Nanny Piggins and the Race to Power 8 (9 page)

The local children had all been forewarned, so they all got out of the way. But the soldiers had never expected to be charged by a huge bellowing fat lady – they had no idea what to do. She ran right over the top of them, slammed into the front door of the shop and knocked it right off its hinges. The children streamed inside, grabbing sweets off the shelves and shoving them in their mouths.

‘Now for the piece of resistance,’ said Nanny Piggins as she got up and pulled back a bush to reveal her old cannon from the circus.

‘How long has that been there?’ marvelled Derrick.

‘I had it installed months ago,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I thought it important to have artillery on hand in case trouble broke out and the sweet shop needed to be defended.’

‘But you’re going to use it to
attack
the sweet shop,’ said Samantha.

‘I know,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s funny how these things work out so conveniently.’

Nanny Piggins climbed into her cannon, Boris lit the fuse and Nanny Piggins blasted out across the street yelling, ‘IIIIIIII TOOOOOOLLLLLD YOOOOOOOUUUU SOOOOOOO!’ as she flew over the heads of the bamboozled soldiers, smashed through the upstairs window of the shop and ran downstairs to join in all the fun.

‘Shall we join them?’ asked Boris, holding out his hand to Derrick, Samantha and Michael. ‘I’ll help you get past the soldiers. I’ll roar at them and pretend to be fierce if they give you any trouble.’

‘Forget that,’ said Michael. ‘I’ll roar at them and pretend to be fierce myself.’ He leapt out and ran towards the shop; Derrick soon followed and even Samantha, who was usually so trepidatious, had a rush of blood to the head (perhaps inspired by the heady scent of confectionery in the air) and took off towards the sweet shop with Boris jogging behind.

A few short minutes later, two hundred exhausted children sat outside on the footpath finishing off the last of the sweets. The soldiers nursed their wounds, which were mainly psychological, although there was one hard-boiled-lolly-to-the-eye injury, a candy cane up the nose to remove and a victim of a particularly nasty wedgie. (He had been standing in front of the fudge counter, so he only had himself to blame.)

Nanny Piggins sat on the gutter, proudly licking the last of the chocolate off her trotters with a very smug expression on her face.

The Colonel and his friend the Drill Sergeant pulled up in their jeep.

‘Drill Sergeant, how wonderful to see you!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve broken the will of your men for you, and given them a short sharp lesson in military tactics.’

‘All I’ve learnt is that children can be terrifying,’ grumbled Peregrine.

‘That’s because they were properly motivated and focused on their objective,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘They just wanted sweets,’ complained Thor.

‘Exactly,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If you can master that level of intensity and single purpose you will win any battle. Now that I have thoroughly thrashed you, I want you all to promise to do everything the Drill Sergeant says from now on.’

The men groaned.

‘I know he can be mean and grumpy, and he wants you to do all sorts of wearisome exercises,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but he only does it because he loves you.’

‘Steady on there,’ said the Drill Sergeant. ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

‘You can hush up as well,’ ordered Nanny Piggins.

‘Yes ma’am,’ said the Drill Sergeant.

‘You might be so out of touch with your emotions that you don’t realise how much you love your men,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but I can see it as clear as the slightly bent nose on your face. So I want you all to be good soldiers and do as the Drill Sergeant says. Otherwise I’ll round up all these children, bring them down to the base and set them on you again.’

‘We’ll be good, we promise,’ said the soldiers quickly.

‘Remember you’re not just doing this for yourselves or for your country,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘you’re doing it for the right to wear a jaunty little brown beret that will look fabulous on all of you.’

And so the men went back to the base having learnt a valuable lesson in military tactics – never take on a pig or two hundred hungry children.

Nanny Piggins, Boris, Derrick, Samantha and Michael went home for breakfast — the 20 metre tall statue of Nanny Piggins. They had to eat it because Mirabella had turned up before Piers had a chance to finish it, and she had vandalised the statue by sticking a huge marzipan moustache under Nanny Piggins’ nose. Nanny Piggins thought it looked quite fetching, but she wanted to be mayor, not a bearded lady, plus she was peckish so she thought it best if they just ate the whole thing (she could always commission a chocolate statue to be carved later).

Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children had enjoyed a busy morning. They had been paying a visit to the local fire station so that Boris could get his monthly shower. (When you are a ten-foot-tall bear with a serious honey habit, your fur does tend to become extremely matted.) And Boris was too tall to fit in a regular shower cubicle so when he needed a wash, Nanny Piggins took her brother to the fire station to be blasted with their giant hoses. It was very beneficial for the firemen as well, because Boris would run around screaming, ‘Oooh aah oooh, it tickles, ooh stop it, oh more, that’s the spot, again again again,’ which was an excellent training exercise for them because it was just like having to put out a spreading bush fire.

But this was not the exhausting part of their morning. The exhausting part came after Nanny Piggins noticed that the firemen were throwing out their old pole, the one they used to use to get from their dormitory upstairs to the fire truck downstairs in super quick time.

The occupational health and safety officer had made them get rid of it because it was too likely to cause sprained ankles, completely ignoring the fact that sliding down a pole in the middle of the night with a siren blaring is so much fun it is totally worth any ankle injury.

Seeing the long brass pole lying there in the driveway, Nanny Piggins immediately knew she had to take it home. She was not quite sure what she would use it for but she knew anything that long and fun to slide down had a lot of potential.

Normally Nanny Piggins would have gone home, sat at the kitchen table and eaten cake as she contemplated the possibilities. But on this occasion it only took thinking of cake for Nanny Piggins to have a brilliant idea.

‘I could run the pole from my bedroom down to the kitchen!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘That way, if I fancy a slice of cake in the middle of the night there’ll be no need to waste valuable time on opening the door or walking down the stairs in my hurry to get to it.’

So the next hour or two were spent chainsawing a hole in Nanny Piggins’ bedroom floor. Followed by chainsawing another hole in Mr Green’s bedroom floor when they realised he had the bedroom above the kitchen. (Nanny Piggins was not disappointed to have vandalised her own floor. She was sure there were advantages to having a hole in her room. For example, with the aid of a system of mirrors she would be able to watch
The Young and the Irritable
on the living room television without getting out of bed.)

All in all it was an action-packed morning. Especially for Boris whose job it was to stand in the kitchen, holding the pole in place while Nanny Piggins bolted the top to Mr Green’s ceiling. It is always physically tiring work to hold something still for prolonged periods, but it is particularly wearisome when your overexcited sister keeps dropping her hammer onto your head from two floors above. And it isn’t as though Boris could let go of the pole to rub his head because then the pole would scoot away and Nanny Piggins would hit the floor, or even worse, the sore spot on Boris’ head.

So Nanny Piggins was just painting olive oil on the pole (to make it extra slippery) before they all had a go, when disaster struck. Suddenly and unexpectedly the entire house began to shake, as a deafening rumble rattled the building from the foundations up.

‘What’s going on?’ wailed Samantha.

‘It must be an earthquake!’ yelled Derrick.

‘Either that, or someone in China has decided to dig a hole through the centre of the earth to come and visit us!’ suggested Nanny Piggins.

Michael had a quick look out the window. ‘I can’t see any tunnels or tourists in the backyard!’

‘Then we’d better take emergency evasive action!’ decided Nanny Piggins.

‘You mean, stand in a doorframe or take shelter under a desk?’ asked Derrick.

‘I was going to say “eat a slice of cake”,’ admitted Nanny Piggins. She had lived her entire life in a circus. And when your home is a tent, earthquakes are no great concern. If a large sheet of canvas or an aluminium pole falls on your head, you’ll be fine. The greater concern is being a victim of cake looting during the aftermath. (Once there had been a cyclone that ravaged the circus and Nanny Piggins had been so busy providing first aid to her dear friend Esmeralda the elephant who had a speck of dust in her eye that she had not noticed when the fat lady snuck into her tent and ate her supply of mud cake.

Nanny Piggins did not hold it against Melanie. Eating is what fat ladies do, and if you are going to leave chocolate cake unguarded, that is tantamount to entrapment.)

At this point, the house was shaking so much that pictures started falling off the walls and furniture started vibrating away from their allocated floor spaces. ‘Perhaps we better continue this discussion outside,’ suggested Derrick.

‘Good idea,’ said Nanny Piggins as part of the ceiling collapsed on the floor next to her. ‘If this is a terrible natural disaster we could dig up the emergency cake supplies I buried in the garden.’

Nanny Piggins decided that the quickest and safest way to get outside was to jump out the bedroom window. But having landed safely on the ground, she had difficultly persuading the children to follow her example. They had a much greater and more rational fear of head injuries than she did. So Nanny Piggins had to push over a wheelbarrow full of nice soft lawn clippings before they could escape the still trembling house. Samantha was so relieved to be safe on the ground that she gave Nanny Piggins an enormous hug, which was a good thing because it meant she did not notice when tiles started sliding off the roof and smashing onto the ground around her.

‘Let’s dig up the cake!’ said Nanny Piggins excitedly. ‘I remember I buried a particularly delicious marble cake near the maple tree.’

‘Hang on,’ said Michael, who was staring at the quivering house. ‘Why is our house the only house in the street that’s shaking?’

‘It must be an extremely localised earthquake,’ guessed Nanny Piggins.

‘Perhaps it isn’t an earthquake,’ said Derrick.

‘What are you saying?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Do you think your father has rented out the space under the house to an evil scientist who is perfecting a doomsday device?’

But then something even more serious occurred to Samantha. ‘Where’s Boris?’ she asked.

‘He’s usually the first person to run outside weeping when something unexpected happens,’ said Michael, ‘like being stung by a mosquito or not finding a toy in his box of honey puff breakfast cereal.’

‘You don’t think he’s trapped inside under fallen debris, do you?’ worried Samantha.

‘He’ll be all right,’ Derrick assured her. ‘He’s used to being under fallen debris. The roof collapses on him all the time when he goes up to adjust the television aerial, then he gets inspired by the view, forgets where he is and launches into ballet.’

‘I must go back inside and rescue him,’ declared Nanny Piggins.

‘But it’s not safe,’ said Samantha.

‘Pish,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If I didn’t do things just because they weren’t safe, I’d never get out of bed in the morning.’

‘Most people don’t do quadruple twisting backflips to get out of bed in the morning,’ observed Michael.

‘More fool them,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s the best way to get to the rug without standing on the cold floorboards. Here, hold my chocolate bars. I’m going in.’ Nanny Piggins pulled out the three dozen chocolate bars she had hidden about her person before marching purposefully towards the house.

‘But what if the house collapses on top of you?’ worried Samantha.

‘I doubt it will,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Your father has done such a shoddy job of maintaining his property that I took it on myself to reinforce the framework by gaffer taping Mars Bars to all the load-bearing beams.’

‘Why?’ asked Derrick.

Nanny Piggins paused and thought about it for a moment. ‘I’m not sure. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But then, perhaps that was because I was slightly delirious from eating so much chocolate. I had to test all the major chocolate bars to determine that the Mars Bar’s combination of caramel to nougat offered the best tensile strength-to-weight ratio.’

Nanny Piggins disappeared in the house.

‘I hope she’ll be all right,’ worried Samantha.

‘I hope Boris is all right,’ worried Michael.

‘I hope Nanny Piggins accurately measured the tensile strength of Mars Bars and wasn’t unconsciously swayed by their deliciousness,’ worried Derrick.

But the children’s concerns were allayed when, two seconds later, Nanny Piggins popped out the back door.