by R. A. Spratt
‘What a bizarre theory,’ puzzled Boris.
‘Well, humans used to think the world was flat. They’re not a terribly bright species,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘So what do you suggest in your articles?’ asked Derrick.
‘I emphasise the basics. Lots of fresh air. Which is why you must never allow children to attend school five days in a row, because there’s no fresh air in a classroom,’ said Nanny Piggins. The children nodded, they had all heard this theory before. ‘And of course – diet. Children must never go on one. Because then they’ll start talking about their diet. And nothing is more boring that someone talking about eating less.’
Just then a Swiss nanny came up to Nanny Piggins and shook her trotter. ‘Nanny Piggins, that article you wrote about letting children watch graphically violent movies in case they want to grow up to be ER doctors was the funniest thing I have ever read. Bravo!’
‘Why did she say “funniest”?’ asked Boris.
‘It must be a translation problem,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t think people in Switzerland know what funny means. It’s all that alpine air. Not enough oxygen gets to their brains.’
But as the children looked about the room, they noticed that just seeing Nanny Piggins made the other nannies giggle, as they remembered the things she had written in the articles.
‘Nanny Piggins, I don’t think these nannies take your articles seriously,’ said Samantha.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘Well, they keep looking at you, pointing and laughing,’ explained Samantha.
‘They are laughing at me?!’ asked Nanny Piggins disbelievingly.
‘The fools,’ muttered Boris, looking about for somewhere to hide. He knew that no-one laughed at Nanny Piggins without suffering dire consequences.
‘Well!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘I only came here to beat Nanny Anne and humiliate her in front of the entire world. But now, that’s it. I’m going to stick it to the lot of them. These nannies will never laugh at me again!’
The first competition was grooming. Fifty-nine nannies lined up ready to go, with their charges in front of them, all immaculately groomed. The idea was to present the child absolutely scrubbed spotless and perfectly ironed (the back of the ears were inspected with a microscope so the washing had to be really thorough).
Nanny Piggins was entering Samantha in the grooming competition. Samantha did not fancy her chances. The other nannies had been cleaning their children for weeks in preparation. Whereas Nanny Piggins only had ten minutes in a cleaner’s storage room. But having been a flying pig for many years Nanny Piggins knew how to get ready for a show, and a room full of solvents and industrial-strength cleaning equipment was the perfect place to do it. While the other nannies dabbed their children with talcum powder, Nanny Piggins attacked Samantha with a whirlwind of machinery and chemicals.
Boris, Derrick and Michael were sitting with the crowd in the stands. All the seats in the stadium were now full, and there was an excited hum in the air as the nannies began to jog out into the arena with their children. Michael counted them as they came out. The first fifty-nine looked much the same. Neither the nannies nor the children had a hair out of place.
‘Where’s Nanny Piggins?’ asked Derrick.
‘I do hope she hasn’t run off with one of the catering vans,’ worried Boris. ‘She does have lapses of judgement when she is around truckloads of food.’
‘Here she comes!’ cried Michael excitedly, jumping up and down.
Nanny Piggins and Samantha had entered the arena. Whereas the other nannies had jogged sportily, Nanny Piggins and Samantha sashayed (Samantha did not look quite as comfortable doing this as Nanny Piggins, but she was putting in a good effort). And while all the other children were dressed in their school uniforms or Sunday best clothes, Samantha was dressed in the latest designer clothes from Paris.
‘Where did she get that dress?’ asked Derrick.
‘My sister is very good at sewing,’ explained Boris. ‘She has a photographic memory for fashion. She only has to see an outfit once in a magazine and she can replicate it at a moment’s notice. All she needs is some thread and a few old potato sacks.’
‘Samantha actually looks … good,’ said Michael (which is really the finest compliment, because admitting their sister looks good are the hardest words for any brother to say).
A huge roar came from the crowd when it was announced that Nanny Piggins had won the Grooming Section. The judges did not really want to give it to her. But there was no denying Samantha was clean. (She even passed the microscope-behind-the-ears-test). And it would have been very petty of them not to give bonus points for making a designer French outfit in under ten minutes. (Some judges did briefly consider being petty – but were actually quite glad not to have to give it to Nanny Anne for the seventh year in a row.)
The next stage of the competition was Obedience. Now this was definitely the hardest part for Nanny Piggins because she barely knew what the word ‘obedience’ meant. And when she found out, she thought it was utterly unimportant. If she ever caught Derrick, Samantha and Michael doing exactly what she said, she would tell them off for not using their imaginations. So to be ordering Derrick around in a stadium was like torture to her – it was like eating hot toast without buttering it.
The other fifty-nine nannies went first. And to Nanny Piggins’ eye she could not see any difference in any of their performances. The only way the judges could separate them was by getting out rulers and protractors to see if the children’s feet were perfectly aligned when they stood still. Or using a high-speed camera to see how many one-hundredths of a second it took the child to stop when their nanny said ‘stop’.
Nanny Piggins had no interest in obedience. And Derrick had no training in obedience. The only thing that gave them any chance against the other nannies was Derrick’s love. Because Derrick loved his nanny a thousand times more than any of the other children loved their hygiene-obsessed careworkers. So when it came to their turn to stand in the centre of the arena in front of forty-thousand spectators, Derrick tried that much harder, and cared that much more than any of the other children.
When Nanny Piggins said ‘stay’ he stayed, when she said ‘fetch’ he fetched, when she said ‘sit’ he sat. He did everything just as well as Samson Wallace, much to the fury of Nanny Anne. Nanny Piggins was going to get an excellent mark for obedience. Because even using protractors and high-speed cameras, the judges could not fault Derrick’s obedience.
That was until halfway through when Nanny Piggins cracked.
‘I can’t take this anymore!’ she screamed. Derrick looked worried. He knew what to do when Nanny Piggins, said ‘sit’, ‘fetch’ or ‘stay’. But he did not know what to do when she screamed, ‘I can’t take this anymore!’
‘This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of!!!’ ranted Nanny Piggins. ‘Obedience?!! I mean obedience?! What a ridiculous thing to …’ Nanny Piggins was interrupted mid-yell by Boris barging his way out of the crowd, grabbing her and dragging her off into the wings before she did something she regretted. So naturally Nanny Piggins did not get a very good mark for that part of the competition.
Having won the first event and come last in the second event, Nanny Piggins was coming thirtieth overall. Nanny Anne was coming first. (If the final event had been a smirking competition the trophy would have been hers already.) But the final event was the Obstacle Course. The only way Nanny Piggins could beat Nanny Anne now was if Michael completed the obstacle course in half the time of any other child.
Now, you must remember that the other children had done actual training on this obstacle course, for months in fact. Whereas Michael had spent the previous months enjoying his favourite hobby, which was sitting under a bush in the garden eating un-defrosted frozen cake. Plus, the kindest way to describe Michael’s physique would be to call him stout (and I dare not use any other word in case Nanny Piggins reads this book and comes to bi
te me). So lined up alongside all the other children who were whippet thin from being forced to get up and go jogging at 4 am every day, Michael looked out of place.
Nanny Piggins was optimistic until she saw the other children in action. Even she had to admit they were seriously good. To complete the obstacle course the children had to run through car tyres, swing across a mud pit, crawl through a tunnel and climb over a wall. And the way the other children performed they could have been an act in the circus. They leapt, ran and climbed with the agility of Chinese acrobats.
When Nanny Piggins’ turn came round she looked across at Michael. There were still smears of honey around his mouth from the snack he had been eating with Boris in the stands. At least he was not going to fail from lack of carbo-loading. For a split second a thought crossed Nanny Piggins’ mind – that perhaps it was cruel to force this little boy to take part in such a potentially humiliating competition. Then Nanny Piggins had a brilliant idea.
Just as the judge raised the starting pistol in the air, ready to fire, Nanny Piggins leaned in and whispered something in Michael’s ear. Michael’s eyes bugged wide and as soon as he heard the gunshot he took off.
The people who saw Michael in the stands that night saw something they will never forget. In decades to come they will still be telling their grandchildren and great-grandchildren the story of the day they saw a boy move faster than the speed of light. Because Michael raced through that obstacle course like he had been bitten by a radioactive spider. He crawled through the tunnel, sprinted through the tyres, swung over the mud pit and leapt over the wall with grace and speed. He did not just do it in half the time of the other children, he did it in a third of the time.
The judges were so shocked by his brilliance they immediately made him do a drugs test and show them his birth certificate in case he was secretly a very short Olympic athlete pretending to be a chubby little boy.
But Michael passed the tests and Nanny Piggins was awarded champion of the Westminster Nanny Show. Nanny Anne was seen fake-smiling so hard she cracked a tooth. Nanny Piggins was so happy to win she felt she could be magnanimous. So she only ran around the ring three times yelling, ‘Hah hah, I beat you, I beat you all!’
The editor of Nannying Monthly rushed up, shook Nanny Piggins’ trotter, and begged her to write a regular column for his magazine. ‘We’ve always known your articles were brilliantly funny. But we never realised you actually knew how to take care of children as well.’
Of course Nanny Piggins said no. Because writing abusive and insulting letters to magazines is fun as a hobby but it takes all the joy out of it when it is a job.
So as Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children hitched a lift home in one of the catering vans, they were all very happy. Nanny Piggins kept hugging the children each in turn, then all together, then Boris too, so he would not feel left out.
‘What I don’t understand is how on earth were you able to do the obstacle course so quickly,’ Derrick asked Michael.
‘It was all the training I’d done,’ said Michael as he took a spoonful of the litre of ice-cream Nanny Piggins had bought him.
‘But you didn’t do any training,’ said Samantha.
‘Yes I did. We train all the time. How many times have we had to leap over walls, crawl through hedges, and dodge around garden gnomes since Nanny Piggins has been our nanny?’ asked Michael.
Derrick and Samantha thought about it and they had to admit, the answer was quite a lot.
‘And doing an obstacle course when there isn’t a savage dog or a stick-wielding neighbour chasing you is actually much easier,’ explained Michael.
‘But Nanny Piggins said something to you just before the starter’s pistol. Something that made you run extra fast, didn’t she?’ asked Boris.
Michael smiled, ‘Yes, she did.’
‘What was it?’ asked Derrick and Samantha.
‘She said –’ said Michael. Boris, Derrick and Samantha leaned in close to hear the secret – ‘she said she would buy me a litre of ice-cream if we won.’
‘Could there be any greater motivation?’ declared Nanny Piggins, before giving them each, then all together, another hug.
Nanny Piggins was teaching the children to pick a lock. Partly because she thought it was an important life skill, but mainly because she had forgotten her keys and locked herself out of the house. This would not have mattered so much, if they had not just bought fifty litres of choc-chip ice-cream, which urgently needed to go in the refrigerator. Consequently, Nanny Piggins was desperately racing Boris to see whether she could break into the house quicker than he could eat the ice-cream.
Boris seemed to be winning. Nanny Piggins was very good at picking locks with a hairpin. But the problem is, if you have a hairpin, then you have the type of hair that needs to be pinned up. Which means, if you take the pin out, your hair will fall in your face and distract you. Plus Nanny Piggins could not stand having unattractive hair, even when she was breaking and entering into her own home in an urgent attempt to rescue ice-cream.
Her lock-picking lesson, however, soon became irrelevant when a man barged past her, screaming, ‘Get out of the way!!!’
The man slammed into the locked door, which only momentarily stopped him, because he was fat enough and moving with enough speed to break the lock and the doorframe, smashing the door open and landing sprawled on the inside doormat.
When Nanny Piggins stepped into the hallway and turned on the light she was shocked to discover that the screaming man was, in fact, Mr Green himself.
‘It’s your father!’ gasped Nanny Piggins.
‘Do you think he’s gone insane?’ asked Michael optimistically.
‘Years ago,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But he seems extra especially bad right now.’
‘Close the door! Quickly close the door!’ begged Mr Green.
Boris pushed the door closed. (Mr Green did not even ask why there was a ten-foot-tall dancing bear in his home, which shows just how distracted he was.)
‘Now lock it!’ pleaded Mr Green.
‘We can’t lock it,’ said Derrick. ‘You just smashed the lock.’
‘Then fetch me a hammer and nails,’ ordered Mr Green.
Michael ran as quickly as he could to the shed and back with the required equipment. His father rarely used tools, so he knew this was going to be entertaining. And it was. As soon as Mr Green began nailing the door shut, it became clear he had no idea what he was doing. He kept banging himself on the hand, or dropping the hammer on his foot.
After she had finished laughing (and finished eating the remaining seventeen litres of ice-cream), Nanny Piggins took pity on Mr Green. She took the hammer and sealed the door with a few vicious but well-aimed wallops.
‘Now, Mr Green, why don’t you come into the living room and tell us what is going on?’ suggested Nanny Piggins.
‘No time,’ muttered Mr Green manically. ‘I must pack my bags. Consult my lawyer. Book an airfare to a secret foreign location.’
‘Why? Have you killed someone?’ asked Samantha.
‘No, no,’ said Mr Green.
‘Does someone want to kill you?’ asked Nanny Piggins. She knew at least two dozen people off the top of her head who definitely did. ‘Apart from the usual people, I mean.’
‘It’s worse than that,’ said Mr Green.
‘Someone wants to force you to study calculus?’ suggested Michael.
‘No, much, much worse. There’s a woman …’ said Mr Green.
‘No way!’ interrupted Nanny Piggins.
‘And she wants to marry me!’ said Mr Green.
At this point Nanny Piggins lost track of what Mr Green was saying because she had fainted. Now you have to remember, Nanny Piggins had seen rebellions, earthquakes and circus clowns without their make-up, all without ever batting an eye. So for Nanny Piggins to be so totally shocked that her body stopped pumping blood to her head really says something.
Boris wafted chocolate cake under Nanny Piggins�
� nose to revive her. They knew she was coming round when her eyelids began to flutter and she snapped the slice out of Boris’ hand, nearly amputating one of his fingers.
‘I’m sorry, children,’ apologised Nanny Piggins. ‘I must have had a dream. I thought I heard your father say that a woman wanted to marry him.’
‘He did,’ said Derrick.
‘Quick, more cake,’ called Samantha, as Nanny Piggins’ eyes rolled back in her head and she started to faint again.
Half a chocolate mudcake later, Nanny Piggins had revived enough to hear the rest of Mr Green’s story.
‘I went to one of those speed-dating evenings,’ began Mr Green.
‘An evening where you quickly eat dates?’ queried Boris.
‘No, it’s an evening where you go on lots of two-minutes dates with lots of different women because you are scared they will find out what you are really like if they talk to you for longer,’ explained Derrick.
‘So it’s got nothing to do with sticky date pudding?’ asked Boris.
‘No,’ admitted Derrick.
‘What a shame,’ sighed Boris. He was particularly fond of sticky date pudding.
‘So what happened?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘I met a woman …’ began Mr Green.
‘I wish I hadn’t eaten all that chocolate cake, I’m starting to feel sick listening to this,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘And she fell in love with me,’ said Mr Green.
‘Was this speed-dating held at a lunatic asylum?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘No,’ said Mr Green pathetically.
‘Are you sure it wasn’t just an elaborate practical joke?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Perhaps one of your colleagues wanting to get back at you for being an insufferable bore.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Mr Green. ‘When they want to do that, they usually just steal my yoghurt from the lunch-room fridge.’
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ Nanny Piggins assured him. ‘I’m sure when this woman wakes up tomorrow morning, and the mental health workers remind her to take her medication, she will realise she has made a terrible mistake and never want to see you again.’
