AM EXTRA TWENTY YEARS TO LIVE!
So come, old friends, and do what's right!
Let's make your lives as bright as bright!
Let's take a dose of this delight!
This heavenly magic dynamite!
You can't go wrong, you must go right!
IT'S WILLY WONKA'S WONKA-VITE!'
14
Recipe for Wonka-Vite
'Here it is!' cried Mr Wonka, standing at the end of the bed and holding high in one hand a little bottle. 'The most valuable bottle of pills in the world! And that, by the way,' he said, giving Grandma Georgina a saucy glance, 'is why I haven't taken any myself. They are far too valuable to waste on me.'
He held the bottle out over the bed. The three old ones sat up and stretched their scrawny necks, trying to catch a glimpse of the pills inside. Charlie and Grandpa Joe also came forward to look. So did Mr and Mrs Bucket. The label said:
They could all see the pills through the glass. They were brilliant yellow, shimmering and quivering inside the bottle. Vibrating is perhaps a better word. They were vibrating so rapidly that each
pill became a blur and you couldn't see its shape. You could only see its colour. You got the impression that there was something very small but incredibly powerful, something not quite of this world, locked up inside them and fighting to get out.
'They're wriggling,' said Grandma Georgina. 'I don't like things that wriggle. How do we know they won't go on wriggling inside us after we've swallowed them? Like those Mexican jumping beans of Charlie's I swallowed a couple of years back. You remember that, Charlie?'
'I told you not to eat them, Grandma.'
'They went on jumping about inside me for a month,' said Grandma Georgina. 'I couldn't sit still!'
'If I'm going to eat one of those pills, I jolly well want to know what's in it first,' said Grandma Josephine.
'I don't blame you,' said Mr Wonka. 'But the recipe is extremely complicated. Wait a minute... I've got it written down somewhere...' He started digging around in the pockets of his coat-tails. 'I know it's here somewhere,' he said. 'I can't have lost it. I keep all my most valuable and important things in these pockets. The trouble is, there's such a lot of them...' He started emptying the pockets and placing the contents on the bed - a homemade catapult... a yo-yo... a trick fried-egg made of rubber... a slice of salami... a tooth with a filling in it... a stinkbomb... a packet of itching-powder...'It must be here, it must be, it must,' he kept muttering. 'I put it away so carefully... Ah! Here it is!' He unfolded a crumpled piece of paper, smoothed it out, held it up and began to read as follows:
RECIPE FOR MAKING WONKA-VITE
Take a block of finest chocolate weighing one ton (or twenty sackfuls of broken chocolate, whichever is the easier). Place chocolate in very large cauldron and melt over red-hotfurnace . When melted, lower the heat slightly so as not to burn the chocolate, but keep it boiling. Mow add the following, in precisely the order given, stirring well all the time and allowing each item to dissolve before adding the next:
THE HOOF OF A MANTICORE
THE TRUNK (AND THE SUITCASE) OF AN ELEPHANT
THE YOLKS OF THREE EGGS FROM A WHIFFLE-BIRD
A WART FROM A WART-HOG
THE HORN OF A COW (IT MUST BE A LOUD HORN) THE FRONT TAIL OF A COCKATRICE
SIX OUNCES OF SPRUNGE FROM A YOUNG SLIMESCRAPER
TWO HAIRS (AND ONE RABBIT)
FROM THE HEAD OF A
HIPPOCAMPUS
THE BEAK OF A RED-BREASTED WILBATROSS