by R. A. Spratt
‘But some mornings I can’t even get out of bed,’ said the haggard woman.
‘Then get someone to bring the cake to your bed,’ urged Nanny Piggins. ‘Better still, put a whole family-sized chocolate mudcake on the pillow next to you before you go to sleep at night. It will be impossible to be tired and depressed when you wake up to that glorious sight in the morning.’
‘Really?’ asked the woman.
‘I guarantee it will perk you up,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Once, when my circus was travelling through India, our lion tamer dropped dead. You have to understand, he was an elderly man and it was a very hot day. But I wafted a slice of chocolate mudcake under his nose and he perked right up again. He tamed lions for another eight years.’
‘Before he died of old age?’ asked the haggard woman.
‘No, he was eaten by a lion,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but that’s the way all lion tamers want to go – putting on a show.’
‘Thank you,’ said the haggard woman. ‘I’m going to try it. The doctor hasn’t been much help. And it’s so exhausting sitting here waiting. I’m off to the bakery.’ The haggard woman stood up to leave.
‘Here,’ said Nanny Piggins, offering her a bar of chocolate. ‘Have some chocolate. It will give you the energy to get to the bakery.’
The other patients watched enviously as the woman left.
Nanny Piggins was starting to enjoy herself. It was fun helping people. And now there was one less person ahead of them waiting to see the doctor. Nanny Piggins turned to the elderly man sitting on the other side of Michael.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘I’ve got a cold,’ sniffed the elderly man.
‘There’s no cure for the common cold,’ chided Nanny Piggins. ‘Surely you’re old enough to know that.’
‘But I feel so awful,’ said the old man. ‘I thought there might be some way the doctor could help me.’
Nanny Piggins rolled her eyes. ‘For a start, the doctor is not going to help you. They are trained not to do that at medical school. They either cure you and expect you to be grateful, or they don’t cure you and expect you to be ashamed for wasting their time,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘What am I going to do?’ asked the old man.
‘If you have a cold, the best thing to do is boost your body’s natural defences with vitamin C,’ instructed Nanny Piggins.
‘So I should get some vitamin C tablets?’ asked the old man.
‘No, I recommend lemon cake at least five times a day,’ advised Nanny Piggins.
‘Lemon cake?’ asked the old man.
‘Oh yes, it’s full of vitamin C. As well as other health foods, like butter and sugar, which are sure to give you a boost,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘It’s worth a try,’ said the old man. ‘It’s better than waiting endlessly only to be told off for wasting the doctor’s time.’
So the old man got up and left. Now there were only four people ahead of Michael. Nanny Piggins was getting rid of the other patients effectively. And still no-one had come out or gone in to the doctor’s room yet.
‘What do you think he’s doing in there?’ a pale young woman asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Why is it taking so long? Do you think he’s got someone seriously ill in there?’
‘Oh goodness no,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘He’s probably got a secret back door out of his office and he’s snuck off to play video games for half an hour.’
‘Do you think so?’ asked the young woman.
‘Yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That’s what most doctors do. If they could think of some way of charging us all for seeing them without actually seeing them, I’m sure they would.’
‘I’d go home right now but my leg hurts so much I don’t know that I could make it that far,’ said the pale young woman.
‘What have you done to yourself?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘I locked myself out of my fifth-floor flat. And I sprained my ankle trying to climb in through the window,’ said the young woman.
‘You fell five storeys?!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. As a former professional flying pig she had suffered many long falls herself but even Nanny Piggins was impressed by a five-storey fall with nothing more serious than a sprained ankle.
‘No, I got up the five storeys all right. But when I got in through the window I fell and landed awkwardly on the tumble dryer,’ explained the young woman.
‘Hard luck,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Landings are always the hardest part.’
‘Now my ankle is all swollen,’ said the young woman, raising her trouser leg to show an unnaturally large, bright red ankle.
‘You know what you need?’ began Nanny Piggins.
‘Some type of cake?’ guessed Michael.
‘Exactly,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘An ice-cream cake. You can use it as a cold compress on your ankle. But make sure you have a spoon in your hand to eat the ice-cream as it melts.’
‘That’s a brilliant idea!’ said the young woman as she got up and hobbled to the door.
‘Keep your foot elevated and in the fridge!’ called Nanny Piggins, ‘so the ice-cream doesn’t melt too quickly.’ By now the other patients had all perked up and were eagerly awaiting treatment by Nanny Piggins.
And so in the time it took for the doctor to finish pretending to see one imaginary patient, Nanny Piggins managed to cure a whole waiting room worth of invalids. Of course, she had a huge advantage over the doctor. Whereas he had gone to medical school and had to learn the names and effects of thousands of drugs, she simply prescribed cake.
When the doctor eventually came out to see his next patient, not even Michael and Nanny Piggins were there. (Between diagnoses, Nanny Piggins had been amusing some small children by re-enacting the time she was chased by an ostrich across the African Sahara. She accidentally fell off the coffee table and knocked Michael hard on the back, which made the bucket fly off his head.) The doctor was horrified to discover a completely empty waiting room.
‘Why is nobody waiting in my waiting room?’ demanded the doctor.
‘A pig cured them,’ explained the receptionist.
‘A pig!’ exclaimed the doctor. He would have fired his receptionist on the spot but he could not because she was his wife. So he had to satisfy himself with stalking back into his office and slamming the door. But then he had to come out again, because the more he thought about it the more he wanted to know – what pig?
Back at the Green house, Nanny Piggins and the children were enjoying a game of bullrush. Bullrush is normally played on an open field. One person is in, then everybody else rushes from one side of the field to the other, trying not to get tagged. But Nanny Piggins had discovered that this already excellent game could be dramatically improved by playing it indoors. It added to the excitement to be rushing past Mr Green’s valuable antique furniture and fragile porcelain. So, as you can imagine, they were all having a marvellous time and naturally felt resentful when they heard the front doorbell ring.
‘Doorbell,’ called Michael.
‘I suppose we have to answer it,’ moaned Nanny Piggins.
‘It might be someone fun who wants to play bullrush,’ said Samantha. She had become a little overexcited about the game and was not thinking clearly.
‘In my experience, whenever you’re enjoying good loud fun, no-one ever knocks on the door to encourage you to have even more fun,’ said Nanny Piggins sadly.
‘I’ll answer it,’ volunteered Derrick. ‘If it’s someone come to complain about the noise, I’ll just say we’re burglars and we don’t live here.’
‘Good idea,’ approved Nanny Piggins.
As it turned out they were partly right. When Derrick opened the door, the man on the step had come to complain, but not about the noise. It was the doctor.
‘Is there a pig living here?’ asked the doctor rudely. For even though he had not said anything technically rude, he had the knack of making otherwise polite sentences sound rude.
‘
Maybe,’ said Derrick, not wanting to get his nanny in trouble.
‘I want to speak to her,’ demanded the doctor.
‘That’s nice,’ said Derrick, shutting the door in his face.
The doctor knocked on the door again. Derrick opened it again.
‘I said I wanted to speak to the pig,’ snapped the doctor.
‘Well we don’t always get what we want, do we?’ said Derrick, swinging the door shut again.
The doctor knocked on the door yet again. Derrick opened it yet again. The doctor took a deep breath and through gritted teeth said, ‘Please may I speak to Miss Piggins.’ After all, he was not a stupid man, just a slow learner.
‘Wait here,’ said Derrick, shutting the door on the doctor for a third time.
The doctor waited on the doorstep for forty-five minutes before the door swung open again. He was really furious. The doctor drew in his breath to start yelling but then he stopped because right in front of him stood the most beautiful pig he had ever seen. He had to pause and think for a moment. When he had imagined himself yelling at a pig, the pig he had imagined had not looked like this at all. The pig of his imagination certainly had not been wearing designer clothes and eye make-up. Derrick, Samantha and Michael stood behind Nanny Piggins waiting to see what she would do to the doctor.
‘Did you enjoy that?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘Did I enjoy what?’ asked the doctor, having no idea what she was talking about.
‘Waiting,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘No, it’s very rude to leave me standing out here for so long,’ complained the doctor.
‘Exactly,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Now you know what it’s like. I hope you don’t make your patients wait so long in the future.’
‘But that’s different,’ spluttered the doctor. ‘They have a comfortable waiting room with magazines.’
‘Don’t get her started on the magazines,’ advised Michael. ‘It will make you feel sick.’
‘There is nothing comfortable about putting a group of diseased people in a confined space and leaving them there for an hour,’ argued Nanny Piggins.
‘Look here, you have completely ruined my business,’ complained the doctor.
‘Have I?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘All my patients have left me and taken up eating cake,’ said the doctor.
‘I’m sure they’re a lot happier,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘That’s not the point,’ protested the doctor. ‘It is my job to make sure they are well.’
‘You’re not doing a very good job then,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘I spent six years at medical school learning to be a doctor,’ said the doctor. ‘You can’t come along and steal all my patients by prescribing cake!’
‘Oh, can’t I?’ said Nanny Piggins, her eyes narrowing.
This just goes to show how very unwise the doctor was. Because anyone who knew Nanny Piggins knew that you should never ever tell her she could not do something. Once, one of the acrobats at the circus had made a similar mistake. He said Nanny Piggins would never be able to pogo-jump all the way across Belgium dressed up as Henry the Eighth. Three days, two million jumps and one very sweaty Henry the Eighth costume later, he was made to look very silly indeed. Telling Nanny Piggins she could not do something was always the best way to make sure that is exactly what she did.
Indeed, humans underestimating the willpower of pigs is a common theme throughout history. It was a pig who built the Great Wall of China to keep the Mongol hordes from invading. (Which is why to this day in every Chinese restaurant you get Mongolian lamb, not Mongolian pork.) And it was a pig who discovered America but, unlike Christopher Columbus, she had the good sense to keep her discovery to herself because she found lots of yummy food there.
Nanny Piggins had planned to spend the next day setting up a ham radio and gossiping with her friends on the Falkland Islands. But the doctor had annoyed her, so she decided to annoy him back.
The next morning, when the doctor arrived at his surgery, there were, yet again, no patients waiting.
‘Where are all my patients today?’ ranted the doctor. His wife/receptionist did not bother explaining, she just pointed out the window. There, on the other side of the road, sat Nanny Piggins. She had set up a cake stall with a sign overhead reading ‘Holistic Cake Healer’. And, unlike the doctor, she was surrounded by eager patients.
‘Now she’s gone too far!’ exploded the doctor.
He set out across the street to give Nanny Piggins a piece of his mind. ‘You cannot treat ill people purely by giving them cake!’ he yelled at Nanny Piggins.
‘I know,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That’s why I’m branching out.’
‘You’re what?’ spluttered the doctor.
‘I’m using honey to treat wounds,’ started Nanny Piggins.
‘It’s an excellent antiseptic,’ supplied Samantha.
‘Lemonade to treat sore throats,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘It’s very soothing,’ added Boris.
‘And I’m using fudge to treat irritable bowel syndrome,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘How does fudge help irritable bowel syndrome?’ demanded the doctor. He did not really want to ask but he could not help but be curious.
‘It doesn’t,’ explained Nanny Piggins, ‘but it really cheers the patient up.’
‘Why are you trying to ruin my business?’ asked the doctor.
‘I’m not,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m merely trying to supply a better alternative.’
‘Cake, lemonade and fudge are no alternative to clinical medicine,’ complained the doctor.
‘Maybe not, but it is a quicker alternative,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘and people are tired of waiting in your waiting room.’
‘This won’t last,’ prophesied the doctor. ‘My patients will come back. They will have their cake, but they will want their medicine too.’
With that the doctor stormed back to his surgery and sat inside, sulking, as Nanny Piggins did a roaring trade, selling cake and sweet goods all day long.
As I am sure you have already guessed, the doctor was completely wrong. Three days later, his waiting room was still completely empty and Nanny Piggins’ cake stall was still thriving. He sat in his office, looking out the window and feeling very sorry for himself. For the first time in twenty years of practising medicine, a thought occurred to him that had never occurred to him before. Maybe he was not as important as he thought he was. It was a very depressing idea. It made him feel all hollow and empty inside. His eyes started to itch. A lump formed in his throat. Then the doctor realised what he needed. He needed a piece of cake to cheer himself up.
And so the doctor swallowed his pride because he wanted to swallow some cake. He crossed the street and approached Nanny Piggins, looking very sad.
‘What do you want?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘A slice of lemon drizzle cake please,’ mumbled the doctor.
Nanny Piggins considered torturing him some more, pretending she had run out of cake, and making him beg for it. But she could see he was a broken man. So, being a compassionate pig, she cut him a large slice (and a slice that Nanny Piggins considered large was very large indeed).
‘A lesser pig would tell you to go away. But when I became a holistic cake healer, I took the Hippopigic Oath – swearing to never withhold cake from anyone who needed it, no matter who they were, how rude they were, or how long they kept their patients waiting in their waiting room.’
‘That seems an awfully specific oath,’ said the doctor.
‘Do you want your cake or not?’ snapped Nanny Piggins.
And the doctor hurriedly took it. As soon as he swallowed his first bite, he started to feel better. ‘So are you going to have your cake stall here forever then?’ he asked resignedly.
‘Perhaps not quite forever,’ admitted Nanny Piggins.
‘You’re not?’ asked the doctor, now starting to really brighten up.
‘Much as I enjoy b
eing a holistic cake healer, it isn’t really my calling,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘It’s not?’ asked the doctor, actually starting to smile again, in between shovelling mouthfuls of lemon drizzle cake into his mouth.
‘You see, I have a career dilemma. While I am a very good at prescribing cake, my true talent lies elsewhere. I have an even greater gift for eating cake,’ said Nanny Piggins immodestly, but truthfully. ‘It presents a terrible conflict of interest.’
‘It does?’ said the doctor. Now he almost wanted to kiss Nanny Piggins he was so grateful.
‘Tell him the real reason you want to give up being a holistic cake healer, Nanny Piggins,’ chided Samantha.
Nanny Piggins looked away shiftily. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You’re going to need the doctor’s help to solve the problem,’ prompted Derrick.
‘You have a problem I can help with?’ said the doctor, now positively gleeful.
‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins petulantly.
‘Lying is wrong,’ Michael reminded her.
‘All right, all right! I’ll admit it. My patients have been coming down with a few problems,’ confessed Nanny Piggins.
‘Oh dear,’ said the doctor.
‘They are very happy with my treatment. And I always cure their problem. But Holistic Cake Therapy seems to have an unfortunate side effect,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘What side effect?’ asked the doctor.
‘Stomach-ache,’ said Derrick matter-of-factly.
‘Ah,’ said the doctor knowingly, struggling hard not to look smug.
‘I tried prescribing more cake,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That always works for me when I have a stomach-ache.’
‘I see,’ said the doctor.
‘I tell the patients – all you have to do is tough it out and push through the cake barrier. If you just keep eating cake, eventually your body becomes so high on sugar and numb from overeating that you start to feel all right again. But for some reason, it doesn’t seem to work for all my patients.’
‘Perhaps,’ suggested the doctor diplomatically, ‘because they are not pigs?’
