Nanny Piggins and the Accidental Blast-off

by R. A. Spratt

  ‘Look at that!’ exclaimed Derrick, as the space shuttle tilted, adjusting its course and the Earth came into view beneath them. They saw the bright blues of the ocean, the greens and browns of the continents and the white of the clouds, all contained in a perfect sphere and highlighted against the deep unending blackness of space. It was awesome.

  ‘Well,’ said Nanny Piggins as their brains finally began to process the extraordinary situation they had found themselves in. ‘I think whatever trouble we will get in when we land will be totally worth it.’

  And even Samantha, who would easily win the gold medal if worrying was an Olympic sport, nodded her head in agreement.

  ‘So,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘now that we’re up here, what are we going to do?’

  The children turned to look at her. They were even more agog at their nanny than they were at the view. ‘You’re not planning to take the space shuttle anywhere, are you?’ asked Derrick, suspecting his nanny of harbouring ideas of a quick visit to Mars.

  ‘Oh no, of course not,’ said Nanny Piggins, looking wistfully at the red dot seventy-eight million kilometres away. ‘That would be naughty. We don’t want to get in too much trouble. I imagine we’ll just orbit Earth a couple of times and then land, once they’ve sorted themselves out down at ground control.’

  It was a relief to hear their nanny sounding so sensible.

  ‘But that will probably take a couple of hours,’ added Nanny Piggins, ‘so how are we going to amuse ourselves in the meantime?’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Boris thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps we should have a snack?’

  ‘Brilliant suggestion,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.

  But when they took off their seatbelts to go in search of food they discovered something even more wonderful than the view out the window. They discovered they were weightless. And in the absence of gravity even Boris was able to float around like a butterfly. It was an amazing sensation. The children tumbled through the air, spun in pirouettes and hung upside down with their heads off the floor. They felt like the greatest acrobats on Earth, except that they were not on Earth anymore, so they could not really claim the title. And when Boris tried out some of his ballet moves they were even more beautiful, poetic and graceful than they were back home.

  Eventually, after an hour of play, Nanny Piggins remembered that they were all hungry so they resumed their search for snacks. They soon found the food storage closet at the back of the ship. But when they opened it, they experienced their first disappointment in space travel.

  ‘Where is all the cake?’ asked a bewildered Nanny Piggins as she rifled through endless sachets. ‘I can’t find anything. No biscuits, no tarts, no doughnuts, no cheesecake … How are astronauts meant to survive up here?’

  ‘I think these sachets are food,’ said Derrick.

  ‘No!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins in shock. ‘Surely not.’

  ‘Now, Sarah, you should be open-minded,’ said Boris. ‘Remember, just because food looks disgusting doesn’t mean it is.’

  ‘It’s usually a good warning sign,’ muttered Nanny Piggins.

  ‘I’ll try one,’ volunteered Michael.

  ‘You’re a brave, brave boy,’ praised Nanny Piggins.

  Michael took a sachet, tore it open and squeezed it into his mouth. The others did not need to ask if it tasted good. They could tell from Michael’s expression. His face went red, his mouth puckered up and his eyes started to water. He would have spat it back out again, but he was worried where the spit would go in zero gravity.

  ‘That was awful!’ exclaimed Michael, after finally summoning the courage to swallow.

  Samantha read the label: ‘Liver with brussels sprouts.’

  ‘How unspeakably dreadful!’ said a horrified Nanny Piggins. ‘No wonder NASA needed me. If they haven’t got the brains to keep a nice chocolate cake on board for the astronauts, it’s no surprise they can’t build a working space shuttle.’

  Just then the speakers crackled and the head of NASA’s voice boomed through the cockpit. (I will not print exactly what he said because he used a lot of rude words, which were unbecoming of a man of science, and really, it is ungentlemanly to yell at a lady.) After a full five minutes of recriminations and tellings-off (him telling Nanny Piggins off for launching the space shuttle and her telling him off for using naughty words in front of children), he eventually calmed down.

  ‘All right,’ said the head of NASA. ‘At 1500 hours we will need you to commence landing procedure.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘He’s not speaking Latin, is he? I absolutely refuse to be spoken to in Latin. It’s a language entirely for show-offs.’

  ‘He said at three o’clock he wants you to start the landing,’ explained Derrick.

  ‘Ohhh,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘He likes using his fifty-cent words, doesn’t he?’

  ‘I can hear every word you are saying!’ yelled the head of NASA. He was beginning to lose his temper again.

  ‘I know,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but unlike some people, I don’t say things I should be ashamed of.’ (If she could have seen the head of NASA at that moment, she would have seen him blush.)

  ‘Because this was an unplanned launch our computers are not properly in sync with the shuttle,’ explained the head of NASA, ‘so you will need to get out the workbook from the aft locker, copy in the readouts from the cockpit displays, use the coordinates I give you, and calculate your re-entry angle using trigonometry.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Nanny Piggins, and for the first time that day she began to feel genuinely sorry that she had become the first pig in space. Because there was nothing in the world that she hated more than doing maths. Nanny Piggins was, however, a brave pig so she got out the workbook, copied down the readouts and gave it a valiant effort. She attempted to do trigonometry for an entire twenty seconds before she got heartily sick of it, cried, ‘Piffle to that!’ and flushed the whole workbook down the space toilet.

  ‘But how are we going to land now?!’ worried Samantha.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Nanny Piggins reassured her. ‘I was blasted out of a cannon night after night for years. I know more about landings than all that lot down at NASA put together. I’ll just land it by eye.’

  ‘But we have to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere at exactly the right angle or we’ll burn up!’ exclaimed Derrick.

  ‘I don’t believe that for a second,’ dismissed Nanny Piggins. ‘I think that’s just a load of old tosh they made up to make space travel movies more exciting. I’m sure we’ll be fine. I never burnt up on re-entry when I smashed out through the Big Top and had to smash my way back in.’

  ‘But this is rather different …’ protested Michael.

  ‘Now, children,’ chided Boris. ‘Nanny Piggins has made a decision. She almost always knows what she is doing, or is very good at faking it, so let’s stop being Nelly-negatives and start being supportive.’

  ‘All I need is something to aim at down on the ground,’ said Nanny Piggins, peering out through the windscreen of the shuttle as Earth passed beneath them.

  ‘You could land it in the ocean,’ said Derrick as they passed over the Pacific.

  ‘Good gracious no!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve got a lovely new pair of suede boots on and I don’t want to get them wet.’

  ‘How about the Sahara desert?’ suggested Michael. He had just read a thrilling book about searching for diamonds in the Sahara.

  ‘Too much sand,’ dismissed Boris. ‘It would take forever to brush out of my fur.’

  ‘I know,’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Look down there – it’s the Great Wall of China. We’ll aim for that.’

  The others peered out the window to see a thin line winding its way across China.

  ‘Do you think you can hit it?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘Easily,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The Great Wall of China is over a thousand miles long, so I’m sure I can hit some part of it.’

  ‘But won’t the Chinese get cross?’ p
rotested Samantha.

  ‘I don’t see why they would,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They don’t use it to keep out the rampaging Mongol hordes anymore so it’s just sitting there doing nothing.’

  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 ou
tside 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.