Dahl comments that this is 1924, and it is common for doctors to operate on adenoids and tonsils without administering anesthetic first. The doctor says he’ll breathe more easily now.

Without warning, the doctor boils a scalpel in a mug of water and then cuts four or five red lumps from inside Dahl’s mouth, which feels like it is on fire. His mother believes he has adenoids in his nose and throat.

The only unpleasant thing to happen on vacation in Norway is a visit Dahl makes to the doctor. They collect mussels from the shore, and fish on lines, pulling up cod, whiting, haddock, and mackerel. He and his family eat lots of fresh seafood and dairy, then spend the days rowing out to little islands, where they play in the water and get sunburnt. The Dahl family stays in a rustic hotel with a wooden outhouse, and Dahl can see rats scurrying around at the bottom of the hole he defecates into. After the stop in Oslo, the family travels by boat up the fjord to the island of Tjöme. Throughout the meal, everyone raises their glasses and says, “Skaal,” the Norwegian ritual version of a cheers. When they arrive at Dahl’s grandparents’ house, they all eat boiled fresh white fish and new potatoes around an oval table. He marvels at how his mother and nanny managed to organize all the bookings on trains and taxis and ships for so many seasick children. It takes four days to reach Oslo, but it is like going home. That summer, Dahl travels over land and sea to visit Norway with his family, all of whom speak Norwegian. Dahl’s mother says she will send him to an English boarding school, because a Welsh school is not of the same caliber as the English schools Dahl’s father knew were best in the world. Coombes called her a foreigner and said she can take Dahl away if she doesn’t like his methods. She tells Dahl she told Coombes that where she is from, you don’t hit children.

When he tells her what happened, she immediately leaves the house and goes to talk to Coombes. That evening, Dahl’s mother sees the bruises. Dahl feels agony as the blows land on his skin and he listens to the pistol-like crack of the cane strike. Pratchett eggs him on to hit them harder, and Coombes does as she says. Coombes goes along, one by one, hitting the boys’ bottoms with a yellow cane. Coombes’s office, Dahl and his friends are made to line up and bend over until they are touching the ground.

A swim roald dahl pdf