Nanny Piggins and the Accidental Blast-off

by R. A. Spratt

  ‘Hang on,’ said Derrick, ‘shouldn’t you talk to him first. He hasn’t done anything wrong yet.’

  ‘Yes, but why wait?’ argued Nanny Piggins. ‘We all know it’s just a matter of time.’

  Just then the Ringmaster turned, bent down and looked straight at them.

  ‘Sarah Piggins, darling!’ said the Ringmaster. ‘Is that you covered in dirt and hiding under the hedge?’

  ‘Maybe,’ admitted Nanny Piggins.

  ‘How wonderful to see you again,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘Are you going to come out? Or should I crawl under there to talk to you?’

  ‘I suppose we’ll come out,’ grumbled Nanny Piggins, ‘but we’re very busy. We still haven’t found a scorpion, so we don’t have much time to talk.’

  ‘A scorpion isn’t an insect, it’s an arachnid,’ Samantha pointed out.

  ‘Your teachers can talk their scientific mumbo-jumbo all they like,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘As far as I’m concerned, one chitin-covered invertebrate is the same as another.’

  Nanny Piggins then turned and glared beadily at the Ringmaster. The box of chocolates he was carrying was a large one.

  ‘So why are you bringing me flowers and chocolate? What do you want?’ Nanny Piggins asked, resisting the urge to just grab the chocolates and make a run for it.

  ‘Actually, darling, these aren’t for you,’ said the Ringmaster.

  ‘They aren’t?’ questioned Nanny Piggins. ‘Then what are you doing here knocking on our door?’ Suddenly Nanny Piggins recoiled in shock. ‘You’re not after Mr Green, are you?! Although I can’t deny he would make a good freak show exhibit at the circus. People would travel for miles to see the world’s most boring man sitting in a damp circus tent and being boring.’

  ‘No no, I’m not here to see him either,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘Although I would certainly love to meet him. The way you describe this Mr Green sounds most intriguing.’

  ‘Then why are you here?’ demanded Nanny Piggins. ‘Come on, spit it out. If you’re trying to use some roundabout, reverse-psychology way of luring me back to the circus, just get on with it so I can say no and carry on with my day.’

  ‘Rest assured, I don’t want a flying pig,’ said the Ringmaster disdainfully, as though this was the most ridiculous idea ever.

  ‘You don’t?’ asked Nanny Piggins, taken aback.

  ‘Goodness, no! Pigs are so out of fashion,’ explained the Ringmaster. ‘Everyone is concerned about calories and cholesterol these days. So the idea of airborne bacon no longer has any appeal whatsoever.’

  Nanny Piggins was now secretly starting to feel a little bit hurt.

  ‘No, these days what people want is culture, art, elegance and class,’ continued the Ringmaster. ‘In short, they want a ballet dancing bear!’

  ‘Boris!’ gasped the children.

  ‘Precisely,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘I have come to see my dear old friend Boris.’

  ‘Hah!’ scoffed Nanny Piggins. ‘He’ll never go anywhere with you. You hurt his feelings when you cut his act, sold his tent and made him sleep in a puddle. He’ll never forget the tyrannical way you –’

  But Nanny Piggins never got to finish her sentence because at that moment, Boris himself came barrelling round the corner of the house, leapt in the air, slammed into the Ringmaster and pinned him to the ground.

  ‘Oh my goodness, Boris is going to bite the Ringmaster!’ exclaimed Samantha.

  But it was not to be. Instead, Boris ripped the box of chocolates out of the Ringmaster’s hands, tore open the packaging and started gobbling them right there on the lawn, without sharing.

  ‘Mmmnmmmglobgolbmmm,’ said Boris as he devoured the chocolates.

  ‘Boris!’ said Nanny Piggins sternly. No-one loved chocolate more than her, but as far as she was concerned having a box of chocolates and not sharing with your friends was a sin so great the offender should immediately be put in jail for cruelty to chocolate lovers.

  ‘Sorry mmmrglog can’t bbmmyum resist numnumyum,’ said Boris.

  Eventually when every last chocolate was gone and the wrapping had been thoroughly licked, Boris collapsed on the ground in a state of complete gluttonous exhaustion.

  ‘I brought you flowers too,’ said the Ringmaster, holding the flowers out for Boris to see.

  ‘No thanks, I’m full now, maybe later,’ said Boris.

  ‘How could you, Boris?’ chided Nanny Piggins. ‘To eat a whole box of chocolates without sharing a single one! And in front of the children!!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sarah,’ said Boris sincerely, ‘but they were chocolate honey cups and you know they’re my Achilles heel.’

  Nanny Piggins was horrified. She turned on the Ringmaster. ‘You came here to our home with chocolate honey cups! How dare you!’ yelled Nanny Piggins. ‘You know he’s a recovering addict.’

  ‘I only wanted to give a gift to my dear friend because I love him so,’ said the Ringmaster.

  ‘You can stop it with your oily lies,’ glowered Nanny Piggins. ‘My brother is wise to your ways now. He’s not going anywhere with you.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ said Boris scrambling to his feet. ‘I’d do anything for another box of chocolate honey cups.’

  ‘Boris, get a hold of yourself,’ wailed Nanny Piggins. ‘Am I going to have to fetch the stepladder so I can slap you?’

  ‘It’s all right, Sarah,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘I’m not a bad man.’

  Nanny Piggins snorted. Even the children raised their eyebrows at the brazenness of his untruths.

  ‘Well, not very bad,’ conceded the Ringmaster. ‘I only want what is best for Boris and ballet lovers everywhere. It is a terrible shame for his talent to go unwitnessed.’

  ‘It doesn’t go unwitnessed,’ protested Michael. ‘He teaches the preschool class down at Mrs Krinklestein’s ballet school.’

  ‘And I’m sure that is very nice,’ oozed the Ringmaster, ‘but if he returns to the circus with me I can guarantee he will be performing to 20,000 people a night.’

  ‘And I’ll get more chocolate honey cups, right?’ asked Boris.

  ‘Of course, anything for my favourite star,’ said the Ringmaster.

  ‘You used to say I was your favourite star,’ said Nanny Piggins, trying (and failing) not to look hurt.

  ‘But you’re a retiree now, darling,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘It’s time for a younger generation to shine.’

  Michael hugged Boris’ leg tightly. ‘You’re not really going to go with him, are you?’ He did not want his favourite ten-foot-tall friend to leave.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ said Boris, ‘but when you have a talent like mine it is a responsibility. I owe it to ballet to dance.’

  Nanny Piggins snorted. ‘We all know you’re just doing it for the chocolate honey cups, so why not admit it?’

  ‘So what if I am?!’ protested Boris. ‘You once swam the length of Lake Michigan because you could smell someone eating a cinnamon bun on the far shore.’

  Nanny Piggins and Boris glowered at each other. They did not often fight, so it was distressing for the children to see them so at odds. Nanny Piggins was better at glowering than her brother. But he was six feet taller so he had a height advantage.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘I hate to be the cause of family disharmony.’ (That was a big fat fib.) ‘Perhaps Boris and I had better just leave now. You can write him a letter to apologise when you get control of your emotions, Sarah.’

  The Ringmaster took Boris by the hand and started leading him away.

  ‘Boris, don’t go!’ called Samantha.

  Boris hesitated. He turned and looked back.

  ‘I’ve got a box of chocolate honey cups in my car,’ said the Ringmaster.

  And that was the last they saw of Boris. He bounded down the street towards the Ringmaster’s car, scrambled in through the open window and started gobbling.

  ‘No hard feelings I hope, Sarah,’ said the Ringmaster. ‘You can’t be cross. He came voluntarily
.’

  ‘Just go now, before your shins feel the wrath of my teeth,’ advised Nanny Piggins.

  The Ringmaster turned and strolled back to his car, whistling the same jaunty tune as when he’d arrived.

  As soon at the car pulled away and turned around the corner, Nanny Piggins burst into tears. ‘Quick, children, fetch me some chocolate, I’m so upset.’

  ‘Do you want us to get you some chocolate honey cups?’ asked Michael.

  ‘No, I do not!’ yelled Nanny Piggins. ‘I say “Pish!” to that accursed confectionary and its controlling effect on my brother.’

  ‘But if he’s just going to perform ballet, surely that’s not too bad,’ said Samantha. ‘It really is a shame that Boris is the best ballet-dancing bear in the entire world and no-one gets to see it.’

  ‘You don’t know the Ringmaster like I do,’ sobbed Nanny Piggins between bites of the chocolate bar Michael had found sewn into the hem of her skirt. ‘Anything involving him never ends well.’

  Nanny Piggins sulked for a full forty minutes before she had eaten enough chocolate and cake to cheer herself up again. Then she got out a pen and paper to write Boris a letter.

  ‘What are you going to write?’ asked Samantha.

  ‘Are you going to denounce him?’ asked Michael.

  ‘You are very good at denouncing,’ said Derrick. ‘Do you want us to fetch the thesaurus so you can look up new names to call him?’

  ‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I am going to apologise and beg forgiveness.’

  ‘Really?’ said the children. They were surprised. Nanny Piggins was normally very good at holding grudges. There were dozens of grudges she personally had been harbouring for years. Plus all the inherited grudges passed down from her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother that the Piggins family had been carefully nursing for decades. (For further information see the Buzzy Bee Biscuits chapter in Nanny Piggins and the Wicked Plan.)

  ‘I love my brother and it is my duty to protect him,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘It is not his fault that honey is delicious, and that he has no willpower. But to save him from the Ringmaster I need to be with him, which means I have to start by writing a full and frank apology.’

  ‘But it will be a fib, won’t it,’ asked Michael, ‘because you’re not really sorry?’

  ‘Yes, but that’s all right,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘because sometimes when you’re not really sorry, just saying you’re sorry actually makes you feel sorry. So technically it is only the idea of a fib, because once you’ve done it, it isn’t a fib anymore.’

  And while the children tried to wrap their minds around the intricacies of this logic, Nanny Piggins wrote her apology letter, to which Boris replied immediately. (Once the honey cups were not clouding his brain he felt dreadful about his behaviour and he desperately wanted to make it up to his sister.)

  So they arranged for Nanny Piggins and the children to pay a visit to the circus to witness his first performance.

  When Nanny Piggins and the children arrived at the circus, Boris rushed to the car to greet them.

  ‘Thank you, thank you so much for coming,’ wept Boris. ‘I don’t know what came over me. When I’m in the presence of chocolate honey cups I lose my mind.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Nanny Piggins, patting her brother’s paw comfortingly. ‘I feel the same way about chocolate biscuits, doughnuts, lemon bonbons, chocolate éclairs, chocolate ice-cream, treacle tarts, jam tarts, peanut brittle, toffee and, of course, all types of cake.’

  ‘Thank you for coming to support me on my opening night,’ said Boris.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Samantha.

  ‘Although it doesn’t look like you need our help,’ said Derrick. ‘Look at all the crowds flooding in!’

  There were thousands and thousands of people pouring into the Big Top.

  ‘There must be a lot of ballet fans in this area,’ said Michael.

  ‘I know, I’m so nervous,’ said Boris. ‘I’d hate to brisé when I meant to assemblé and embarrass myself in front of such a large audience.’

  ‘Hah!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If all you did was the chicken dance it would still be an honour for them to see it performed by a ballet master such as yourself.’

  Boris blushed (not that you could tell with all his brown fur).

  ‘I’d better get back to my dressing tent and get ready,’ said Boris. ‘I’m doing highlights from Swan Lake for my first act. Will you help me with my tutu and tiara?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  Twenty minutes later Nanny Piggins had blow-dried Boris’ fur, pinned his tiara to his head and zipped him up in his best white tutu. Then, after he had used up a whole box of tissues weeping at how handsome he looked, Boris was ready to go on.

  ‘Break a leg,’ said Nanny Piggins (which is what people always say in the theatre). ‘Preferably not your own’ (which is what people always say at the circus).

  When Boris entered the Big Top the spotlight immediately found him and the audience burst into howls, cheers, applause and whistles of delight. Boris’ chest swelled with pride to be greeted by such adulation. Up ahead he could see the stage and he was a little surprised to note that it was an unusual shape – square. But Boris was a professional bear, so he was not going to let a little thing like that distract him from doing a truly beautiful ballet performance.

  The Ringmaster’s voice boomed out over the public address system. ‘And now, weighing in at 700 kilograms! And ten feet tall! Let me introduce to you – BORIS – THE? BIG – BAD – BEAR!!!’

  The crowd went wild.

  Boris was a little perplexed – introductions for ballet dancers did not usually involve giving their weight. But still, he was not going to be put off. He owed it to Tchaikovsky to do the best Swan Lake ever. So Boris drew in a deep breath and made his entrance, skipping daintily to the stage.

  At this point Boris did notice that the crowd were no longer cheering. It sounded more like jeering and some very hurtful name-calling, using words like ‘sissy’ and ‘princess’. But Boris dismissed this as an ugly argument that must have broken out between two audience members that had nothing to do with him.

  Boris clambered up onto the stage, which was not so easy. Some silly-billy had put ropes all around the platform so he had squeeze between them. But once he was in position under the lights, Boris bowed gracefully to the crowd.

  There was definitely more inappropriate name-calling now, so Boris decided to silence these rude critics with the greatest display of ballet they had ever seen. The introductory overture swelled and Boris launched into his beautiful portrayal of a swan, when suddenly he felt a bump on the back of his neck. Boris ignored it for a while, continuing with his dance, but after a few seconds the bump seemed to be strangling him. So Boris looked over his shoulder and was surprised to discover a man dressed in a blue leotard, squeezing him in a head lock.

  ‘How rude!’ said Boris.

  ‘Do you give in?’ asked the leotard-wearing man.

  ‘I don’t approve of improvised dance. Would you please get off the stage, I’m doing my Swan Lake,’ said Boris, politely but firmly.

  ‘I’m tagging out!’ said the blue leotard-wearing man as he turned and slapped the hand of a man wearing a red leotard. Now the red man sprang into the ring, climbed up on the ropes and threw himself at Boris, knocking him over.

  ‘You’re supposed to throw roses, not yourself, when you enjoy a ballet,’ scolded Boris.

  Fortunately Nanny Piggins was quicker on the uptake than her brother. From her position in the entry way she had seen everything and she was outraged.

  ‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘The Ringmaster is not interested in ballet at all. He has tricked Boris into becoming a professional wrestler!’

  ‘No!’ gasped Derrick.

  ‘Cool!’ exclaimed Michael.

  ‘Surely that isn’t fair on the other wrestlers,’ worried Samantha. ‘Boris is a bear and a lot bigger th
an a human.’

  ‘Yes, but his heart is as soft as a marshmallow,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  And the children had to concede that this was true. Many was the time they had seen Boris rescue a fly and release it outside, or usher a door-to-door salesman away before Nanny Piggins could come to the front door and bite him.

  ‘Fortunately I’m not such a soft touch,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Here, hold my handbag and my chocolate bars. No-one puts my brother in a stranglehold, crushing his best tutu, and gets away with it.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘Just watch,’ said Nanny Piggins. She then ran full tilt at the wrestling ring, screaming her most terrifying ‘HIIIIIIYYYYAAAAHHHHH!!!’ When she got there Nanny Piggins bounded up onto the top of the corner post, turned and angrily shook her fist at the crowd (which only made them go wild with delight), then leapt off the post onto one of Boris’ opponents.

  What followed was spectacular. You would never think that a four-foot-tall pig could lift a fully grown man above her head, spin him round three times and then throw him over the ropes onto a stack of folding chairs. But that is exactly what Nanny Piggins did.

  Naturally this scared his wrestling partner and he tried to run away. Unfortunately when he turned to flee he ran smack bang into Boris. And lying flat on your back on the mat is not the best defensive position when you are under attack from an angry flying pig. Nanny Piggins launched herself onto him, twisted his arms and legs into positions in which the human anatomy is never meant to be twisted, pinning his shoulders against the canvas so that he was counted out by the referee.

  In the wings, the Ringmaster was horrified to see his two best wrestlers so easily dispatched and just twenty seconds into the bout. The crowd would get angry if the show stopped now. So the Ringmaster sent in another four wrestlers to take on Nanny Piggins.

  Unfortunately for the Ringmaster, Nanny Piggins dealt with them with the same ease. The first one she folded up in the elasticated ropes, got Boris to pull him back, then catapulted him into the thirtieth row of the crowd. The next wrestler was a big fellow. He was almost as tall and definitely as heavy as Boris, but he had never studied the ancient art of Hapkido, so Nanny Piggins soon had him in a wristlock so painful that he was on his knees, begging to be allowed to go home. The final two wrestlers were the easiest to finish off. Nanny Piggins simply taunted them until they were quivering with rage and then, when they both launched themselves at her, she stepped out of the way so that they banged their heads together and were knocked out cold. (It is amazing the self-defence techniques you can pick up watching early morning cartoons.)