The grandparents were indeed lazy bums. The author Roald Dahl had a wicked, irreverent sense of humor. Always got a chuckle out of the Alfred Hithcock Presents episode Dahl wrote in which Barbara Bel Geddes’ character murders her husband by bludgeoning him with a leg of lamb... and then serves said leg of lamb to the cops investigating his murder.
I’ll look for that episode. Thanks. I think he wrote this book to have it made a dystopian Dickension nightmare. Which the movie was.