Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Danny The Champion of The World
Danny The Champion of The World
Danny The Champion of The World
Danny lives with his father in an old gypsy caravan behind the filling station they own, it had been this way since Dannys Mother had died when he was just four months old and Danny would not have it any other way. His father taught him so many things, from being able to strip and clean an engine in the workshop to the names of all the local flora and fauna. But Dannys father had a secret, a longing that he had kept in check all the while he raised Danny but eventually gave in to when Danny was nine years old. Danny awake one night to notice the absence of his fathers steady breathing, a quick look in his bed confirmed that he was not asleep nor was he in the workshop next to the filling station. Hours passed with Danny sitting on the caravan steps waiting and worrying before he finally sees his father walking down the country lane towards their caravan, and when he realizes that Danny is awake he shares with him the most amazing secret, a secret that will change their lives. I loved the far intent look on my Fathers face when he was telling a story. His face was pale and still and distant, unconscious of everything around him. Dannys father had been at Hazels woods; Victor Hazel was a despised brewery owner who according to Danny`s father - had ideas way above his station. He owned virtually all of the land surrounding the filling station and could be seen shooting along the country lanes in his silver Rolls Royce. His crowning passion was the fact that he owned one of the best pheasant woods in southern England, woods in which he held an annual start of season shoot for the rich and gentry. Danny`s father had been doing a spot of poaching, a practice that it seems virtually everyone thereabouts partook in such was the universal hatred for Victor Hazel. And now, with the opening shoot fast approaching Danny hits upon a marvelous idea, an idea so clever and yet so simple that it simply has to be tried, an idea so ingenious it could change the face of poaching forever.. It is impossible to tell you how much I loved my father. When he was sitting close to me on my bunk I would reach out and slide my hand into his, and then he would fold his long fingers around my fist, holding it tight. What I have been trying so hard to tell you all along is simply that my father, without the slightest doubt, was the most marvelous and exciting father any boy ever had.
Danny's father and a fellow poacher, to treat Danny's father for his injury. Danny's father is prescribed strong sleeping pills to deal with the pain of his broken ankle, but declines to use them. While Danny's father is recovering from his injury, they hear that Mr. Hazell's annual pheasant-shooting party is approaching, which he hosts to curry favor and prestige among the gentry. They decide to humiliate him by luring all the pheasants away from the forest, so there will be no pheasants to shoot. Danny suggests that they should put the contents of sleeping tablets inside raisins which the pheasants will then eat; his father dubs this new method the "Sleeping Beauty." Having poached 120 pheasants from Mr. Hazell's woods, they hide the drugged pheasants at the local vicar's house, while they take a taxi home. The next morning, the vicar's wife delivers the sleeping pheasants in a speciallybuilt oversized baby carriage. As she is walking toward them, the pheasants began to wake up and fly, but they droopily fall back down. An angry Hazell arrives at the filling station just as the pheasants are waking up. With the help of Sgt. Samways, the local constable, Danny and his father herd the groggy birds onto Hazell's Rolls Royce, where they scratch the paintwork and defecate all over it, inside and out. Once the pheasants have woken completely, they fly away from the scene - in the opposite direction from Hazell's wood. Mr. Hazell drives off in disgrace, his fancy car and shooting party both ruined. Danny is hailed as "the champion of the world" by his father, Doc Spencer, and Sgt. Samways, but their victory is a bittersweet one, due to the fact that all the pheasants flew away. But Doc Spencer shows them six pheasants who have died from eating too many drugged raisins. They each receive two pheasants, except the Doc, who didn't want any. Danny and his father walk off toward town, intending to buy a new oven for cooking their pheasants. As they stroll along, Danny muses about how fortunate he is to have a father who is so imaginative and fun to be with.