08 Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker

Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse- Maker 'Children are rrree-volting!' screamed The Grand High Witch. 'Vee vill vipe them all avay! Vee vill scrrrub them off the face of the earth! Vee vill flush them down the drain!' 'Yes, yes!' chanted the audience. 'Wipe them away! Scrub them off the earth! Flush them down the drain!' 'Children are foul and filthy!' thundered The Grand High Witch. 'They are! They are!' chorused the English witches. 'They are foul and filthy!' 'Children are dirty and stinky!' screamed The Grand High Witch. 'Dirty and stinky!' cried the audience, getting more and more worked up. 'Children are smelling of dogs' drrroppings!' screeched The Grand High Witch.

'Pooooooo!' cried the audience. 'Pooooooo! Pooooooo! Pooooooo!' 'They are vurse than dogs' drrroppings!' screeched The Grand High Witch. 'Dogs' drrroppings is smelling like violets and prrrimroses compared vith children!' 'Violets and primroses!' chanted the audience. They were clapping and cheering almost every word spoken from the platform. The speaker seemed to have them completely under her spell. 'To talk about children is making me sick!' screamed The Grand High Witch. 'I am feeling sick even thinking about them! Fetch me a basin!' The Grand High Witch paused and glared at the mass of eager faces in the audience. They waited, wanting more. 'So now!' barked The Grand High Witch. 'So now I am having a plan! I am having a giganticus plan for getting rrrid of every single child in the whole of Inkland!' The witches gasped. They gaped. They turned and gave each other ghoulish grins of excitement.

'Yes!' thundered The Grand High Witch. 'Vee shall svish them and svollop them and vee shall make to disappear every single smelly little brrrat in Inkland in vun strrroke!' 'Whoopee!' cried the witches, clapping their hands. 'You are brilliant, O Your Grandness! You are fantabulous!' 'Shut up and listen!' snapped The Grand High Witch. 'Listen very carefully and let us not be having any muck-ups!' The audience leaned forward, eager to learn how this magic was going to be performed. 'Each and every vun of you,' thundered The Grand High Witch, 'is to go back to your home towns immediately and rrree-sign from your jobs. Rrree-sign! Give notice! Rrree-tire!' 'We will!' they cried. 'We will resign from our jobs!' 'And after you have rrree-signed from your jobs,' The Grand High Witch went on, 'each and every vun of you vill be going out and you vill be buying…' She paused.

'What will we be buying?' they cried. 'Tell us, O Brilliant One, what is it we shall be buying?' 'Sveet-shops!' shouted The Grand High Witch. 'Sweet-shops!' they cried. 'We are going to buy sweet-shops! What a frumptious wheeze!' 'Each of you vill be buying for herself a sveetshop. You vill be buying the very best and most rrree-spectable sveet-shops in Inkland.' 'We will! We will!' they answered. Their dreadful voices were like a chorus of dentists' drills all grinding away together. 'I am vonting no tuppenny-ha'penny crrrummy little tobacco-selling-newspaper-sveet-shops!' shouted The Grand High Witch. 'I am vonting you to get only the very best shops filled up high vith piles and piles of luscious sveets and tasty chocs!' 'The best!' they cried. 'We shall buy the best sweetshops in town!' 'You vill be having no trouble in getting vot you vont,' shouted The Grand High Witch, 'because you vill be offering four times as much as a shop is vurth and nobody is rrree-fusing an

offer like that! Money is not a prrroblem to us vitches as you know very vell. I have brrrought vith me six trrrunks stuffed full of Inklish banknotes, all new and crrrisp. And all of them,' she added with a fiendish leer, 'all of them homemade.' The witches in the audience grinned, appreciating this joke. At that point, one foolish witch got so excited at the possibilities presented by owning a sweet-shop that she leapt to her feet and shouted, 'The children will come flocking to my shop and I will feed them poisoned sweets and poisoned chocs and wipe them all out like weasels!'

The room became suddenly silent. I saw the tiny body of The Grand High Witch stiffen and then go rigid with rage. 'Who spoke?' she shrieked. 'It vos you! You over there!' The culprit sat down fast and covered her face with her clawed hands. 'You blithering bumpkin!' screeched The Grand High Witch. 'You brrrainless bogvumper! Are you not rrree-alizing that if you are going rrround poisoning little children you vill be caught in five minutes flat? Never in my life am I hearing such a boshvolloping suggestion coming from a vitch!' The entire audience cowered and shook. I'm quite sure they all thought, as I did, that the terrible white-hot sparks were about to start flying again. Curiously enough, they didn't. 'If such a tomfiddling idea is all you can be coming up vith,' thundered The Grand High Witch, 'then it is no vunder Inkland is still svorming vith rrrotten little children!'