"Attention please!
Attention please!
Don't dare to talk!
Don't dare to sneeze!
Don't doze or daydream!
Stay awake!
Your health, your very life's at stake!
Ho–ho, you say, they can't mean me.
Ha–ha, we answer, wait and see.
Did any of you ever meetA child called Goldie Pinklesweet?
Who on her seventh birthday
To stay with Granny down in Kent.
At lunchtime on the second
Of dearest little Goldie's stay,
Granny announced, 'I'm going
To do some shopping in the town.'(D'you know why Granny didn't
The child to come along as well?
She's going to the nearest
To buy herself a double gin.)So out she creeps.
She shuts the door.
And Goldie, after making
That she is really by herself,
Goes quickly to the medicine shelf,
And there, her little greedy
See pills of every shape and size,
Such fascinating colours too ––Some green, some pink, some brown, some blue.'All right,' she says, 'let's try the brown,'She takes one pill and gulps it down.'Yum–yum!' she cries. 'Hooray!
What fun!
They're chocolate–coated, every one!'She gobbles five, she gobbles ten,
She stops her gobbling only
The last pill's gone.
There are no more.
Slowly she rises from the floor.
She stops.
She hiccups.
Dear, oh dear,
She starts to feel a trifle queer.
You see, how could young Goldie know,
For nobody had told her so,
That Grandmama, her old
Suffered from frightful constipation.
This meant that every night she'd
Herself a powerful laxative,
And all the medicines that she'd
Were naturally of this sort.
The pink and red and blue and
Were all extremely strong and mean.
But far more fierce and meaner still,
Was Granny's little chocolate pill.
Its blast effect was quite uncanny.
It used to shake up even Granny.
In point of fact she did not
To use them more than twice a year.
So can you wonder little
Began to feel a wee bit moldy?
Inside her tummy, something stirred.
A funny gurgling sound was heard,
And then, oh dear, from deep within,
The ghastly rumbling sounds begin!
They rumbilate and roar and boom!
They bounce and echo round the room!
The floorboards shake and from the
Some bits of paint and plaster fall.
Explosions, whistles, awful
Were followed by the loudest clangs.(A man next door was heard to say,'A thunderstorm is on the way.')But on and on the rumbling goes.
A window cracks, a lamp–bulb blows.
Young Goldie clutched herself and cried,'There's something wrong with my inside!'This was, we very greatly fear,
The understatement of the year.
For wouldn't any child feel crummy,
With loud explosions in her tummy?
Granny, at half past two, came in,
Weaving a little from the gin,
But even so she quickly
The empty bottle on the floor.'My precious laxatives!' she cried.'I don't feel well,' the girl replied.
Angrily Grandma shook her head.'I'm really not surprised,' she said.'Why can't you leave my pills alone?'With that, she grabbed the
And shouted, 'Listen, send us
An ambulance!
A child is sick!
It's number fifty,
Fontwell Road!
Come fast!
I think she might explode!'We're sure you do not wish to
About the hospital and
They did a lot of horrid
With stomach–pumps and rubber rings.
Let's answer what you want to know;
Did Goldie live or did she go?
The doctors gathered round her bed,'There's really not much hope,' they said.'She's going, going, gone!' they cried.'She's had her chips!
She's dead!
She's died!"'I'm not so sure,' the child replied.
And all at once she opened
Her great big bluish eyes and sighed,
And gave the anxious docs a wink,
And said, 'I'll be okay,
I think.'So Goldie lived and back she
At first to Granny's place in Kent.
Her father came the second
And fetched her in a Chevrolet,
And drove her to their home in Dover.
But Goldie's troubles were not over.
You see, if someone takes
Of any highly dangerous stuff,
One will invariably
Some traces of it left behind.
It pains us greatly to
That Goldie suffered from this fate.
She'd taken such a massive
Of this unpleasant kind of pill,
It got into her blood and bones,
It messed up all her chromosomes,
It made her constantly upset,
And she could never really
The beastly stuff to go away.
And so the girl was forced to
For seven hours every
Within the everlasting
Of what we call The Ladies Room.
And after all, the W.
C.
Is not the gayest place to be.
So now, before it is too late.
Take heed of Goldie's dreadful fate.
And seriously, all jokes apart,
Do promise us across your
That you will never help
To medicine from the medicine shelf."(from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator) Roals's American readers may notice a change in line 126-7.
Apparently some US publishers printed it as "There she sits and dreams of glory, alone inside the lavatory." since WC (or Water Closet) is not in common usage in the United States.
