Nanny Piggins and the Race to Power 8 (16 page)

‘I don’t work in government – that’s your job,’ said Dr Higgenbottom. ‘I have reached my verdict. Of all the thousands of public spaces I have been asked to inspect, in dozens of different countries around the world, I have never before seen one like this. It is absolutely and utterly . . . perfect. There is no need to change a thing. Except perhaps you could add a couple more burnt-out cars.’

‘I knew it!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘The man is a genius.’

‘But it is dangerous, unsafe and rat-infested,’ protested the councillor.

‘As is life,’ said Dr Higgenbottom. ‘This park has wonderful scope for the imagination. There is opportunity for water play, interaction with small mammals and role-play games using found objects.’

‘You mean there’s a drain, rats and rubbish,’ summarised the councillor.

‘Exactly! This park has everything,’ gushed Dr Higgenbottom. ‘For the sake of the children, I forbid you to change a thing. Sebastian, give the man his invoice, we’re leaving.’

Sebastian slapped a sheet of paper into the councillor’s hand and they left. The councillor slumped down on the bonnet of a burnt-out car.

‘What am I going to do?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been given a two-million dollar budget to improve this park and I’ve got nothing to spend it on.’

Nanny Piggins felt sorry for the councillor. ‘Don’t worry. Why don’t you just hire another advisor? One who will be more cooperative.’

‘But where am I going to find another person with a PhD in children’s playgrounds,’ asked the councillor.

‘I doubt you’ll find a second person quite that silly,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘Why don’t you hire me? I am the world’s leading flying pig. Amazing and delighting children comes as naturally to me as breathing in and out.’

‘She’s telling the truth,’ confirmed Michael. ‘She amazes and delights us every day.’

‘Sometimes she horrifies and shocks us as well,’ added Samantha, ‘but she always makes us the most delicious cake afterwards to help us get over it.’

‘Plus Nanny Piggins only charges ten cents an hour,’ added Derrick.

‘And it’s only going to take me one minute to tell you how to spend your budget,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘It will?’ asked the councillor, beginning to feel a glimmer of optimism.

‘Obviously you can’t change a thing that is here,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but you could add to it.’

‘Add to it?’ asked the councillor, liking the idea. ‘How?’

‘Really, the only way I can think of improving this already wonderful public play area is by building a state-of-the-art ice-cream shop slap bang in the middle,’ stated Nanny Piggins, stamping her trotter on the very spot she thought suitable.

Everyone gasped, the way people instinctively do gasp when they know they have just heard a brilliant idea.

‘Ice-cream and playgrounds go together like . . .’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘well, like cake and more cake.’

So that is exactly what the councillor did. And because Nanny Piggins was a generous soul, she even agreed to allow some of the budget to be spent on planting flowerbeds, because everyone liked looking at flowers and lawn, and because she knew how much it would upset Nanny Anne.

The Hazelnut Street Park soon became the most popular park in Dulsford, because even the most scrupulous parent can overlook a few rats and a stormwater drain when they had a double scoop of chocolate ice-cream with extra sprinkles in their hand.

Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children were very bored. There was no reason why they should have been – they were standing in the Russian embassy, and usually embassies are fascinating places. You never know what sort of spies, important dignitaries or looted art is hidden away inside. And even if none of those things is there, Nanny Piggins enjoyed pretending they were. Her imagination was so vivid that playing a game where you pretend to cause an international incident was almost as much fun as actually causing an international incident. If anything it was more fun, because it tended to result in less jail time.

But on this occasion they were not enjoying themselves, because they had not come to the embassy to apologise for destroying a national treasure or beg for the release of a much loved circus colleague. They had come for a much more tedious reason – to renew Boris’ passport.

There is something about the bureaucracy of passport dispensing, that even in this day and age of computers, digital photographs and holographic watermarks, it still takes weeks for a government to issue a small cardboard book with a photo stuck inside. And even though they could easily have the television on in the waiting area (perhaps playing re-runs of
The Young and the Irritable
) or hire a juggler to amuse the waiting applicants (goodness knows you would not have to pay them very much; unemployment among professional jugglers is sadly very high, over a hundred and ten per cent), passport officials seem to take pride in ensuring the boredom of all those who enter their office. And passport applicants are always so anxious that they may have committed some terrible transgression, like signing their name outside the box, getting their birthday wrong or smiling in the photograph, that they are overcome with boredom due to the stress of the situation.

It is a strange fact that you are only ever bored if you are stressed. If you are relaxed and content, you can happily lie on a beach doing nothing for hours. But five minutes in a line at the passport office feels like five hours of being hit about the head by a wet fish.

Normally Nanny Piggins would have alleviated the boredom by handing around some cake to everyone in the office or loudly denouncing the inefficiency and inhumanity of the staff; but on this occasion Boris had made her promise that she would behave, because he really did want a passport.

‘I don’t understand why you want a passport anyway,’ grumbled Nanny Piggins. ‘You don’t need one. Whenever you travel internationally it’s almost always because you’ve been kidnapped. And if you are stuffed inside a crate with a pillowcase over your head, the customs officials aren’t going to check your paperwork.’

‘I want a passport,’ said Boris, ‘because I want one. I like to think that one of these days I shall rise to a sufficient level of dignity and respect in the community that someone will pay for me to sit in an airline seat like a regular law-abiding person.’

‘You could always pay for a ticket yourself,’ Michael pointed out.

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ exclaimed Boris. ‘If I had that kind of money, of course I’d spend it all on honey. I am a bear, after all.’

‘I didn’t know bears could get passports,’ said Samantha.

‘We can in Russia,’ said Boris. ‘Bears are held in very high regard. We have a long historic association with Russian folklore. Plus, we tend to bite people who are rude to us.’

called the grey grumpy woman behind the counter (which is Russian for ‘next’).

‘It’s me, it’s me, it’s my turn,’ said Boris excitedly as he skipped up to the counter. ‘I’m applying for a passport.’

‘Urgh,’ said the grumpy woman (which means ‘urgh’ in Russian) as she started paging through the voluminous application form and tutting ominously at any misspellings or places where Boris had accidentally smeared honey on the document.

‘Would you just get on with it,’ snapped Nanny Piggins. ‘We have been waiting here for ages and if my blood sugar drops any lower I may have to resort to eating one of the stale sandwiches you have in your vending machine.’

The children gasped. In the entire time they had known Nanny Piggins, they had never known her to eat anything as low in sugar as a sandwich. So they knew she was desperately serious.

‘You. Bear. Stand on line,’ ordered the grumpy woman. There was a line of masking tape stuck on the carpet, where applicants had to stand to get their passport photo taken.

‘I think you forgot to say please,’ Boris reminded her kindly.

‘You want passport. You stand on line,’ snapped the grumpy woman.

Boris raised his eyebrows. ‘I think Mr Manners needs to pay a visit to this embassy.’ But he went and stood on the line.

‘You too tall,’ accused the woman as she looked through the camera at Boris’ chest.

‘How can you be too tall to get a passport? That’s heightism!’ accused Nanny Piggins. She knew she should be behaving herself but there was something about this official. She was so rude that Nanny Piggins had an overwhelming urge to bite her shins.

‘Get down on your knees,’ the grumpy woman ordered Boris.

‘I don’t suppose you have a little cushion I could kneel on?’ asked Boris politely.

‘No cushion for you!’ declared the grumpy woman.

At this point Boris, predictably, started to cry.

‘How dare you upset my brother!’ accused Nanny Piggins.

‘I adjust lights,’ said the grumpy woman, whipping out three spotlights and quickly adjusting them so they glared into Boris’ face, making him wince.

‘Perfect!’ she declared and took the photo.

‘That’s a hideous photograph!’ accused Nanny Piggins as she peered across the counter to see the grumpy woman’s computer screen.

‘Now you go away!’ ordered the grumpy woman.

‘Come on, Sarah,’ sniffed Boris. ‘I want to go home. My feelings have been hurt.’

But as they turned to leave, the Russian embassy’s Head of Security was blocking their exit.

‘It is you!’ accused the Russian Head of Security as he pointed at Nanny Piggins.

‘Yes, yes, it is me,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The World’s Greatest Flying Pig. I can sign an autograph for you later. But right now would you kindly step aside. Listening to all this Russian is making me hungry for Briskvit.’ She turned and explained helpfully to the children, ‘That’s a moist Russian sponge cake.’

‘That’s not what he means. Look!’ said Derrick as he pointed to a noticeboard on the wall. There were signs warning travellers about the dangers of smuggling caviar (the tins can explode in your suitcase and make your underwear very smelly), the health risks of travelling to Siberia (mosquito bites in summer and hypothermia in winter), and ten sheets of paper, each showing a picture of one of Russia’s ten most-wanted criminals. The seventh picture was unmistakeably of Nanny Piggins.

‘They’ve found me!’ yelled Nanny Piggins. ‘Quick, run!’

Unfortunately embassies are not designed for making speedy exits. There are security guards and checkpoints everywhere. And while they are mainly focused on keeping lunatics with bombs
out
, it is a simple matter for them to turn around and keep lunatic pigs
in
.

‘We’re surrounded,’ panicked Samantha.

‘Quick, Boris!’ cried Nanny Piggins. ‘Distract them.’

‘How?!’ asked Boris.

‘I don’t know,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Do some ballet!’

‘They’re Russians,’ protested Boris. ‘They see world-class ballet all the time.’

‘Yes, but not performed by a ten-foot-tall Kodiak bear,’ argued Nanny Piggins.

‘Are you saying people only watch my ballet because I’m a bear?’ said Boris, starting to get teary.

‘Of course not,’ said Nanny Piggins, back- pedalling frantically. ‘I just meant that it is even more impressive that you are a world-class artist given that you are so tall.’

But it was too late. Boris was weeping so hard and so loudly, he could not hear anything else. Fortunately, however, a ten-foot-tall bear collapsing in a heap on the floor and bawling his eyes out is even more distracting than a sublime ballet performance, so Nanny Piggins and the children were able to dodge around the befuddled guards and make good their escape.