David Walliams - Fing

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2018 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk Text copyright © David Walliams 2019 Cover illustration copyright © Tony Ross 2019 Cover lettering of author’s name copyright © Quentin Blake 2010 David Walliams and Tony Ross assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work respectively. Cover design copyright © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019 A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eBook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Source ISBN: 9780008349134 Ebook Edition © 2019 ISBN: 9780008349103 Version: 2019-02-15

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Thank-Yous

Prologue

Part 1: More, More, More

Chapter 1: Howling

Chapter 2: An Alphabet of Stuff

Chapter 3: Fury

Chapter 4: Bestest Best

Chapter 5: Giant Poops

Chapter 6: Two Evils

Chapter 7: Ancient, Obscure and Bizarre

Part 2: The Monsterpedia

Chapter 8: An Encyclopedia of Monsters

Chapter 9: Rolled in Rabbit Droppings

Chapter 10: Aghastliest

Chapter 11: Twin Beds

Chapter 12: Some Light Reading

Part 3: Deepest, Darkest, Jungliest Jungle

Chapter 13: Underpants and Socks

Chapter 14: Up a Tree

Chapter 15: Trap!

Chapter 16: Suspicious Droppings

Chapter 17: Wiggled, Waggled and Woggled

Chapter 18: Double Trouble

Chapter 19: Flying Sausage

Chapter 20: Furry Finger-Warmer

Chapter 21: Hot-Air Fing-Ing

Chapter 22: Beard Down to his Belly Button

Part 4: Big Fing and Little Fing

Chapter 23: How We Laughed

Chapter 24: Being British

Chapter 25: Wart

Chapter 26: A Volcanic Explosion of Tears, Snot and Dribble

Chapter 27: Custard-Cream-Induced Frenzy

Chapter 28: Gobble!

Chapter 29: Big Fing, Meet Little Fing

Part 5: Kaboom!

Chapter 30: Instant Replay

Chapter 31: Pong

Chapter 32: Fizzling Fur

Chapter 33: Nightmare

Chapter 34: Escaped Burp

Chapter 35: Behind You

Chapter 36: A Ginormous Boot Up the Bottom

Chapter 37: Silence

Epilogue

Footnotes

More from the World of David Walliams

Also by David Walliams

About the Publisher

For Percy, Wilfred and Gilbert

Sometimes perfectly nice parents have children who are monsters.

Meet the Meeks.

This is Father, Mr Maurice Meek. As his name suggests, Mr Meek is a mild-mannered man. He likes to wear socks with his sandals, and would not dare to eat a peach in public. Mr Meek works as a librarian. He loves LIBRARIES as they are quiet, like him. This is a man who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Or, indeed, any species of bird.

This is Mother, Mrs Meredith Meek. She wears her glasses on a chain round her neck.

The most embarrassing moment of her life was when she once sneezed on a bus, and everybody turned round and looked. It will not surprise you to learn that she is also a librarian. Meredith met Maurice at the LIBRARY. They were both so painfully shy that they never spoke a word to each other for the first ten years of working there. Eventually, across the poetry aisle, Maurice and Meredith fell in love. Some years later, they were married, and some years after that they had a baby girl.

This is their daughter, Myrtle. You might be thinking that nothing could be sweeter than a little baby girl. WRONG! From the moment she was born, Myrtle was an absolute HORROR. Whatever she was given – dummies, cuddly toys, rubber duckies – the baby demanded more.

Myrtle’s first-ever word was “more”, and she uttered it on the very day she was born. It was more milk Baby Myrtle was demanding, even though she had already guzzled a gallon. “More” was a word the infant would say over and over and over again.

“MORE! MORE! MORE!”

Being Meek by name and meek by nature, Maurice and Meredith didn’t dare stand up to their monster of a child. Whatever Baby Myrtle wanted, Baby Myrtle got. Her parents bought their baby daughter toys and toys and MORE toys, even though she would instantly smash them to pieces. BISH! BASH! BOSH!

“MORE! MORE! MORE!”

As a toddler, they gave their daughter crayons and crayons and MORE crayons. Myrtle would use them to scrawl all over the walls.

SCRATCH!

Before snapping them in two.

SNAP!

“MORE! MORE! MORE!”

As she grew bigger and bigger and bigger still, Mr and Mrs Meek would feed Myrtle chocolate biscuit after chocolate biscuit after chocolate biscuit. More and more and more. Even though Myrtle would take great delight in spitting the crumbs back in their faces.