The Nanny Piggins Guide to Conquering Christmas (6 page)

‘The choir shall consist of me, Boris and the children,’ announced Nanny Piggins proudly.

‘What?’ wailed Samantha. She did not like performing publicly, especially when she had no idea what she was doing.

‘So that I can trounce you all at the Carols by Candlelight concert,’ warned Nanny Piggins.

‘You do realise that a Carols by Candlelight concert is not considered a competitive event?’ asked Derrick.

‘Pish,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You’ve clearly had very little to do with professionals in the performing arts. They are all cutthroat competitors. But unlike athletes, they don’t eat properly, so they are much, much more immoral. Just look at Nanny Anne and you will see how a deficiency of sugar in your diet can corrupt your very soul.’

So they all went home to prepare. This involved eating lots of cake while Nanny Piggins flicked through the pages of a book of Christmas carols, tut-tutting and muttering things like ‘Abysmal, utterly abysmal’, ‘the things these people do to force a rhyme’, and ‘Santa is a rotter!’

Nanny Piggins eventually slammed the book of carols down on the table. ‘Well, from my extensive reading of these carols over the last five minutes, I have determined that they are all awful. There is way too much focus on evergreen trees and holly bushes. There is a shocking portrayal of Santa failing to stamp out bullying among his reindeer, as well as the lamentable untruth that a baby which was laid in a trough full of cattle feed wouldn’t cry.’

‘Does that mean we don’t have to sing at the Carols by Candlelight concert?’ asked Derrick hopefully.

‘Of course not,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It just means I shall have to rewrite all the lyrics first.’

‘But the concert is tomorrow,’ worried Samantha. ‘How are we going to have time to rewrite all the lyrics and practise the songs?’

‘There won’t be time,’ said Nanny Piggins honestly. ‘It will take me a full 23 hours to fix up this deplorable poetry. Another forty-five minutes to prepare myself by eating cake, and fifteen minutes to walk to the park.’

‘But that leaves no time for practice,’ wailed Samantha.

‘Pish,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You won’t need to practise. I’ll give you song sheets to read off. The words will be so good, no-one will notice if you are singing them in tune.’

With that, Nanny Piggins went and locked herself in their father’s study to write. Then she let herself out, complaining that the room smelt of dead cockroaches and dirty socks, and went up to lock herself in her own bedroom to write.

Over the next 23 hours the children could hear snatches of songs coming from their nanny’s room. Rewritten carols that included lyrics such as:

(To the tune of ‘As Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night’)

As shepherds ate their cake by night

All seated on the ground

The angel of the Lord came down

And handed ice-cream round . . .

As well as:

(To the tune of ‘The First Noel’)

The first chocolate cake, the angels did say

Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay

No cake, no cake, no cake, no cake,

No cake tastes good lest with butter thee bake.

And:

(To the tune of ‘We Wish you a Merry Christmas’)

We wish you a merry chocolate

We wish you a merry chocolate

We wish you a merry chocolate and a lovely big cake

Good toffee we bring

To you and your kin

We wish you a merry chocolate and a lovely big cake.

And occasionally her carols took a more adventure story turn:

(To the tune of ‘Good King Wenceslas’)

Bad King Wenceslas laughed a lot

As he roasted Stephen

Baste the boy with sticky sauce

Deep and crisp and even

Through the window Santa smashed

With some Navy Seals

Biff Boff Bang and also Bash

‘That boy is not a meal.’

An hour before the performance the children shoved an extra-large chocolate mud cake under Nanny Piggins’ door. (She’d had a cake flap installed especially for this purpose. It was kind of like a doggie door, except that dogs were not allowed through, only cakes.) Then fifteen minutes before the performance, Nanny Piggins burst out of her room saying, ‘Let’s go!’

‘What about our song sheets?’ asked Samantha.

‘Oh yes, I forgot about those,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Forgot about them?!’ cried Samantha. If she put on her pyjamas, this evening would soon come to resemble her very worst nightmare.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘I’ll jot it all down on the way in the car.’

‘Do you even have a pen?’ asked Derrick, knowing his nanny might carry a chocolate cake, a jar of cockroaches and a boltcutter in her handbag but rarely something as mundane as a pen.

‘Piffle sticks,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve got a mascara brush and a napkin – that will do.’

And so they set off. They arrived at the Carols by Candlelight concert twenty minutes late because Nanny Piggins insisted they do extra preparation, by which she meant swinging by to see Hans at the bakery and eating a dozen cherry danishes to lighten their voices. So they arrived just as Nanny Anne’s choir took the stage.

‘You’re up next,’ a stagehand hissed in Nanny Piggins’ ear.

Nanny Anne’s group was a sight to behold. They actually looked like angels because they had dressed up in costumes made of white silk, silver tinsel and an astonishing amount of glitter. They even had halos that were electric and voice-operated so that they flashed on and off as they sang. Not that anyone noticed, because as soon as Nanny Anne’s group started, their singing was so sublime that the audience was entranced . . . for about three minutes.

Nanny Anne’s group did not, however, stop after three minutes; they went on and on. People started to shift in their seats and fidget. For the singing was beautiful, but that was it. The audience could not make out the words because their voices were so high and Nanny Anne insisted on singing many of the well-known songs in Italian or, worse still, Latin, to make them more sophisticated. Inaudible lyrics combined with a lovely sound just started to put the audience to sleep, or put their bottoms to sleep, hence the fidgeting.

‘I suspected as much,’ said Nanny Piggins with a wry smile.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Samantha.

‘Entertaining an audience is not about beauty,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Well . . . partly it is. But it is also about astonishing, delighting, surprising and, most importantly, scaring the hoo-hah out of them. Sunsets are beautiful. But they happen every day and how often do we even bother to step outside to look at them. Whereas traffic accidents are horrific, yet we always crane our necks for a stickybeak.’

‘So is that why you are so confident that everyone will enjoy our singing?’ asked Michael. ‘Because it is going to be like a traffic accident?’

‘Not at all,’ Nanny Piggins assured him. ‘Our performance will be spectacular because we have a secret weapon.’

At this point Nanny Anne’s group stopped singing and received rapturous applause, because they had been going on for over an hour and everyone was relieved that they had finally stopped. They filed past Nanny Piggins as they left the stage.

‘I’m surprised you have the courage to follow us,’ said Nanny Anne with a smile.

‘I’m delighted to,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The audience will now be pathetically grateful to see a real performance.’

What the children did not realise, however, was that when Nanny Piggins said she had a secret weapon, she literally meant a weapon. As they stepped up on stage, they could hear the sound of heavy machinery being moved on behind them.

‘Are we going to start?’ asked Derrick, as they stared out at the expectant and bored crowd. Many people in the audience were openly checking their watches and muttering, ‘When will all this be over?’

Suddenly a huge 16-inch Howitzer (giant cannon) rolled out of the bushes behind the stage, with its barrel pointed at the crowd.

‘Ah, excellent,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The Colonel has arrived and right on time. I do enjoy working with a military man.’

‘The pleasure is all mine,’ the Colonel called out from his gunnery position (he had been deeply in love with Nanny Piggins for a long time now; he would launch a coup d’état on the government if she asked him to).

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Derrick. ‘Shell Nanny Anne?’

‘Goodness no,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The Colonel has the coordinates to fire at the audience.’

Fortunately the audience could not hear her, or they did not believe her. Either way, no-one started running away as Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children launched into their first song. And the audience loved it. Largely because as they reached the end of the first line of their first song the cannon fired, blasting a giant chocolate mud cake over the entire crowd.

Cake, icing, cream and strawberry jam splattered down on everyone. Their first reaction was to be horrified. Then they began tasting the sugary goo and soon everyone became delighted to be covered in so much of it. But the performance did not end there. Nanny Piggins’ group kept singing, and at the end of every line another shell full of cake exploded over the crowd; but each time it was a different, yet equally sublime cake, pie, pudding, tart or gateau. There was sticky toffee pudding, key lime pie, banoffee pudding, treacle tart and many, many more. It was like having an edible fireworks display blasted in your face. In short, the audience loved it.

If Christmas is about getting together with friends and family and sharing your good fortune, what better way to do that than to be hit in the face repeatedly with the finest baked goods imaginable?

And the people who enjoyed it most were Nanny Anne’s singing group. She’d had them on a strict zero calorie diet for weeks now. The air was so thick with sugar and fat that they were practically gaining weight by osmosis. But best of all, their white angel dresses were irrevocably stained, which pleased the mothers because very few people look good in white.

When they reached the end of their set (the five carols Nanny Piggins had learnt), the audience yelled so many cries of bravo and encore that they repeated the whole performance twice before walking off stage to thunderous applause and foot stamping.

In her moment of triumph Nanny Piggins looked across to Nanny Anne at the back of the audience. She looked thwarted and stained in her now ruined angel dress. A wave of Christmas compassion filled Nanny Piggins’ heart. She walked over to her arch-nemesis to make a peace offering.

‘Nanny Anne,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘What do you want?’ asked Nanny Anne sulkily.

‘It is Christmas and we are meant to be good to each other at Christmas,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘so as a gesture of goodwill I would like to invite you to join my choir for next years’ Carols by Candlelight concert.’

‘Why on earth would I do that?’ asked Nanny Anne.

‘I know you would derive no pleasure singing alongside me, a far superior performer,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but if you were standing alongside me, instead of in the audience, your outfit would not get covered in cake shrapnel.’

Nanny Anne looked down at her own hopelessly stained angel outfit, then across at Nanny Piggins’ impeccable pale blue cocktail dress, and reluctantly said, ‘All right.’ Then Nanny Anne shocked Nanny Piggins by doing something entirely unexpected – she held open her arms and gave Nanny Piggins a big tight hug.

Boris gasped he was so impressed. ‘I didn’t know she had it in her. Such technique! Good squeeze, arm extension and duration.’ (Being a bear, he was an expert on bear hugging.)

As Nanny Anne walked away, the children stepped forward to join Nanny Piggins.

‘What an unexpectedly harmonious result,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘You do realise that Nanny Anne only hugged you,’ said Derrick, ‘so she would spread the stains from her outfit onto yours, don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘After all, she is still a dreadful woman. But she doesn’t realise how much I enjoy having cake stains all over my dress, which I can suck out later, so I am prepared to accept her gesture in the spirit that it was not intended.’