Nanny Piggins and the Accidental Blast-off (5 page)

Nanny Piggins took the controls of the space shuttle and started pressing the buttons that she thought would make it land.

The speakers crackled. ‘What are you doing?’
yelled the head of NASA. ‘Why are you pressing buttons? Have you done your trigonometry?’

‘Keep your hair on,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m just bringing her in to land.’

‘But–but you don’t know how!’ spluttered the head of NASA.

‘That didn’t stop me launching it, did it?’ Nanny Piggins reminded him.

‘That is a multi-billion dollar piece of machinery,’ the head of NASA wailed.

‘And I’m about to return it to you,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Really, this fellow needs to make up his mind what he wants. Now stop talking to me while I’m trying to pilot the space shuttle.’ Nanny Piggins turned off the speakers (she had figured out where that switch was). ‘Strap yourselves in. I’m taking her down.’ Nanny Piggins turned the nose of the space shuttle in towards the atmosphere, gave the engines a blast and before they knew it they were rocketing back towards Earth.

The space shuttle shuddered, the atmosphere seared the outside of the windscreen, and the wind whistled against the wings. The g-force once again pinned Boris and the children to their seats.

‘Is everything all right, Nanny Piggins?’ asked Derrick.

‘Tickety-boo!’ Nanny Piggins assured him.

After several unpleasant seconds of being shaken about like an old shoe in a washing machine that was inexplicably being blasted by a blowtorch, they finally broke through the upper atmosphere.

‘You see!’ cried Nanny Piggins. ‘I told you we wouldn’t burn up.’

Having not exploded, the children now began to worry about not crashing. They could see China rapidly approaching as the space shuttle part-glided and part-dropped like a stone towards it.

‘Now where is that wall?’ muttered Nanny Piggins. ‘I could have sworn it was here somewhere.’

‘Oh no,’ moaned Samantha.

‘It’s all right,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve spotted it! It’s up ahead.’

Suddenly the famous icon of fourteenth century Chinese architecture appeared among the trees in front of them.

‘And there’s a nice flat spot,’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘This is working out well. I’ll just put her down.’

Nanny Piggins lowered the landing gear, put up the flaps, lifted the nose and with a big – BANG! – made contact with the Great Wall of China. The
shuttle shook and the brakes screeched, leaving two long strips of rubber along the top of the wall. Then, eventually, after what felt like a lifetime of shrieking brakes and grinding metal, they came to a complete halt. If it had been on a runway, and not on a tourist attraction in a foreign country, it would have been a perfect textbook landing.

‘Easy-peasy,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t see why people make such a fuss about astronauts. Flying a space shuttle is nowhere near as hard as making caramel baskets from scratch. Shall we get out and see if we can find a Chinese restaurant nearby? I’m starving.’

As it turned out, they did not need to find a restaurant because the President of China personally invited them to a banquet at the People’s Palace. After all, no pig had ever landed a space shuttle on the Great Wall of China before and he thought it was important to mark the occasion. Then, as soon as the meal was over, the President had armed guards escort them to the border, where they were made to promise never to return to China, except via an aeroplane and carrying passports.

When they got back to Houston, the head of NASA was less kind about the whole thing. He yelled at Nanny Piggins using words so rude she had to go
home and look several of them up in a dictionary. But despite his threats and accusations, the head of NASA did not have her arrested or sent to prison, because he so desperately wanted the whole affair hushed up. He was not sure what he wanted the media to know less. That he had allowed a pig, a bear and three children into the space shuttle … or that he had been unable to stop the space shuttle landing on the Great Wall of China … or that he had been cutting costs by giving the astronauts nothing but liver and brussels sprouts to eat (which was the first thing Nanny Piggins threatened to reveal if she sold her story).

The head of NASA even gave Peter, Nanny Piggins’ old cannon assistant, a promotion. Because whatever else had happened, no-one could deny it had been his suggestion of hiring a flying pig that got the space shuttle going again. Which just goes to show why lateral thinking is so important.

And so Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children returned home having only been away for two nights. Mr Green had not even noticed that they were gone. He just grumbled that there had been nothing in the fridge for his dinner except six chocolate mud cakes. Fortunately he had only eaten half of one, so there was a lovely snack waiting for the weary space travellers.

‘Are you glad you finally got to try space travel?’ asked Michael.

‘Oh yes, I’ve been meaning to give it a go for years,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But, on the whole, I’d much rather be right here in this kitchen eating cake than orbiting Earth and eating brussels sprouts. Some sacrifices are just too much.’ The children agreed heartily as they ate their seventh helpings of chocolate cake. Because no-one ever had seventh helpings of brussels sprouts.

When Derrick, Samantha and Michael got off their school bus, they were surprised to see Boris standing there waiting for them.

‘Where’s Nanny Piggins?’ asked Derrick.

‘I don’t know,’ admitted Boris. ‘She burst into my shed, announced that she had a very important meeting to go to and then ran off.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Samantha. ‘That doesn’t sound good.’

‘Was she happy-excited or worried-excited?’ asked Michael.

‘It doesn’t make much difference, does it?’ asked Derrick. ‘Either way she always seems to end up in the same amount of trouble.’

Just then the children got to see exactly what sort of excited Nanny Piggins was because she came running down the road towards them, happily yelling, ‘I got it! I got it! I got it!’

‘Got what?’ asked Derrick.

‘Not the flu, I hope,’ said Boris. ‘You aren’t the easiest patient to nurse. You always bite my fingers when you get delirious and start thinking they’re chocolate brownies.’

‘No, I’ve got something much better than that,’ announced Nanny Piggins triumphantly. ‘I’ve got a job.’

‘But you’ve got a job already,’ Samantha reminded her.

‘You look after us,’ said Michael, feeling hurt that his nanny had forgotten.

‘Yes, but this is the best job ever in the entire world!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.

‘What?’ asked Derrick. ‘Has the cake factory in Slimbridge finally answered your letters and given you a job as a cake taster?’

‘No, not that,’ conceded Nanny Piggins.

‘Has the United Nations answered your letters?’ asked Michael. ‘Are they letting you be in charge of giving World Heritage status to all your favourite cake shops and suppliers?’

‘Okay, well it’s not quite as good as that, but it’s still jolly good. I was reading the newspaper this morning …’ began Nanny Piggins.

‘But you hate reading the newspaper,’ protested Samantha, ‘because it is full of so many nasty stories about sad people.’

‘I know,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but it was wrapped around my large serving of chips with extra salt and vinegar, so it was hard for this particular advertisement not to catch my eye.’

‘What did it say?’ asked Boris.

‘The council was advertising for a lollipop lady!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Can you believe that? And I went for an interview and I got the job! They are actually going to pay me to stand in the street holding a giant lollipop outside the school. It’s the perfect job for me because I love licking things generally, but lollipops in particular. And you’re all welcome to come and lick it as much as you like before classes begin.’

The children did not know quite what to say.

Samantha, being the most compassionate, spoke first. ‘Nanny Piggins, I’m afraid I have some very bad news.’ She took her nanny’s hand. ‘You had better brace yourself for a shock. Lollipop ladies don’t hold actual lollipops that you can eat. They just hold lollipop signs.’

‘What do you mean?!’ asked Nanny Piggins, totally appalled.

‘A lollipop sign is just in the shape of a lollipop,’ explained Derrick. ‘It is made of wood and paint, the same as a regular sign.’

Nanny Piggins gasped. She was speechless. Tears started to well in her eyes.

Boris immediately gave her a big bear hug. ‘There there, Sarah, we will help you through this.’

‘But it’s an outrage!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins, through a faceful of thick bear fur. ‘How dare they! I am going to sue the council for false and misleading advertising. It’s diabolical, it’s entrapment, it’s a gross and disgraceful misuse of the word lollipop!’

When they got home Nanny Piggins immediately rang Isabella Dunkhurst for legal advice. And while Ms Dunkhurst was enormously sympathetic to
Nanny Piggins’ disappointment, she did not think that they had a strong case when it came to the technical points of law. Nor did she think there was any way that Nanny Piggins could get out of the employment contract she had just signed.

Needless to say, an enormous amount of cake was consumed in the Green house that night as the children and Boris supportively did their best to help Nanny Piggins overcome her bitter disappointment.

The next morning, after a hearty breakfast of chocolate pudding with extra chocolate, Nanny Piggins went to her room to put on her new uniform. Her footsteps were heavy as she trudged upstairs. When she emerged a few minutes later she was wearing a white coat (which Nanny Piggins actually liked because she thought it made her look like an evil scientist), a yellow iridescent vest (which would be useful, the ice-cream van man couldn’t pretend not to see her now!) and of course she was holding the lollipop sign. Although she could not bring herself to look at it as it made her want to cry. (When the man from the council had dropped the sign off the night before, Nanny Piggins had sobbed. Until that moment she still had not given up hope that it would be entirely made of hard candy. But
after five minutes of desperate licking, even she had to concede that it was definitely made of nothing more delicious than plywood and paint.)

‘You look lovely, Sarah!’ exclaimed Boris, which was true. Nanny Piggins had a knack for making even the most dowdy council-provided uniform seem tremendously glamorous.

‘Yes, I know. But I may well starve to death doing this horrible job,’ grumbled Nanny Piggins. ‘These pockets aren’t nearly big enough to hold a mud cake.’

From the dark smears around the pockets, the children could see that their nanny had certainly made a concerted effort trying to get one in there.

‘You’ll be all right, Nanny Piggins,’ comforted Michael. ‘You may not get to eat a giant lollipop but at least you only have to work for one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. That’s not bad as far as jobs go.’

‘I suppose,’ muttered Nanny Piggins, ‘but to be reduced to this – directing traffic – like a common street sign. And with no getting blasted out of a cannon or anything! What has my career come to? Oh well, I suppose I should just get on with it.’

And so they got the bus down to the school and waited by the zebra crossing. It was not long before
the first child appeared. She was a quiet little girl who liked to get to school early so she could sit in the library and read.

‘Hello,’ the bookish girl said to Nanny Piggins.

‘Hello,’ said Nanny Piggins glumly.

‘Are you the new lollipop lady?’ asked the girl.

‘Yes,’ said Nanny Piggins sadly. ‘And did you realise that this lollipop sign is not really a lollipop?’

‘No!’ said the bookish girl, appropriately appalled. ‘Then why did the old lollipop lady lick her sign all the time?’

‘Optimism?’ suggested Nanny Piggins. ‘Come on, I suppose you want me to help you across the road?’

‘Yes, please,’ said the bookish girl.

So Nanny Piggins trudged out on to the zebra crossing and held her STOP sign up to the oncoming traffic. The cars obediently drew to a stop and the girl crossed the road. But Nanny Piggins still stood there, blocking the way.

‘You’re supposed to let the traffic through when there are no children crossing,’ called Derrick.

‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Nanny Piggins, withdrawing her sign and walking to the footpath. But there was more bounce in her step now.

‘You know, I think there may be more to this
job than I originally thought,’ said Nanny Piggins, a twinkle beginning to emerge in her eye.

‘What are you thinking?’ worried Samantha.

‘Hmm? Oh, just that this could actually be a lot of fun,’ said Nanny Piggins. Now she was craning her neck first one way and then the other, looking up and down the street. She spotted what she was looking for when a small child turned the corner. ‘Ah, there’s another one.’ She called out to him, ‘You, child – hurry up! Come on, run! Actually, no, don’t rush. I’ll stop the traffic for you now and make them wait.’

Nanny Piggins leapt back onto the crossing, causing much screeching of brakes as she dramatically stabbed her sign into the road (she had seen an elderly wizard do something similar in a movie recently) and held up her other hand with a snappy flick of the wrist, blocking the peak-hour traffic for several minutes while one poor five-year-old carrying a very heavy backpack (why are maths textbooks so unreasonably heavy?) struggled to the crossing, then across the street. Nanny Piggins glared hard at the motorists, before slowly turning and walking off the crossing herself.

‘That was fun,’ she said with an excited smile.

‘You’re not abusing your power, are you, Nanny
Piggins?’ asked Derrick. (People often phrase things as questions when they are afraid of phrasing them as accusations.)

‘Oh yes, of course I am,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But it will do the motorists good. Everyone is always in such a rush these days; delaying them by a few minutes will help them realise the futility of their meaningless lives.’

‘I don’t think they will want to realise the futility of their meaningless lives while they are trying to drive to work in the morning,’ said Samantha.

‘No, but like injections, the things that are good for you are often deeply unpleasant,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Oooh look, here come
two
children. That means I can stop the traffic for twice as long.’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ protested Derrick, as his nanny again burst back onto the crossing.

‘It does if I make them cross one at a time for me,’ reasoned Nanny Piggins.

And so Nanny Piggins spent a wonderful hour directing traffic. Once she got going she found she had so much to say to the motorists. She told off people for picking their noses when they should
have two hands on the steering wheel. She told off people who drove four-wheel drives for driving on the road. To her mind, if you are going to have an off-road vehicle you should drive it
off the road
, so she made them pull up onto the footpath and drive down all the front lawns along the street. And she made all the trucks stop and let her into their cabs so she could pull their horns. Nanny Piggins did enjoy making loud noises.

But the best bit was when the first adult tried to cross the crossing. Nanny Piggins stood, blocking his way.

‘Excuse me, I need to get across the road,’ said the man politely.

‘Of course,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘As soon as you give me a lollipop.’

‘What?’ said the polite man.

‘I’m a lollipop lady, and the toll I charge for crossing the road is one lollipop,’ explained Nanny Piggins.

‘But I’ve never had to give a lollipop lady a lollipop before,’ protested the polite man.

‘It’s not my fault all the other lollipop ladies don’t have any imagination,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘But I don’t have a lollipop,’ complained the polite man.

‘That’s all right, they sell lots of lovely ones at the corner shop over there. The strawberry ones are particularly good. You should get one for yourself while you’re in there,’ encouraged Nanny Piggins.

The polite man looked Nanny Piggins in the eye and wisely decided it was best to just do as he was told.

And in this way, Nanny Piggins soon had pocketfuls of lollipops.

Inevitably, forty minutes into Nanny Piggins’ shift, when traffic was backed up for five kilometres down the road, and the entire student body was hanging over the front fence watching her performance, Headmaster Pimplestock ventured out to remonstrate with Nanny Piggins. But of course he had no luck. Every time he tried to step into the street, Nanny Piggins would wave the traffic through yelling, ‘Go go go!!!’ And when he tried to call out to her, Nanny Piggins pretended she could not hear above the noise of the car engines.

At nine o’clock the school bell rang.

‘We’d better be going,’ said Derrick.

‘Well done, Nanny Piggins,’ said Samantha encouragingly. ‘You got through an entire shift with out any children being hit by a car, and the traffic jam is
not nearly as bad as when you were trying to get the cars to hit Headmaster Pimplestock.’

‘You’re right, I think I have a talent for this,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.

‘Well, we’ve got to get to class,’ said Michael.

‘You can’t go to school now,’ said Nanny Piggins, beginning to pout.

‘It is a school day,’ Samantha reminded her.

‘And the school is right there,’ said Michael, pointing to the building not ten metres away.