“Oh yes.”
“Is it a buffet or a sit-down thing?”
“I can’t stay too late. I really need to be back at the hospital before midnight.”
“Yes, yes, yes, you can all come!” exclaimed the Queen. “Now, please, everyone leave immediately before I change my mind!”
You’ve never seen people exit a room so quickly.
BOOM! WHIZZ! KABOOM!
Fireworks danced in the sky over London. Those lucky enough to be on the top floor of Buckingham Palace had the best view.
The elderly Queen was hosting quite a party. There were the twenty-five orphans, all the Chelsea Pensioners, Abdul, Dotty and, of course, the guest of honour, Elsie.
Fittingly, a huge Victoria sponge cake was served. It was so big you could have dived into it, but it was demolished by the starving orphans in seconds.
By the fireplace, Private Thomas got down on one knee, to propose to his beloved.
“Dotty, will you marry me?”
“Where are you?” asked the lady.
“Here!”
Dotty looked down and spotted him. “Sorry, I didn’t see you all the way down there.”
“Dotty, will you marry me?”
“Ooh, I forgot to rinse me mops out!”
“DOTTY!” The little man was becoming irate now. “WILL YOU MARRY ME?”
“There’s no need to shout, dear. YES!”
The pair kissed as everyone around them clapped and cheered.
“HURRAH!”
BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG! BONG!
BONG! BONG! BONG!
BONG!
Twelve bongs from Big Ben meant it was midnight. 1899 had ended, and 1900 had begun.
Everyone crossed arms, and led the singing of “Auld Lang Syne”.
Robert Burns’s words, and the mournful tune, made Elsie think about Woolly. She missed her friend terribly. As she sang, a tear rolled down her cheek, and she stole away to the far side of the room so nobody would see her. Elsie didn’t want to spoil the celebration for everyone else.
Only the Queen saw that the girl was upset, and she broke away from the rest. The unlikely pair of friends found themselves alone in a corner, as fireworks illuminated them from the window.
“What’s the matter, child?” asked the Queen softly as she placed her hand in Elsie’s.
“The song. It just got me thinking about how much I miss Woolly.”
“If truth be told, ‘Auld Lang Syne’ always makes me a little tearful too,” replied , her old eyes becoming misty. “It always makes me think of my darling husband, Prince Albert. I lost him thirty-eight years ago, but not a day goes by, not an hour, not a minute, when I don’t think about him.”
“It sounds like he was a very special man.”
“Oh, he was, child, he was. The most perfect gentleman in all the world.”
Elsie reached out her other hand to the old lady, who held it tight.
“See those fireworks, Elsie?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“That is how it felt in my heart every time my darling Albert entered the room.”
“That’s beautiful,” murmured the girl.
“It was real. In the end, we’ve both loved, child – and been given love in return. What more can you ask of life?”
“I suppose so,” replied the girl.
“I know so. Elsie, you may look around this palace of mine, this country of mine, this empire of mine, which stretches to the four corners of the globe, and think I have everything. But believe me, child, you have nothing without love.”
The Queen picked up a glass of champagne for herself, and handed a glass of lemonade to Elsie.
“To Albert,” said Elsie.
“To Woolly,” said the Queen.
CLINK!
AFTERWORD
Learn More About Woolly Mammoths
The woolly mammoth roamed Asia, Europe and North America, and first appeared more than 400,000 years ago. They wouldn’t have liked the Arctic much, because it consists entirely of ice so there is no food for them there. Even so, mammoths lived during the Ice Age and survived very harsh wintry conditions.
They were not unlike today’s elephants, but with some differences – mainly their huge coat of thick, brown, woolly hair that kept them warm in the cold. They had two long pointy tusks, which they used to fend off hunters and predators. They also used their tusks to dig through the snowy ground as they searched for food and water.
Scientists believe woolly mammoths died out due to humans hunting them, or because of climate change at the end of the Ice Age, or both. The last known mammoths lived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean, around the same time that the Great Pyramid of Giza was built in Egypt about 4,000 years ago.
1.Woolly mammoths grew up to three metres tall, which is the height of two people standing on top of each other.
2.A fully grown male mammoth weighed around six tonnes. This is the weight of five Mini cars!
3.Their tusks could grow up to four metres long.
4.They were herbivores, which means they didn’t eat meat. Their diet consisted of leaves, moss, berries, grass and twigs.
5.Woolly mammoths lived and travelled in large female-led family groups. This is also true of their relative, the modern elephant.
6.The average lifespan of a woolly mammoth is thought to be sixty years.
7.The best way to determine the age at which a mammoth died is by looking at its tusks. Age is shown by the number of rings on a cross-section of the tusk, but the early years wouldn’t be accounted for, however, as these would show on the tip of the tusk, which usually wore away.
8.The tail and ears of woolly mammoths were actually quite small. This was to prevent heat loss from their bodies, and also stopped them from getting frostbite.
9.The first fully documented remains of a complete woolly mammoth skeleton were discovered in 1799 by a Siberian hunter, and were brought to a museum in Russia in 1806. Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius, using the skeleton of an Indian elephant as a guide, successfully reconstructed the mammoth except for one mistake – he put each tusk in the wrong socket, so that they turned outwards instead of inwards.
10.The youngest person to discover a woolly mammoth was an eleven-year-old Russian boy, Yevgeny Salinder. He came across the remains while out for a walk near his home in 2012. The mammoth was named “Zhenya” after Yevgeny’s own nickname, but its official name is the “Sopkarginsky mammoth”.
NOTES ON THE REAL VICTORIAN WORLD
The Ice Monster is a story imagined by David Walliams so some of the extraordinary things you have just enjoyed reading might never have happened in real life. But the author has set his story in 1899 so you might be interested in learning some more facts about the real Victorian London!
THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM
The Natural History Museum took seven years to build – and eventually opened in 1881. In 1899, when The Ice Monster is set, its official name was the British Museum (Natural History) although it was commonly known as the Natural History Museum. When the museum first opened its doors, you could find animal and human skeletons there, as well as collections of minerals and dried plants originally belonging to a scientist called Sir Hans Sloane. Sloane was also famous for having invented hot chocolate. The famous replica of the Diplodocus skeleton – or Dippy as you might know it – wasn’t actually donated to the Natural History Museum until 1905! There were no life-sized models of whales on display in 1899, though there was a blue whale skeleton, and dioramas were later painted on to curved backgrounds.
THE ROYAL HOSPITAL CHELSEA
The Royal Hospital Chelsea is a retirement and nursing home for about 300 veterans of the British Army. It was founded in 1682 at a site by the Thames in Chelsea by King Charles II as a retreat for those who had served in the British Army. For special occasions and ceremonies, the residents, known as Chelsea Pensioners, wear distinctive scarlet coats and tricorne hats.
TANKS
THE ZEPPELIN
Zeppelins were a type of airship named after Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, who came up with the idea in 1874. They had a fabric-covered, cigar-shaped rigid metal frame filled with bags of hydrogen gas and a cabin, called a gondola, hanging underneath. The first prototype flight did not, in fact, happen until 1900 in Germany, and it was only in 1910 that airships were flown commercially.
HMS VICTORY
HMS Victory was launched in 1765 and served in the American War of Independence and the French Revolutionary War. She is perhaps best known for her role as Lord Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. In 1899, when the story of The Ice Monster is set, HMS Victory was actually docked at Portsmouth, where she remains today.
HMS ARGONAUT
HMS Argonaut was an armoured cruiser in the British Royal Navy. Launched in 1898, she was commissioned for service in China in 1900. During the First World War, she was used as a hospital ship. She was sold and broken up in 1920.
QUEEN VICTORIA
Victoria became queen when she was just eighteen years old on 20 June 1837 and reigned for sixty-four years until she died in January 1901 at the age of eighty-one. At the time, this was the longest reign of any British queen or king. Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840, and when he died she missed him very much and felt so sad that she rarely went out in public.
ABDUL KARIM
Queen Victoria was also the Empress of India. She asked that two Indian people be chosen to help prepare for celebrations of her Golden Jubilee, and in 1887 Mohammed Abdul Karim arrived at Windsor Castle. He taught Queen Victoria the Urdu language and became the first Indian clerk to attend to her personally.
LONDON WEATHER
Although the winter of 1899 was snowy, the River Thames did not freeze over. In fact, it had not actually frozen over since 1814, and since then has only frozen once, partially, in the winter of 1963.
Footnotes
Chapter 6: Giant Ghosts
* Dripping is fat from cooked meat.
Chapter 11: Human Net
* “Rozzers” is a slang term for the police, loosely echoing the first name of their founder, Robert Peel.
Chapter 13: A Sea of Old Men
* “Munshi” was the fond title Queen Victoria gave Abdul. It is a Persian word which means “secretary”, though he was a great deal more than that to her.
Chapter 29: Dino-Ladder
* A footnote is a short note written at the bottom of a page, like this.
Chapter 33: What’s in a Name?
* Many things are named after the people who made them famous. For example, the wellington boot is named after the Duke of Wellington.
* Sandwiches are named after the fourth Earl of Sandwich, whose idea they were.
Chapter 42: Back-Door Barrage
* Other military terms for breaking wind the sergeant major could have used include: one-gun salute, bottom blast, invisible grenade, dirty bomb, back-door barrage, attack from the rear.
Chapter 54: HMS Victory
* Named after its pioneer, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin. A Zeppelin consisted of a gondola under a huge envelope of hydrogen.
Chapter 62: Down But Not Out
* Named after the crew of Jason’s ship, the Argo, in ancient Greek mythology.
Chapter 76: The Bravest
* The founder of modern nursing, known as the Lady of the Lamp, who tended to wounded soldiers.
** The first woman to gain a licence to practise medicine.
*** She led the suffragist movement that campaigned for women’s right to vote.
Enjoyed this story? Then CLICK on the covers below for more laugh-out-loud reads from your favourite writer!
Dads come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. There are fat ones and thin ones, tall ones and short ones. There are silly ones and serious ones, loud ones and quiet ones.
Of course there are good dads. And there are bad dads …
And don’t miss these hilarious picture books for children of ages 3 and up
A mischievous new picture book packed with snow and surprises!
And have you read the hilarious stories of the world’s worst children?
Previously written by David Walliams:
THE BOY IN THE DRESS
MR STINK
BILLIONAIRE BOY
GANGSTA GRANNY
RATBURGER
DEMON DENTIST
AWFUL AUNTIE
GRANDPA’S GREAT ESCAPE
THE MIDNIGHT GANG
BAD DAD
THE WORLD’S WORST CHILDREN
THE WORLD’S WORST CHILDREN 2
THE WORLD’S WORST CHILDREN 3
Also available in picture book:
THE SLIGHTLY ANNOYING ELEPHANT
THE FIRST HIPPO ON THE MOON
THE QUEEN’S ORANG-UTAN
THE BEAR WHO WENT BOO!
THERE’S A SNAKE IN MY SCHOOL!
BOOGIE BEAR
GERONIMO
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