by R. A. Spratt
‘I haven’t got time for that!’ exclaimed Mr Green. ‘I’ll call you on your telephone.’
‘Even better,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. She returned to her desk where she could hear the faint sound of Mr Green dialling her number, then leaving a message on her voicemail.
Nanny Piggins sighed contentedly, putting her trotters up as she popped another biscuit in her mouth. Just then a harried-looking middle-aged woman burst in.
‘Where’s Mrs Applebaum?’ she asked.
‘Quit this morning,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Would you like a biscuit?’
‘Yes please,’ said the harried woman. ‘My boss, Mr Thorp, wants me to find the Pattison amendments to the Crickleston estate and he says that Mr Green has them.’
‘Really,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Where would they be?’
‘In the archive boxes, I suppose,’ said the harried woman.
‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Have another biscuit. Seeing as how this is a law firm, I assume there must be a room somewhere where they shred documents.’
‘Yes, there’s a massive machine up on the sixth floor,’ said the harried woman.
‘Why don’t we just take all the boxes up there and throw them in,’ suggested Nanny Piggins.
‘But what would we say when we were asked how it happened?’ asked the harried woman.
‘We tripped?’ suggested Nanny Piggins.
The harried woman looked at the boxes as she bit her biscuit. ‘All right, let’s do it. Going through boxes is always very rough on my cuticles and I never get a thank-you or a jar of hand cream for doing it.’
Five minutes later all twenty boxes had been shredded and Nanny Piggins and her new friend were sitting with their feet up, eating their biscuits.
‘I like what you’ve done with the office,’ complimented Eleanor, which was the harried woman’s name.
‘Yes, getting rid of the paperwork has really brightened it up,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘After lunch I’m going to get one of those fit young boys from the mail room to take the filing cabinets up to the street so I can arrange to have them run over by a dump truck.’
‘Do you think you could do that with mine too?’ asked Eleanor.
‘Of course,’ said Nanny Piggins.
During lunch, word spread among the secretaries. So when Nanny Piggins and Eleanor went out into the car park, there was quite a crowd of women with their three-drawer filing cabinets laid out in a row.
‘Here comes my friend, Steve,’ called Nanny Piggins happily as a garbage truck pulled into the driveway. Luckily the lawyers did not notice that their secretaries were gone, or that there were cheers of delight coming from the car park, or even the loud beeping of the garbage truck as it went back and forth over all their pointless files.
‘Do you want me to scrape them up and take them to the tip for you?’ called out Steve.
‘That would be lovely,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I owe you a chocolate cake.’
‘You know how to wrap a man around your little finger, Nanny Piggins,’ laughed Steve.
‘I’m starting to feel a little peckish,’ said Nanny Piggins to one of the other secretaries. ‘Where do they keep the cake?’
‘There isn’t any cake,’ said another secretary. ‘If you want cake you have to provide your own.’
‘Oh,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘So where is their oven for baking cakes?’
‘There isn’t an oven,’ said the secretary from the intellectual property department.
Nanny Piggins gasped. ‘But what do they do if there is an emergency and one of the lawyers urgently needs a sticky toffee pudding.’
‘They don’t do that,’ said a secretary from corporate law. ‘When they’re hungry they eat a stale cheese sandwich from the vending machine.’
‘No!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘I knew lawyers were morally bankrupt but I didn’t realise their depravity ran so deep. Never mind. We’ll still have cake. I just have to whip up an oven before I can whip up a cake.’
And so Nanny Piggins built an oven in the kitchenette.
‘Is this going to be a wood-fired oven?’ asked a junior secretary, as Nanny Piggins deftly fashioned the oven out of the stationery cabinet (the one the efficiency experts had emptied that morning) and using an air-conditioning duct as a chimney.
‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘A law-book fired oven. We don’t have many logs of wood lying round. But there are lots of law books in this building.’
Nanny Piggins was sitting at her empty desk in her now empty office eating freshly baked cake when three men in grey suits entered. She knew immediately that these were the dreaded efficiency experts because (efficiently enough) they wore name tags clearly labelled, that said: Efficiency Expert.
‘Hello,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Can I help you?’
‘We’re here to evaluate Green,’ said the lead efficiency expert. (His name tag efficiently said Efficiency Expert – Team Leader.)
‘The colour or the man?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
Just then Mr Green burst out of his office.
‘Gentlemen!’ he gushed. ‘It is an honour to have you here in my humble office.’ Mr Green bowed as he said this, behaving like a nineteenth-century Russian peasant being paid a visit by the Tsar.
‘We want to start by having a look around,’ said the lead efficiency expert.
‘Of course, please do,’ said Mr Green, waving them into his office. ‘I’ll fetch my files.’ But as he turned in the direction of his filing system, Mr Green flinched away in horror. ‘Where are my files?’ he hissed.
‘I filed them,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘in the landfill at the tip.’
‘Aaagghh,’ whispered Mr Green. (It is hard to yell at someone while keeping your voice down so that the efficiency experts in the next room do not fire you.) ‘Where’s the paperwork I left on your desk?’
‘I liberated it,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘by taking it up to the tenth floor and throwing it into the wind.’
‘But they were important papers!’ shrieked Mr Green.
‘Well, there were still a few pages blowing round when I was out in the car park arranging for a dump truck to back over all the firm’s filing cabinets,’ said Nanny Piggins helpfully.
‘Where are the status reports and case logs I asked you to fetch?’ asked Mr Green.
‘You didn’t ask me to do that,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Yes, I did,’ spluttered Mr Green. ‘I left a message on your phone.’
‘Oh,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I disconnected that this morning. It was irritating me.’
‘Oh no,’ said Mr Green. ‘I’m going to be fired. I’ll have to spend more time with the children.’
Now Nanny Piggins was distressed. ‘Surely not. They wouldn’t be so cruel. Not to innocent children.’
‘They’re lawyers,’ wailed Mr Green. ‘Of course they would.’
The efficiency experts emerged from Mr Green’s office mumbling among themselves. The team leader spoke. ‘Green, we want you to clear out your desk.’
Mr Green started to weep. ‘But where will I go?’ he sobbed. ‘Please don’t make me go home.’
‘Yes, don’t send him home,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘He gives the place that old lawyer smell, which is impossible to get out of the curtains.’
‘We want you to pack up your desk because we’re promoting you,’ said the efficiency expert.
‘You are?!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins and Mr Green, in a rare note of unison.
‘We love what you have done down here,’ raved the efficiency expert. ‘You’ve cleared up valuable floor space by getting rid of your files.’
‘But all the records of my work are gone,’ protested Mr Green.
‘Exactly,’ praised the efficiency expert, ‘which means they can’t be subpoenaed and used against the firm in court. And we see that you’ve streamlined the efficiency of your support staff by cutting off her phone.’
‘She only did it so she could spend more time eating c
ake,’ confessed Mr Green.
‘An inspired managerial idea,’ complimented the expert. ‘And don’t think we didn’t notice that you threw your paperwork out the window.’
‘You like that?’ asked a bewildered Mr Green.
‘All that A4 has provided a lovely bed of mulch in the firm’s ornamental garden,’ said the efficiency expert. ‘It will keep down weeds and retain moisture, which has allowed us to sack the gardener.’
‘Really?’ said Mr Green. ‘Maybe I am an inspired manager and I didn’t even realise it.’
‘But most impressive of all you hired this pig,’ praised the expert.
‘You like the pig?’ asked Mr Green incredulously.
‘Like her? We love her!’ exclaimed the expert. ‘She only charges 11 cents an hour! None of the other lawyers thought to save money by hiring farm animals.’
‘Ahem,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Circus animals.’
‘Green, you are clearly middle management material,’ continued the expert, ‘which is why we are giving you the promotion. You are going to be the new Senior Tax Lawyer. We’ll let you know the details as soon as your new location has been finalised.’
‘Don’t I get to keep my basement office?’ asked Mr Green.
‘Oh no,’ said the lead efficiency expert. ‘We’ve got just the place for a hard-nosed problem solver with limited interpersonal skills such as yourself.’
‘Gosh,’ said Mr Green.
The experts turned and left, leaving Mr Green blushing with pleasure. ‘Oh, Nanny Piggins, I don’t know how to thank you,’ said Mr Green breathlessly.
‘I do,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You can give me $11.17 to buy some more cake.’
Nanny Piggins was running at full speed towards the school. She did not normally meet the children at the school gate. They caught the bus. But on this occasion something terribly important was happening that meant she desperately needed to be there when the bell rang.
Nanny Piggins had just learnt that Mrs Hesselstein, of the Hesselstein Chocolatorium, was having her annual stock clearance sale that afternoon, and she would be selling all chocolate that was past its use-by date at ninety per cent off. For Nanny Piggins, this was like all her Christmases come at once, except better because there would be none of that unpleasant business of receiving lurid yellow socks from Great Aunt Edith or having to write Christmas cards to everyone she had ever accidentally fired herself into (a surprisingly long list).
Nanny Piggins had to pick the children up and get them to the Chocolatorium by 4 o’clock, because Mrs Hesselstein (knowing full well how much chocolate lovers really love chocolate) only expected the sale to last seven minutes. She held these sales once every four years and it was akin to scheduling a tornado to hit the store.
The school gate was up ahead. There was not a second to lose. All those years of chasing ice-cream vans and running after cake trucks were going to pay off.
Nanny Piggins looked up and saw the minute hand on the Town Hall clock start to move. With just moments to go she dived, skidding to a halt face-down on the gravel just as the bell rang. When the dust settled, Nanny Piggins was too busy checking the damage to her Yves Saint Laurent dress to notice who was standing over her.
‘Good afternoon, Nanny Piggins,’ smirked Nanny Anne. ‘Are you running a little behind schedule today?’
Nanny Piggins looked up and glowered. Nanny Anne was her arch nemesis. A nanny so perfectly perfect, she ironed her underwear three times (once before she put it away, once before she put them on, and once again while she was wearing them, just to be sure).
‘What are you doing here?’ grumbled Nanny Piggins. ‘I thought you made Samson and Margaret catch the bus so that they could stay in touch with how common people live.’
‘Usually that is the case,’ agreed Nanny Anne. ‘It is so important to inspire a child what not to live up to.’
‘Then why are you here?’ asked Nanny Piggins, feeling the growing urge to bite Nanny Anne (knowing that the taste would soon be washed away by delicious Hesselstein chocolate).
‘Because it’s Egg Week, of course,’ smiled Nanny Anne.
Nanny Piggins glowered harder. She had no idea what Nanny Anne was talking about and Nanny Anne knew it. The question was, would Nanny Piggins crack and ask her?
‘You do know all about Egg Week, don’t you?’ asked Nanny Anne.
‘Of course,’ fibbed Nanny Piggins.
‘The children told you all the details?’ asked Nanny Anne, needling Nanny Piggins to see if she would snap. ‘When Samson and Margaret come home they always spend the first half hour, before afternoon tea, writing me a report on how they spent their day.’
‘Yes, well, Derrick, Samantha and Michael don’t have time to write reports. They can’t wait to fill me in on every detail of their school curriculum,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘which is why I’m here today. Derrick was so anxious to tell me about his last biology experiment that he had a brain aneurysm on the bus ride home, and his neurosurgeon said I had to meet him at the school gate because he clearly loves me so much, the anticipation of waiting to tell me about his day was literally making his mind explode.’
Nanny Anne was momentarily stunned by the medical severity of this story. She warred with herself. It was so obviously a load of poppycock. But if it was true, then it would be polite to enquire after Derrick’s mental health and Nanny Anne had to, at all times, be polite. Luckily Nanny Anne was saved from making a terrible social faux pas by several hundred children bursting out of the building, screaming with delight to be liberated from their educational establishment.
Derrick, Samantha and Michael spotted their nanny and walked over quickly. They did not run because they were all holding eggs.
‘My goodness,’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘It really is Egg Week!’
‘I told you so,’ smirked Nanny Anne (her four favourite words in the English language).
‘What do we have to do with them?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Make an omelette?’
Nanny Anne laughed. ‘You might as well. There’s no chance you are going to win. Samson and Margaret take the prize every year.’ Nanny Anne took her two charges by their hands and briskly led them away.
‘Samantha, hand me your egg,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Why?’ asked Samantha.
‘I want to throw it at Nanny Anne’s head,’ explained Nanny Piggins, reaching for Samantha’s egg. But Samantha protectively jerked it away.
‘You can’t!’ exclaimed Samantha.
‘Oh yes, I can,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘She isn’t too far off yet. And I don’t mind chasing after her to make sure I get in a really good shot.’
‘No, I mean you can’t because I need to keep my egg safe,’ said Samantha. ‘That’s the assignment for school.’
‘What? To let a perfectly good egg go to waste?!’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘What higher purpose could an egg have than congealing into the back of Nanny Anne’s perfectly perfect hair?’
‘I’m supposed to pretend this egg is a baby, take it everywhere with me and protect it from danger,’ said Samantha.
‘Why?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘In case all the chickens of the world go on strike and there is a worldwide egg shortage, making eggs more valuable than gold? Which actually isn’t a half-bad idea, I must suggest it to my friend Brenda. She’s a chicken and she’s been looking for a plan for world domination for years and that just might do it.’
‘Looking after an egg is supposed to teach us about how hard it is to look after children, so we appreciate our parents more,’ explained Samantha.
‘Because they think there is a real chance your parents might fry you up and eat you with some toast soldiers?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Although in your father’s case, I wouldn’t put it past him.’
‘I have to carry the egg everywhere with me and return it safely at the end of the week,’ explained Samantha.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about this Egg Week?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s obvio
usly a big deal.’
‘Well,’ began Samantha, looking to her brothers for help, but they avoided her eye. ‘It gets very . . . competitive.’
‘Children compete to see who can look after the eggs better?!’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘No, the parents compete,’ explained Samantha, ‘and we know you have a little bit of a competitive streak yourself, Nanny Piggins, so we thought it better not to mention it.’
‘Me? Competitive? Whatever do you mean?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘Well you did try to throw Mr Brennan out a second-storey window by his tie when he didn’t judge Derrick the winner of the science fair,’ Michael reminded her.
‘But Derrick deserved to win!’ protested Nanny Piggins. ‘The chocolate blancmange he created was the greatest contribution to chemistry since . . . since . . .’ Nanny Piggins struggled to think of an example. ‘. . . since cavemen invented the wheel so they could ride their bicycle to the cake shop.’
‘Anyway, you know now,’ said Samantha. ‘It isn’t a hard assignment. I just have to be careful for a few days.’
‘What about you two?’ asked Nanny Piggins, looking at Derrick and Michael’s eggs. ‘Do you have to protect your eggs too?’
‘No,’ said Michael. ‘Each class has to do something different. I have to spin mine. I have to practise all week. Then on Friday there will be a competition and whoever spins their egg longest wins.’
‘That makes moderately more sense,’ conceded Nanny Piggins. ‘If you ever needed to make an egg dizzy, spinning it would do the trick.’
‘And I have to drop my egg off a three-storey building,’ said Derrick.
‘Really?’ asked Nanny Piggins, riveted by this exciting suggestion.
‘I’ve got to build something that will protect my egg from a three-storey fall,’ explained Derrick.
‘Finally, this school is teaching you something useful,’ approved Nanny Piggins. ‘Do you then put your teacher in the contraption to see if they survive the fall?’
‘No,’ said Derrick firmly, before Nanny Piggins got any more wild ideas.
‘Well, those assignments sound simple enough. I’m sure we’ll win this competition easily,’ said Nanny Piggins as they began walking home.
