by R. A. Spratt
‘All right, I admit it. I’ve been out jogging!’ confessed Lavinia.
Nanny Piggins sniffed at Lavinia, ‘And –’
‘And I did some star jumps,’ Lavinia admitted.
‘One hundred and fifty-three, if my nose tells me correctly,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Actually one hundred and fifty-four,’ said Lavinia.
‘Well, it is first thing in the morning. My snout is just warming up,’ said Nanny Piggins.
Lavinia broke down in tears. ‘I’m sorry, Nanny Piggins. I thought I had the strength to do it, but not being on a diet is so hard.’
‘There, there,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You don’t have to eat four thousand chocolate cakes if you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t?’ said Lavinia, starting to look happy for the first time since she had arrived.
‘Of course not,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m not the Ringmaster. I don’t believe in forcing people into a life of glamour and show business if that’s not what they want.’
‘I liked being a Fat Lady,’ said Lavinia. ‘But for some reason I like being thin, fit and beautiful even more.’
‘I can’t understand it myself,’ said Nanny Piggins, shaking her head. ‘But if that’s what you want then that’s what you should do.’
‘But what about the Ringmaster?’ asked Lavinia. ‘I’ve signed a fifty-year binding contract promising to be over four hundred kilograms for life.’
‘Him and his diabolical contracts. We’ll find a way around it,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘But how?’ asked Lavinia.
‘We’ll just have to find a replacement. A woman who does enjoy eating three times her body weight in cake a day,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Where would we find such a woman?’ asked Lavinia.
‘By consulting an expert,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Who?’ asked Lavinia.
‘Hans the baker, of course,’ said Nanny Piggins.
And so Nanny Piggins, Boris, the children and Lavinia went back to the bakery. And Nanny Piggins let Lavinia walk this time. Boris carried Derrick, Samantha and Michael instead because he found he liked being a form of transport.
Nanny Piggins asked Hans if he knew of a woman with a great love of cake.
‘You mean other than yourself?’ asked Hans.
‘I already have a job,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Besides, for some reason, people don’t find fat pigs as remarkable as fat women.’
‘We live in a cruel and prejudiced society,’ agreed Boris.
‘Boris weighs seven hundred kilograms and nobody notices because he has such good bone structure,’ said Michael. Boris blushed with pleasure at such a lovely compliment. (Although the truth was that most people did not comment on Boris’ weight because they were too terrified about seeing a bear. They tended to focus on screaming and running away.)
‘So do you know anyone suitable?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘No, I’m sorry,’ said Hans. ‘Obviously I know a lot of women who like cake and a lot who even love cake but I don’t think I know a woman who loves cake so much she wants to be a Fat Lady.’
Suddenly there was a desperate banging at the window. They all turned round to see Michelle (the girl whose job it was to clean nose marks off the glass), desperately beating on the window and pleading, ‘What about me?!!’
‘I think she’s trying to tell us something,’ said Nanny Piggins.
They rushed outside to talk to her. (Michelle was not allowed to come inside, because she had to remain vigilant. There were so many people who could, at any moment, press their nose to Hans’ window.)
‘Do you know someone who would like to be a Fat Lady?’ Nanny Piggins asked Michelle.
‘Yes, me! Being a Fat Lady would be my dream job!’ exclaimed Michelle.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Lavinia. ‘It isn’t all eating cake and eclairs and lying around. Well, come to think of it, it is. But that isn’t as easy as it sounds.’
‘I’m certain it’s what I want to do,’ explained Michelle. ‘For seven years I have worked here, cleaning other people’s nose marks off this window. And for seven long years I have looked at these cakes, desperately wanting to eat them myself.’
‘I would have thought you would grow tired of cake working in a bakery,’ said Samantha.
Nanny Piggins and Michelle gasped in horror.
‘Samantha, I love you. But I have never before felt such a strong urge to wash your mouth out with soap,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Sorry,’ said Samantha.
‘That’s all right, I forgive you,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘I never ever get tired of cake. Just look at them,’ said Michelle, turning to look at the window display. There was a beautiful array of cakes, tortes, flans, doughnuts and meringues. ‘Sometimes when nobody is looking, I actually lick the glass.’
And so Michelle and Lavinia happily swapped lives. Michelle was so happy to become a Fat Lady, Nanny Piggins had to bite her hard on the hand to stop her signing one of the Ringmaster’s diabolical fifty-year binding contracts. The Ringmaster was happy because, given Michelle’s enthusiasm for her new job, he suspected he would soon have a five-hundred kilogram Fat Lady, and that would really draw the crowds. And Lavinia was happy too, because finally she was able to cut back her eating to just seven or eight meals a day. She even wrote an internationally successful diet book called How to Lose Weight by Not Eating Twenty-Four Cakes a Day.
Later that evening, Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children sat around the television feeling proud of their good works. Only Samantha had one small concern. ‘Nanny Piggins, don’t you feel the slightest bit guilty about encouraging Michelle to get really fat? It’s not very healthy.’
‘True, being fat is not healthy,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But being unhappy is not healthy either. And almost everybody is unhealthy in some way. Marathon runners wreck their knees. Scuba divers get nitrogen narcosis. Flying pigs can accidentally land on bitumen roads and get some very nasty grazes. You see, life is all about choice. It’s true that eating cake is not healthy. But if you are really, really good at eating cake, it is a shame to keep your talent from the world.’
Nanny Piggins could be a very wise pig. This made so much sense to the children that they never let it worry them again.
Nanny Piggins was walking the children to school. The children usually caught the bus. But on this particular morning, Nanny Piggins had been getting to a good bit of her novel, and she had not wanted to get out of bed until she made sure the heroine was not going to be brutally murdered. By the time Nanny Piggins did get up, to whip together a breakfast of homemade jelly doughnuts (with extra jelly and extra doughnut), the school bus was long gone.
Now most people, when they are walking to school, just trudge along in morose silence wishing they were back in bed. But not Nanny Piggins. They had only been walking for a few minutes when suddenly she stopped, grabbed Derrick and Samantha for support and shrieked, ‘Ew yuck pooey!!!’
‘What is it?’ asked Derrick with genuine concern.
‘Can’t you smell it? It’s horrible!’ said Nanny Piggins as she tried to hold her trotters over her snout.
‘I can’t smell anything,’ said Samantha.
‘It’s not me,’ said Michael defensively. ‘I had a bath yesterday or the day before. I’ve definitely had one this week!’
‘Ew pooey, it’s not you. It’s something far worse than little boy smell,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Samantha. ‘Little boys can smell pretty bad.’
Derrick and Michael glared at her.
‘Well it’s true,’ she maintained.
‘No, this is something a thousand times more horrid,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Yuck! I wish I had something to stick up my nostrils. Michael, do you still have that banana in your school bag?’
‘But I want to eat my banana at little lunch,’ protested Michael.
‘I have a greater need!’ insisted Nanny Pigg
ins.
‘Come on, Michael, you know if Nanny Piggins had a banana and you wanted to shove it up your nose, she’d give it to you,’ chided Derrick.
‘All right,’ said Michael, handing over his banana. He was not too reluctant. He had never seen a pig with a banana up her snout before.
‘Ahhh, that’s better, thank you,’ said Nanny Piggins, recomposing herself, and assuming all the dignity that a pig with half a banana up each nostril can assume. ‘Now it only smells utterly disgusting, instead of earth-shatteringly awful.’
‘Shall we keep walking then?’ suggested Derrick.
‘Of course not,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That would be irresponsible. We can’t just let such a sickening stench go unchecked.’
‘Why not?’ asked Michael.
‘Who knows where it might waft next?’ said Nanny Piggins darkly. ‘No, we have to deal with it. Does anybody have a trowel?’
None of the children had a trowel on them.
‘Never mind,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll just use my trotters. Now, where is it …?’ Nanny Piggins used her banana-stuffed snout to sniff about. The children followed her as she sniffed across the road, under a car, into someone’s front yard, around the side of their house, into the backyard, and stopped right underneath a hazelnut tree.
‘Here it is,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Here’s the source of the foul odour.’
‘I still can’t smell anything,’ said Derrick.
‘Can’t any of you smell it?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
Samantha and Michael shook their heads.
‘It’s a wonder humans can get anything done when their sense of smell is worse than a blind person’s sense of sight,’ marvelled Nanny Piggins as she rolled up her sleeves, got down on the ground and started digging. The children watched in fascinated awe. Nanny Piggins had a gift for earthworks. Soil flew everywhere as she burrowed downwards. Then suddenly, she stopped.
‘Aha!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve got it. And it’s a particularly large one.’ Nanny Piggins held aloft a large nobly brown lump about the size of a tennis ball.
‘What is it?’ asked Michael.
‘A truffle,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘That’s a truffle!’ exclaimed Derrick.
‘Wow!’ said Samantha.
‘Yes, it’s the one drawback of being a pig. I can smell these from miles away,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Now, do any of you have some matches so we can burn it?’
‘You can’t burn a truffle!’ protested Samantha.
‘Why not?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘It can’t make the smell any worse’.
‘No, you can’t burn truffles because they’re incredibly valuable,’ explained Derrick. He knew this because their father had once tried avoiding tax by hiding a large amount of money in an off shore Truffle Trading Scheme. (Sadly, Mr Green had lost all this money when a cleaner had mistaken the truffles for rotten mushrooms and fed them to her dogs.)
‘This foul-smelling stinky lump is valuable?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘To whom?’
‘Chefs,’ explained Derrick. ‘They use it in cooking.’
‘They let this near food?!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. Now she was really shocked.
‘They are supposed to be delicious,’ said Samantha.
‘You’re pulling my trotter,’ said Nanny Piggins suspiciously.
‘No, it’s true,’ said Samantha. ‘That lump you’ve got there is probably worth two or three hundred dollars.’
‘I don’t believe it!’ said Nanny Piggins.
That a pungent brown lump of fungus was valuable was too much for Nanny Piggins’ brain to accept. So she decided to consult an expert. Nanny Piggins went with the children to see the greatest chef at the finest restaurant in town, Pierre Valjean of the Très Bien French restaurant.
‘What do you make of that?’ asked Nanny Piggins as she dumped the truffle in front of the famous chef.
‘Sacre Boeuf!’(which is French for ‘Holy Cow!’) exclaimed Pierre.
‘These children are trying to tell me this smelly thing is valuable. And they don’t usually lie, so I am tempted to believe them,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Valuable! No, this is priceless,’ exclaimed Pierre.
‘I knew it!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Where’s your toilet? I’ll flush it away.’
‘Non!’ (which is French for ‘No!’) exclaimed Pierre, clutching the truffle to his chest. ‘When I say priceless I mean no price is too high.’
‘That’s a funny way of saying it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Worthless means worthless, so why doesn’t priceless mean priceless?’
‘The English language is very strange,’ said Michael. He knew this because Boris often said so.
‘With this truffle I can make the finest sauces, the most delicate gravies, the most mouth-watering marinades,’ gushed Pierre.
‘So you’d like it then?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Because I know where we can get more.’
‘More?’ exclaimed Pierre. ‘I will take all the truffles you have. If I can find a large supply of truffles I will be able to transform my menu and serve the very finest cuisine.’
Nanny Piggins led the children back out onto the street. She was looking thoughtful.
‘So what did you do with all the truffles you found over the years?’ asked Derrick.
‘Well, some of them I burnt,’ admitted Nanny Piggins.
The children gasped.
‘Some of them I flushed down the toilet,’ said Nanny Piggins.
The children went pale.
‘But most of them I buried in a deep hole,’ said Nanny Piggins.
This made the children feel slightly more cheerful.
‘So somewhere there is a big hole full of lots of truffles?’ asked Derrick.
‘Exactly,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘One weekend I made a point of finding as many of the smelly things as I could and then burying them deep underground.’
‘Then all we have to do is go and dig them up, and we can sell them for a fortune!’ said Derrick.
‘The only problem is,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘I’m not entirely sure where the truffle dump is. All those foul-smelling truffles affect my sense of direction. It may take some time to find it.’
‘There’ll be plenty of time after school,’ suggested Samantha.
‘There will be even more time if you don’t go to school,’ pointed out Nanny Piggins.
Derrick and Michael smiled. As soon as Nanny Piggins had said they were walking to school, they knew they were unlikely to ever get there.
Nanny Piggins decided that the best way to find the truffle dump was to get a convertible car and drive around with her snout high in the air, trying to sniff it out. Fortunately, the retired Army Colonel who lived around the corner, and who was deeply in love with Nanny Piggins, owned a convertible. (He had bought it hoping to attract Nanny Piggins’ admiration. And it had done just that. Unfortunately for the Colonel, however, it had inspired Nanny Piggins admiration for the car but not him. At any rate, it took very little flirting before he offered to lend it to her.)
‘Who is going to drive while I sniff?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘We can’t drive! We’re children!’ exclaimed Samantha.
‘Who better to drive than children?’ argued Nanny Piggins. ‘Everybody knows children have better reflexes than adults. Which is why they are so good at computer games. And children are much less likely to get into accidents because they don’t spend half their time turning round to the backseat, telling children to behave.’
‘But children can’t get drivers’ licences,’ argued Derrick.
‘Neither can pigs,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘and I’ve never let a little thing like that stop me.’
‘Why don’t I drive?’ suggested Boris. ‘Because I’m a dancing bear, so if I get stopped by the police I can bamboozle them with some exotic footwork.’
‘Good thinking, Boris,’ said Nanny Piggins.
So Boris drove. Which was not easy because he
was ten feet tall, so his head stuck out three feet above the windscreen, which meant that bugs kept getting squashed against his teeth and eyeballs. But Boris got along all right as long as he kept his eyes firmly closed, and Michael told him which way to turn the wheel.
Meanwhile, Nanny Piggins held her snout high and sniffed, calling out instructions like, ‘Smelly, smelly … smellier … really stinky … utterly foul!’ as they got closer to unpleasant-smelling objects.
Really, the plan was going very well. The only problem was that Nanny Piggins’ sense of smell was so acute she kept sniffing out all foul-smelling things, not just truffles.
Their first stop was a drab suburban house.
‘Is it here?’ asked Derrick.
‘There is definitely something odiously foul on these premises,’ said Nanny Piggins, her eyes watering as she tried to shield her snout from the unpleasant aroma.
Unfortunately, when they knocked on the door they found it was not truffles Nanny Piggins was smelling. The door was opened by Headmaster Pimplestock.
‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Nanny Piggins.
‘What am I doing here?!’ exclaimed Headmaster Pimplestock. ‘I live here. What are you doing here?’
‘You live here! That explains the smell,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘The headmaster smells unbelievably foul?’ asked Samantha.
Nanny Piggins sniffed at Headmaster Pimplestock’s clothes. ‘It’s hard to tell exactly where the smell comes from. I think there must be some kind of microscopic fungus growing on him that really pongs.’
‘How dare you!’ yelled Headmaster Pimplestock. ‘Why aren’t you three in school?’
‘Why aren’t you in school?’ asked Nanny Piggins shrewdly.
The headmaster turned red in the face. ‘Uh … I’m unwell.’
‘You don’t look unwell,’ said Nanny Piggins, peering around him and into his house. ‘Is that a toy train I can hear? You haven’t pretended to be sick so you can stay home and play with your model railway, have you?’
Headmaster Pimplestock looked simultaneously embarrassed and angry. But all he did was yell, ‘Go away!’ and slam the door in their faces.
