox movie is out… and I kinda liked it! (I’m as surprised as you are.) It bears very little resemblance to the original story, but to be honest it was never one of Dahl’s best works anyway. (It also underwent extensive revisions, as the original was even more a glorification of thievery.) I actually chuckled quite a few times during the trailer, especially at the young fox with the tube sock on his head. So for the moment, I’m cautiously optimistic about this one…

I really should start updating my Dahl site again. This movie could generate some serious traffic.

Hat tip to Andrew for pointing me to today’s Australian, which features a story about Roald Dahl’s sexy adventures as a “World War II spy.” *snort* Look, the guy was no angel, and he certainly got around a lot when he was younger. But he also has a documented history of embellishing his wartime adventures after the fact. I take all this stuff with a huge grain of salt.

And by the way, what a crappy article! It doesn’t even mention the name of the new book which apparently prompted the piece. If I was the author, I’d be annoyed.

This article about books written by computers reminded me of something… Oh, that’s right! The Great Automatic Grammatizator! The obvious next step is for this Philip Parker guy to start paying “real” authors not to write.

“…I was about your age then, maybe a little older, and in those days we always had a hot tea in the kitchen at five o’clock. I can remember exactly what was on the table that evening. It was my favorite thing of all, toad-in-the-hole, and my mum could make toad-in-the-hole like nobody else in the world. She did it in an enormous pan with yorkshire pudding very brown and crisp on top and raised up in huge bubbly mountains. In between the mountains you could see the sausages half buried in the batter. Fantastic it was…”
– Danny’s father in Danny the Champion of the World

How awesome is it that I live with someone who will indulge a whim and cook me a special dinner based on something out of a beloved children’s book? It was delicious.

Happy birthday, Roald! Can you believe I actually forgot? What amused me about this article is that I’ve actually met one of the people quoted. Amanda Conquy is the one who initially contacted me eight years ago about the roalddahl.org domain (which I owned). I happily signed it over to them, of course. She also put me into contact with Felicity Dahl and helped arrange my visit in 2000. Glad to see she’s still promoting Dahl’s work!