Nanny Piggins and the Accidental Blast-off

by R. A. Spratt

  Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children were having a lovely time at the park fighting for the land rights of Native Americans. They did this every Saturday morning. It had started out as a game of cowboys and Indians, but then Nanny Piggins read up on the history of early American settlement and nobody wanted to be cowboys anymore. The Indians were much more fun. They wore striking costumes that involved face paint and feathers, and they had vengeance on their side (Nanny Piggins loved fighting for vengeance).

  So every weekend they would gather with the other neighbourhood children, then lay siege to the playground equipment and fight off the cowboys. It worked out to be a surprisingly pacifistic game, because all the enemies were imaginary, so there were very few injuries, unless you counted the plants. (The grass had been scalped so many times it no longer needed mowing.)

  On this particular morning their mission was to protect The Lost Treasure of Brown Gold (a large supply of chocolate Nanny Piggins had brought along for their mid-morning snack) from the rampaging attack of General Cowardy Custard (who was, for the purposes of the exercise, being played by a particularly savage-looking begonia bush).

  As such, they were so engrossed in their military planning that they did not notice when three black SUVs pulled up and a team of men in grey suits got out. If Nanny Piggins had noticed them she certainly would have found them intriguing, because they seemed to be talking to each other via their sleeve cuffs, usually something only super-spies in movies did.

  When one of the men stepped forward and yelled into a bullhorn, ‘Sarah Matahari Lorelai Piggins, come out and give yourself up!’ Nanny Piggins assumed it was just one of the parents getting involved in the fun. So naturally she threw a bucket of dirt at him and said, ‘If you take one step nearer I’ll scalp you!’

  The men were not sure what to do. They had been trained to take threats of terrorism seriously, but it was hard to take them seriously when they came from a petite pig wearing a lovely pink dress and matching bolero jacket. However, like Nanny Piggins, they enjoyed a little bit of violence, so on balance they decided to charge the play equipment, much to the delight of the children who had a wonderful time keeping them at bay by throwing water balloons and fending them off with sticks. (Nanny Piggins had taught the children the ancient art of Kendo only the previous weekend, so they were all very handy with a stick.)

  After half an hour of struggle the men eventually retreated to the safety of the park’s gazebo, to treat their wounds and revise their strategy. This gave Nanny Piggins and the children a wonderful opportunity to hide The Lost Treasure of Brown Gold – in their stomachs.

  The men in the gazebo had a long and animated discussion (with much finger pointing and some weeping), then one of them went back to his SUV, opened the door and pulled out a timid-looking man wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a white lab coat. The suited man handed him the bullhorn and marched him over to the play equipment.

  ‘Er, um, Sarah Piggins?’ said the timid man into the bullhorn.

  ‘Are you ready to surrender?’ demanded Nanny Piggins.

  ‘No, um, I think there’s been a little misunderstanding,’ said the timid man. ‘We’re not here to play.’

  ‘Well then, you’re a fool,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘because we’re having a jolly good game.’

  ‘It’s me, Peter, from the circus,’ said the timid man.

  ‘Peter?’ said Nanny Piggins, whipping out her binoculars for a closer look. ‘My cannon assistant! How wonderful to see you. Who do you fire out of cannons these days?’

  ‘I don’t do that anymore,’ admitted Peter. ‘I got a proper job.’

  ‘Oh no!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘What a shame! You had such a talent for gunpowder.’

  ‘I got a job at NASA,’ explained Peter.

  ‘The Naughty Association for Sneaky Acrobats?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘No,’ said Peter.

  ‘Good,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You don’t want to fall in with them. They never pick up their share of a restaurant bill.’

  ‘I work on the space program,’ continued Peter. ‘I help launch the space shuttle. At least I would if I could. For some reason we can’t get it to take-off. We’ve tried everything – recalibrating the computers, dismantling the engines, rewiring the electrical system …’

  ‘Did you try kicking it and pressing the “go” button lots of times?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Yes, that too,’ said Peter. ‘The greatest aeronautical engineers in the world have been working on it, but with no luck. That’s why I’m here. I told my boss, “No-one knows more about being blasted than Sarah Piggins, the world’s greatest flying pig.”’

  ‘It’s true,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.

  ‘We’re supposed to be launching the space shuttle this Saturday,’ explained Peter, ‘but we’re going to look pretty silly, with the whole world’s media watching, if we can’t even turn the engines on.’

  ‘So you want me to come and put on a tap dancing show to distract them?’ guessed Nanny Piggins.

  ‘No,’ said Peter. ‘We were wondering if you could help us fix the space shuttle?’

  ‘Of course! Why didn’t you say so?’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll just have to pop home and pack some cake.’

  ‘No need,’ said Peter. ‘When I knew we were going to try to recruit you, I took the liberty of hiring a team of pastry chefs to be on stand-by at all times.’

  ‘This is why you were such a great assistant,’ praised Nanny Piggins.

  And so Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children were flown out to Houston to see if they could rescue the space program. But when they arrived at NASA they were not given the welcome they’d been expecting.

  ‘When you said you knew a flying pig who might be able to help,’ yelled the head of NASA, ‘I thought you were talking metaphorically!’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘When they say I am a flying pig, they mean I am a flying pig. I won’t stand for false advertising.’

  ‘We can’t let a pig into the space shuttle!’ raged the head of NASA. ‘It is a scientifically controlled environment.’

  ‘It’s all right, I am prepared for the worst,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I know astronauts have terrible body odour. But I have a strong will, so I will tolerate it.’

  ‘What choice do we have, sir?’ reasoned Peter. ‘Nobody else has been able to fix the problem.’

  The head of NASA considered this. They had tried everything short of turning to circus animals, and he was desperate. ‘All right, but let’s assemble a topnotch team of experts to work with her, so they can watch her like a hawk.’

  ‘No need,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve brought my own team.’

  ‘Where?’ asked the head of NASA, trying to look around Boris and the children to see if there were any top scientists behind them that he had not noticed.

  ‘Derrick is in charge of supplies,’ explained Nanny Piggins (which, to her mind, meant cake), ‘Samantha is in charge of taking down notes,’ continued Nanny Piggins (which, to her mind, meant taking down orders for cake), ‘and Michael is second-in-command for both supplies and taking down notes – he’s very versatile.’

  ‘And I suppose next you’ll be telling me your bear is of vital scientific importance,’ said the head of NASA sarcastically.

  ‘Oh yes, he is the morale officer,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If we can’t work out your problem right away, he will be in charge of cheering us all up by doing a little ballet.’

  ‘This is ridiculous – I am not letting a pig, three children and a dancing bear get into the space shuttle – it is a multi-billion dollar piece of space exploration technology.’

  ‘If you don’t let me fix it for you,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘it’s a multi-billion dollar paperweight.’

  ‘She’s right, sir,’ agreed Peter. ‘What have you got to lose?’

  ‘My dignity, my respected place in the scientific community, my position as head of NASA,’ said the head of NASA.

  ‘P
ish!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Who cares about silly things like that? Now, has anyone got a crowbar and a wrench they can lend me so I can sort this problem out? I’d like to get on with it so I can get home in time to see The Young and the Irritable.’

  And so the head of NASA went to sulk in his office, while Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children were led away to the space shuttle. They had to put on orange jumpsuits before they were allowed inside, which delighted Nanny Piggins.

  ‘What a brilliant idea to wear a jumpsuit over your clothes,’ she enthused. ‘Now if any of my chocolate falls out of my pockets, it will gather around the elasticated ankles and not be lost.’

  Nanny Piggins was not permitted to take a crowbar or wrench onboard. The technicians insisted that the equipment was too delicate. Instead they gave her a tiny allen key, a tiny screwdriver and a tiny flash-light. Then she was given strict instructions not to use any of them without writing a full report both before and after, detailing exactly what she had done.

  As they drove across the runway towards the space shuttle, they could see it was much bigger than it looked on television, and much more peculiar looking. It was kind of like a squat stubby aeroplane that someone had accidentally parked pointing directly upwards at the sky.

  When they arrived at the launch site, Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children rode a lift up to the nose of the shuttle.

  ‘Are you sure this is safe?’ worried Samantha.

  ‘It’s fine,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We catch lifts all the time in department stores.’

  ‘Not the lift,’ said Samantha, ‘I mean the space shuttle.’

  ‘I’d worry more about the lift,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But then I have always had a dread fear of being caught in a confined space with insufficient cake supplies.’

  ‘We forgot to leave a note for Father saying we wouldn’t be home for dinner,’ said Michael.

  ‘What is he going to think if we are in a terrible space shuttle accident?’ panicked Samantha.

  ‘That he will have to get his own dinner, I suppose,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘which, no doubt, he’ll find upsetting. But I’m sure he’ll struggle through.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Boris, giving the children a reassuring hug. ‘Nanny Piggins knows what she’s doing.’

  ‘But she doesn’t know anything about computers, space shuttles or space travel,’ said Derrick.

  ‘Yes, but if anyone can pick it up in five minutes, Nanny Piggins can,’ said Boris confidently.

  ‘Difficult things are almost never as difficult as they seem,’ explained Nanny Piggins, ‘except for sudoku. They’re impossible.’

  Entering the cabin was tricky, because the space shuttle was pointing up and all the chairs were lying back. So getting about inside was more like climbing around a jungle gym than walking about inside an aeroplane.

  The hardest thing was getting Boris in through the doorway. Apparently the space shuttle door had not been designed with a 700 kilogram bear in mind. Fortunately Boris happened to have a seven litre bucket of honey with him, which they were able to smear around the doorframe as lubricant. So, eventually, with the children and Nanny Piggins pulling on the inside, and the NASA ground crew pushing from the outside, he was able to get inside with one big ‘POP’.

  ‘What do we do first?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘Let’s see,’ said Nanny Piggins thoughtfully. She looked about. Then she sniffed about. Then she licked her trotter and held it in the air. The children were completely silent while she concentrated.

  ‘There!’ declared Nanny Piggins, pointing dramatically at one small panel in the wall. ‘There is something wrong with the wiring behind that panel.’

  ‘There is?’ said Derrick, astounded.

  Nanny Piggins clambered across the shuttle and used her allen key to access the panel (without writing a full report beforehand).

  ‘Aha, just as I suspected,’ announced Nanny Piggins. ‘These two wires are crossed!’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Samantha in amazement.

  ‘There was a faint aroma of quadruple espresso coffee, parmesan cheese and poorly made burritos coming from this vicinity,’ explained Nanny Piggins, ‘which tells me that someone, who was overtired after a night of being sick from eating bad Mexican food, was working on this panel. And as soon as I opened it I could see it was all wrong.’

  ‘You could?’ marvelled Michael, as he looked at the web of hundreds of different coloured wires woven in every direction.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘As you can see, this blue wire leads to this green wire. And everyone knows those two colours clash.’

  ‘Blue and green should never been seen,’ quoted Boris solemnly.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And over here, there is a red wire leading to a pink wire! Yuck! I can barely look at it, it’s so unsightly.’

  ‘It is?’ asked Michael.

  ‘That poor engineer,’ sympathised Boris. ‘He must have been so exhausted not to realise he was making such a dreadful colour mistake.’

  ‘I’ll swap them back,’ said Nanny Piggins, whipping out a pair of wire cutters she just happened to have hidden in her hairdo.

  ‘But you can’t just start cutting wires on the space shuttle!’ exclaimed Derrick.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘I can’t leave something as ugly as this. It’s like walking past a crooked picture and not straightening it. Or not throwing a blanket over your father’s face when he’s fallen asleep on the sofa.’ Nanny Piggins deftly snipped the wires and crossed the colours over. ‘You see – blue and red, and green and pink – much nicer.’

  ‘Please don’t snip any more wires,’ begged Samantha.

  ‘Of course not,’ agreed Nanny Piggins as she shut the panel door. ‘Now we’ll just turn her on to see if that’s fixed it.’

  ‘When you say “turn her on”, you don’t mean the whole space shuttle, do you?’ asked Michael, beginning to panic as much as his sister. If his nanny did manage to destroy the space shuttle he imagined they would get into even more trouble than the time she ‘accidentally’ ran over Headmaster Pimplestock’s bicycle with a steamroller.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be fine,’ said Nanny Piggins as she clambered over to the main controls. ‘I hope it’s like a car and the radio will come on when you turn the engine on … Hmm, there’s no key to turn … But this big green button looks promising; I’ll try that.’

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Maybe I pressed the wrong button,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll try a few more.’ She swiftly tapped her trotter on every button, flicked every switch and pushed every slider within arm’s reach (which was a lot because there are a lot of buttons and switches within arm’s reach of the pilot’s seat in a space shuttle).

  Again, nothing happened.

  ‘I knew I should have brought a crowbar,’ muttered Nanny Piggins.

  But then, suddenly, the space shuttle shuddered, red lights started flashing and an automated voice boomed out of the speakers: ‘Commencing launch procedures in ten …’

  ‘It worked!’ cried Nanny Piggins delightedly.

  ‘Nine …’ said the automated voice.

  ‘It worked!’ screamed the children in horror.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll just switch it off again. Now, what did I press?’

  ‘Eight …’ said the automated voice.

  ‘You don’t remember?!’ shrieked Samantha over the roar of the engines that had just fired up.

  ‘Seven …’ said the automated voice.

  ‘Perhaps we’d better sit in the seats and put our safety belts on, just in case,’ suggested Boris.

  ‘Six …’ said the automated voice.

  ‘Good thinking,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘Safety belts are so important, as anyone who has ever read about Newtonian physics knows.’

  ‘Five …’ said the automated voice.

  ‘You are still trying to stop the launch, aren’t you?’ asked Mich
ael.

  ‘Four …’ said the automated voice.

  ‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I know, I’ll just bang the green button again lots of times and see if that helps.’

  ‘Three …’ said the automated voice.

  Nanny Piggins pressed buttons furiously but the engines still roared and the space shuttle still shuddered.

  ‘I don’t know why they have to make it all so complicated,’ muttered Nanny Piggins. ‘We don’t have any buttons on cannons and they still manage to fire people all right.’

  ‘Two …’ said the automated voice.

  ‘This is ground control. What the heck do you think you are doing?! Turn that space shuttle off immediately!’ screamed the head of NASA.

  ‘All right, no need to yell,’ chided Nanny Piggins, ‘although perhaps you can tell me which button exactly should I be pressing?’

  ‘One …’ said the automated voice.

  ‘The big red one!’ screamed the head of NASA.

  But Nanny Piggins never got to press the big red button because just as she reached forward, the space shuttle launched, and the force of it accelerating at 4793 kilometres per hour pushed her back in her seat.

  ‘We’re going to die!’ wailed Samantha. She would have fainted but there is no way you can collapse when 3Gs of force are holding you in a sitting position.

  ‘This is so cool!’ yelled Michael.

  ‘Samson Wallace is going to be totally jealous,’ agreed Derrick.

  The shuttle burst through the atmosphere and out into space. The shuddering stopped, the engines turned off and everything went silent. The five of them did not say anything for a moment because there was so much adrenaline pumping through their systems.

  ‘Well, I got it going all right, didn’t I?’ said Nanny Piggins proudly.

  ‘Well done, Sarah,’ said Boris.

  ‘Hey, look out the window!’ exclaimed Michael.

  (Now reader, I am sure you know that little children generally do not enjoy looking at views. The idea of going on a long car journey and being told to look out the window is, to most children, akin to the very worst kind of torture. But in this instance, Derrick, Samantha and Michael looked out the window and were struck speechless by the beauty of what they saw. The vast infinity of space was utterly black, but this darkness was lit up like a Christmas tree by a million stars spread out in every direction. And the stars twinkled, really twinkled, and so much brighter than they did down on Earth, where you can only see them through all the gases of the atmosphere.)