The Twits

Roald Dahl The Twits Table of Contents Hairy Faces Mr. Twit Dirty Beards Mrs. Twit The Glass Eye The Frog The Wormy Spaghetti The Funny Walking Stick Mrs. Twit Has the Shrinks Mrs. Twit Gets a Stretching Mrs. Twit Goes Ballooning Up Mr. Twit Gets a Horrid Shock The House, the Tree, & the Monkey Cage Hugtight Sticky Glue Four Sticky Little Boys The Great Upside-Down Monkey Circus The Roly-Poly Bird to the Rescue No Bird Pie for Mr. Twit Still No Bird Pie for Mr. Twit Mr. & Mrs. Twit Go Off to Buy Guns Muggle-Wump Has an Idea The Great Glue Painting Begins The Carpet Goes on the Ceiling The Furniture Goes Up The Ravens Swoop Over The Twits Are Turned Upside Down The Monkeys Escape The Twits Get the Shrinks Hairy Faces What a lot of hairy-faced men there are around nowadays. When a man grows hair all over his face it is impossible to tell what he really looks like. Perhaps that's why he does it. He'd rather you didn't know. Then there's the problem of washing. When the very hairy ones wash their faces, it must be as big a job as when you and I wash the hair on our heads. So what I want to know is this. How often do all these hairy-faced men wash their faces? Is it only once a week, like us, on Sunday nights? And do they shampoo it? Do they use a hairdryer? Do they rub hair-tonic in to stop their faces from going bald? Do they go to a barber to have their hairy faces cut and trimmed or do they do it themselves in front of the bathroom mirror with nail-scissors? I don't know. But next time you see a man with a hairy face (which will probably be as soon as you step out on to the street) maybe you will look at him more closely and start wondering about some of these things. Mr Twit Mr Twit was one of these very hairy-faced men. The whole of his face except for his forehead, his eyes and his nose, was covered with thick hair. The stuff even sprouted in revolting tufts out of his nostrils and ear-holes. Mr Twit felt that this hairiness made him look terrifically wise and grand. But in truth he was neither of these things. Mr Twit was a twit. He was born a twit. And now at the age of sixty, he was a bigger twit than ever. The hair on Mr Twit's face didn't grow smooth and matted as it does on most hairy-faced men. It grew in spikes that stuck out straight like the bristles of a nailbrush. And how often did Mr Twit wash this bristly nailbrushy face of his? The answer is never, not even on Sundays. He hadn't washed it for years. Dirty Beards As you know, an ordinary unhairy face like yours or mine simply gets a bit smudgy if it is not washed often enough, and there's nothing so awful about that. But a hairy face is a very different matter. Things cling to hairs, especially food. Things like gravy go right in among the hairs and stay there. You and I can wipe our smooth faces with a flannel and we quickly look more or less all right again, but the hairy man cannot do that. We can also, if we are careful, eat our meals without spreading food all over our faces. But not so the hairy man. Watch carefully next time you see a hairy man eating his lunch and you will notice that even if he opens his mouth very wide, it is impossible for him to get a spoonful of beef-stew or ice-cream and chocolate sauce into it without leaving some of it on the hairs. Mr Twit didn't even bother to open his mouth wide when he ate. As a result (and because he never washed) there were always hundreds of bits of old breakfasts and lunches and suppers sticking to the hairs around his face. They weren't big bits, mind you, because he used to wipe those off with the back of his hand or on his sleeve while he was eating. But if you looked closely (not that you'd ever want to) you would see tiny little specks of dried-up scrambled eggs stuck to the hairs, and spinach and tomato ketchup and fish fingers and minced chicken livers and all the other disgusting things M