Grimble

I have mentioned a couple of times on this blog that one of my all-time favorite books from my childhood is GRIMBLE AND GRIMBLE AT CHRISTMAS by Clement Freud. I think I first saw the story read on an episode of the BBC children’s program “Jackanory” back when I was maybe 8 or 9. Not long after that, I think I checked the book out of the library, and may have even procured a copy for myself. In any case, I parted ways with whatever copy I may have had a long time ago, so I was delighted a few years back when my Mum found a copy and bought it for me.

I believe the book is out-of-print, which is a shame. It’s a great young middle-grade book that has wide appeal. To give you a taste of what you’re missing out on if you’ve never read it, here’s an excerpt. Grimble’s parents have gone to Peru and left Grimble to fend for himself for a week. This passage is from Wednesday, where he goes swimming with the other kids in his class at school:

In the afternoon they went to the swimming pool. The pool was new and belonged to some people called the Council who were always sending notes to Grimble’s school asking boys not to make so much noise, to slop less water about and try to remember other people who wanted to swim. Saturday was sports day, and Grimble’s school had to choose teams for the different swimming events. Grimble was quite good at the under-eleven butterfly stroke but as they only wanted six boys in the final and there were seven under-eleven butterfly-strokers, they had a race to see who would be last and not swim on Saturday. The seven boys got into the bath [pool] at the deep end, a man said read, steady, go and the boy next to Grimble, who was called Blatt, did a very deep butterfly stroke, came up with several mouthfuls of water, banged his head against the rail, and sank.

As Grimble realized that there was now no point in using up a lot of energy in not coming last of seven when there were only six swimmers he swam very slowly and came last of six.

‘The following boys will swim in the final on Saturday,’ shouted the swimming master, and he read out five names and Grimble’s.

When he got home that afternoon he looked for a piece of paper and wrote out a telegram. GRIMBLE PERU. AM IN UNDERELEVEN BUTTERFLY-STROKE FINAL SATURDAY IMPORTANT YOU ATTEND LOVE GRIMBLE.

As telegrams cost so much for every word sent, he looked at his message and decided that ‘undereleven’ was not very important to the meaning and might as well be taken out. Then there were the words ‘am’ and ‘in’. If he wrote ‘butterflystroke final Saturday’ they would get the general idea. So he changed the piece of paper to: GRIMBLE PERU. BUTTERFLYSTROKE FINAL SATURDAY LOVE GRIMBLE and took it to the Post Office with his tin of money and they said, ‘You can have some extra words because the least you can pay for a telegram to Peru is 75p.’ So he took back the paper and wrote PLEASE COME BACK SOON BECAUSE I AM MISSING YOU A LOT LOVE GRIMBLE.

If you can track down a copy of this book, I highly recommend it. 🙂