Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion (11 page)

Nanny Piggins whistled down the ramp even faster than before; her ears drawn tight against her head and her snout stretched forward for maximum aerodynamics. Then, at just the right moment, she used her hind legs to thrust herself forward off the jump. And she was flying.

The people from the back row of the stand knew they could have kept their seats, because Nanny Piggins was going even further this time. The penthouse suite of the tallest hotel in town was about to get a flying pig come crashing in through its window. That was until it happened . . .

Someone opened a chocolate bar.

Now the sound of a chocolate bar wrapper being torn open is very distinctive. And Nanny Piggins' hearing was so good, she could tell the difference between a Kit-Kat and a Mars Bar being opened from five kilometres away. So when she heard that magical noise, she never really made a conscious decision. Her entire body simply responded reflexively, swooping in the general direction of the sound and snapping the chocolate bar out of the hand of its owner, who just happened to be the Norwegian judge.

The entire crowd groaned with disappointment.

When the children found Nanny Piggins she was sitting in the snow behind the judges' table, trying to lick every last trace of chocolate out of the wrapper.

'Oh, Nanny Piggins,' sympathised Samantha. 'Are you all right?'

Boris did not say anything. He just wrapped his sister in a bear hug.

'Are you dreadfully disappointed to be disqualified and lose out on the gold medal?' asked Derrick.

Nanny Piggins looked up. 'Gold medal?' It took her a moment to realise what they were saying. 'Why would I worry about that? I've just had the most delicious chocolate bar.'

'But, Nanny Piggins,' said Michael, 'I think that Norweigan judge may have opened the chocolate bar on purpose to trick you into not winning.'

'Then he is a very silly man indeed,' said Nanny Piggins, 'because who got to eat the chocolate bar? Not him! Really, I don't know how these men get to be national officials. Their priorities are all wrong.'

'You've been thrown out of the national team,' said Samantha.

'We have to go back to living with Father,' said Derrick.

'It's probably for the best,' said Nanny Piggins. 'We shouldn't really leave your father unattended for too long. It isn't fair on the rest of the community. And ski jumping is exhausting.'

'But you never do any training or practice,' said Michael.

'I know, but being universally admired is hard work,' explained Nanny Piggins. 'Besides, I much prefer being a nanny. It's more exciting.'

And so Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children headed home that afternoon, satisfied that they had enjoyed a lovely two-week holiday, and completely revolutionised the sport of ski jumping at the same time.

'How dare you suggest such a price!' yelled Nanny Piggins.

'You are trying to ruin me!' accused the shopkeeper.

Boris and the children were standing on the sixth floor of a restaurant supply shop in Chinatown watching Nanny Piggins haggle over the price of a new wok. It was a quite a show.

'Do you want my family to starve?' demanded the shopkeeper.

'It is the children I care for who will starve if I agree to your extortionate demands,' countered Nanny Piggins.

'If you can't afford a wok, maybe you should just eat your food raw!' yelled the shopkeeper.

Nanny Piggins' old wok had been ruined earlier that morning in a backyard badminton accident. She had been using it as a racquet (because the badminton racquets were ruined when they played Scott of the Antarctic. They had made excellent snowshoes but sadly, like Scott, the racquets did not survive).

To win the badminton game, Nanny Piggins had thrown herself full stretch at the shuttlecock and hit a brilliant volley. Unfortunately Boris was so delighted by his sister's success he jumped up and down excitedly, accidentally jumping on Nanny Piggins' wok. And while woks are designed to withstand incredibly high temperatures and extremely bad-tempered chefs, they are not designed to withstand the full weight of a 700-kilogram bear.

Which is how she came to be haggling with the shopkeeper. Now, Nanny Piggins and the shopkeeper both knew what price she would end up paying for the wok, but they both enjoyed haggling. You see, in ordinary day-to-day life it is frowned upon to yell loudly at someone, call them names and wave your arms about. But when you are haggling that is all okay.

'You want me to lose my shop and live in a card board box in the street,' remonstrated the shopkeeper.

'I want you to charge reasonable prices and stop taking advantage of poor hardworking nannies,' retorted Nanny Piggins.

But just then their argument was interrupted by the most extraordinary event. Out of the corner of her eye Nanny Piggins noticed a toddler on a balcony in the building opposite. The toddler, with the total lack of self-preservation unique to children of that age, was climbing over the safety barrier. Nanny Piggins froze mid-haggle and pointed. She was just about to call out, 'climb back inside you naughty child,' when the little boy lost his grip and fell.

Nanny Piggins did not even think. Her circus training kicked in and she reacted instinctively by hurling herself out of the window and catching the falling infant. At this point she did allow herself a brief millisecond of self-congratulation, before turning her mind to the more urgent matter of what to do about the hard pavement that they were plummeting towards.

Fortunately there were several canvas marquees below her so, holding the baby tightly in her arms, Nanny Piggins spun around to land flat on her back on the first one. She tore straight through, but the marquee had slowed her fall. So when she hit the second marquee Nanny Piggins bounced off, spiralling across the street and hitting another marquee, which she bounced off too. Now Nanny Piggins was starting to enjoy herself, so she did a double-flip before smashing through a fourth marquee feet-first, and landing on a street trolley full of bananas.

Nanny Piggins did not normally approve of fruit, but in this instance the slightly overripe bananas provided a soft if somewhat messy landing. So Nanny Piggins slid down the barrow and landed on the pavement, with barely a hair out of place. The baby, who was safe in her arms, smiled delightedly, saying, 'Again, again!'

'All right,' said Nanny Piggins. She had enjoyed the fall too. She did not get to do much plummeting these days (since she'd left the circus). So Nanny Piggins was just about to climb back up the stairs to have another go when everyone from the street (and it was a crowded street) rushed forward to praise her.

'You're a hero!' exclaimed an elderly woman.

'It's like you're a trained acrobat,' said a doughnut salesman.

'Well actually –' began Nanny Piggins.

'My baby, my baby, my baby!' screamed the baby's mother.

'Have a free banana!' said the banana salesman, finding the one unsquashed banana left on his barrow.

A television camera and microphone were shoved in her face. (The television crew just happened to be in the street doing a story on the extortionate price of woks when they had caught Nanny Piggins' daring rescue on tape).

'Who are you? How did you do that? Are you some kind of roving superhero?' asked the journalist.

'Not at all,' said Nanny Piggins. 'I'm just the world's greatest flying pig.'

That night the footage of Nanny Piggins saving the baby was on the news. It looked even more spectacular in slow motion. Each acrobatic manoeuvre was even more graceful and Nanny Piggins' hair looked even more fabulous.

'Wow, you're a celebrity!' exclaimed Michael.

'Nanny Piggins has always been a celebrity,' Boris reminded him.

'But now you're a celebrity all over again,' said Michael.

'That is the difficult thing about having enormous talent,' said Nanny Piggins. 'It is hard to stay out of the public spotlight. But don't worry, I am not going to pursue that life again. Tomorrow there will be some other spectacular footage on the news, perhaps a tap-dancing ferret or a scuba-diving badger, and the world will forget about me.'

But Nanny Piggins was only partially right. A badger did scuba-dive off the coast of Vanuatu, but that did not mean everyone had lost interest in her.

It was a rainy morning, so Nanny Piggins was just helping the children set up a soccer pitch in the living room using Mr Green's crystal trophies as goalposts (he won the trophies for being the runner-up in 'The Best Tax Lawyer of the Year Award'. There were only two tax lawyers in the local area, so he won this award year after year, and there was no shortage of goalposts), when they were interrupted by the sound of the doorbell.

'You don't think your father has set up a closed-circuit TV system and he can see what we are up to?' asked Nanny Piggins, looking about the room for hidden cameras.

'I don't think Father wants to know what we are up to,' said Derrick. Which was true; Mr Green did not notice what was going on when he was right there in the same room as them, so it would not make sense for him to start paying attention when he was not.

'You hide, and I'll answer the door, just in case it's the truancy officer,' said Nanny Piggins.

'But it's a Saturday,' Derrick pointed out.

'I doubt that would stop her,' said Nanny Piggins. 'If that woman could lock you up in school seven days a week I'm sure she would.'

Nanny Piggins bravely approached the front door. She picked up an umbrella, just in case it was the truancy officer and she needed to poke her. But as Nanny Piggins swung the door open it immediately became apparent that it was not the truancy officer. For a start the truancy officer was an unusually tall woman and this visitor was closer to Nanny Piggins' own height. Also, the truancy officer was very neat and precise, with a pinched expression on her face as if she had just stepped on a thumb tack, whereas this woman was a mess. She had crooked smudged glasses and a mass of dark wavy hair sticking out in the most peculiar directions, and she looked slightly bewildered, as though she could not remember how she got there.

'What do you want?' asked Nanny Piggins suspiciously.

'To talk to you, please,' said the messy woman.

'We don't want to change our phone service provider,' said Nanny Piggins guardedly.

'Oh no, I'm not a door-to-door salesperson,' said the messy woman. 'I'm an author.'

'Aaah, that explains your clothes,' said Nanny Piggins. For the author looked like she had been sleeping in her moth-eaten clothes for at least a week (a common trait among writers).

'Why do you want to talk to Nanny Piggins?' asked Derrick.

'Because I saw you save that baby on the news last night. You were amazing!' said the author. 'You are by far the most glamorous, athletic pig I've ever seen. Please, you have to let me write your biography.'

'Hmm,' said Nanny Piggins. 'You'd better come in and have a slice of cake.'

Nanny Piggins, Boris, the children and Jo (that was the author's name) sat around the kitchen table, eating cake and debating whether or not Nanny Piggins should allow the author to write a book about her.

'I don't want to become any more famous,' said Nanny Piggins. 'Being universally admired can be so draining.'

'It's all right, nobody reads non-fiction books,' said Boris.

'Yuck, they're the worst kind,' agreed Michael.

'Yes, but when they make an international blockbuster movie out of the book, then everybody will see that,' argued Nanny Piggins. 'Also, I can't be bothered doing the work. If I talked non-stop twenty-four hours a day every day, with no cake breaks, it would still take me months to tell you even half the exciting things I've done.'

'But you owe it to history to make a record of your life,' argued Jo the author.

'There's more than enough history already,' said Nanny Piggins. 'I don't want to create any more. History teachers will just try to stuff it into the already overcrowded heads of poor, unfortunate children.'

'But your life story will be much more exciting than all those other historical things, like the rise and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,' argued Derrick. Derrick was currently studying nineteenth-century Central European history at school and he often had to pinch his own leg to stay awake.

'True,' agreed Nanny Piggins, 'although the two stories have many similarities.'

'Why don't we just take it day by day,' suggested Jo. 'You can start telling me about your life, I'll start writing it down, and we'll just see how we go.'

'Hmm,' said Nanny Piggins, as she thought it over.

'It is raining,' pointed out Michael, 'so it's not as if we can build a solar-powered helicopter like we planned.'

'I don't know . . .' said Nanny Piggins.

Jo put her slice of cake down on the table. 'That's okay, if you really don't want me to write a book about you, I'll be all right,' she said. 'I've heard about a flying armadillo in Mexico called Eduardo. I could go and write about him instead.'

Nanny Piggins leapt to her feet. 'That amateur! He doesn't deserve to have a book written about him! No, you're writing about me. That's that. As soon as we've finished our soccer game.'

And so Nanny Piggins, Boris, the children and Jo played soccer for an hour. Jo was not very good at soccer, or indeed anything involving foot–eye coordination, but she tried. And it was an excellent game. They smashed nine of Mr Green's trophies, which was good because you got double points for a goal when you smashed the goalpost, and triple points if you got both goalposts.

Then they adjourned to the living room so that Nanny Piggins could begin recounting her life story. (They needed a room with lots of floor space so Nanny Piggins could act out the exciting bits.)

'Where would you like me to start?' asked Nanny Piggins.

'It's always best to start at the beginning, so why don't you tell me about your mother,' suggested Jo as she took a tape player out of her handbag, turned it on and placed it on the coffee table.