Nanny Piggins and the Pursuit of Justice

by R. A. Spratt

  When Derrick, Samantha and Michael emerged from school they were surprised to see their father’s Rolls-Royce sitting outside the gates with the engine running. They were surprised for two reasons. First, in the entire time they had been at school they had never, not once, been picked up by their father. (Not even the day their mother had gone missing in that mysterious boating accident. Even then he let them catch the bus home before breaking the terrible news.) Second, the street outside the school gates was a ‘No standing’ zone, and Mr Green would never have the courage to disobey a sign put up by the municipal council.

  ‘Is that Father’s car?’ asked Samantha in bewilderment.

  ‘Who else do we know who owns a vomit-yellow Rolls-Royce?’ asked Michael.

  ‘It must be Nanny Piggins,’ said Samantha. ‘She must have “borrowed” it.’

  ‘But Father had all the locks changed and only one key pressed, which he keeps hidden on a chain around his neck,’ said Derrick.

  ‘I knew that sounded like a bad idea as soon as I heard it,’ said Michael. ‘As if Nanny Piggins would let a little thing like Father’s neck stand between her and the Rolls-Royce.’

  As the children approached the car, a tinted window rolled down and they could see a figure entirely dressed in black and wearing a balaclava, sitting behind the wheel.

  ‘Eeek!’ said Samantha. ‘It’s a car thief!’

  ‘If it was a car thief, why would they come and pick us up from school?’ reasoned Michael.

  ‘Perhaps they feel bad about being a car thief,’ suggested Samantha.

  Just then the black clad figured pulled up her balaclava, revealing herself to be none other than their beloved nanny.

  ‘Quick, get in!’ called Nanny Piggins.

  ‘How on earth did you get hold of Father’s car?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘You didn’t cut his head off, did you?’ asked Michael, although he doubted if she did it would do their father much harm. Chickens can survive for weeks with their heads cut off, provided you keep putting food down their oesophagi. And his father often reminded him of a chicken.

  ‘No no, not at all,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I didn’t have the time. I just borrowed a half brick from Mrs Simpson and dropped it in through the sunroof.’

  The children peered into the car to see the gaping hole.

  ‘He should thank me really,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Convertibles are much more fashionable and he could do with some work on his tan.’

  The children were not entirely sure their father would see it that way.

  ‘Hurry up and get in,’ urged Nanny Piggins. ‘We’ve got work to do. I’ve got balaclavas for all of you so the police won’t be able to prove anything.’

  The children obediently got in the car and pulled their balaclavas over their faces, as Nanny Piggins peeled away, with tyres squealing.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘To teach someone a lesson,’ explained Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Who?’ worried Samantha.

  ‘The advice columnist from the newspaper. She’s been at it again,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘See for yourselves.’ Nanny Piggins passed a copy of the local newspaper back to the children.

  They scanned it quickly. It seemed like pretty standard sort of advice. ‘Be honest with your husband.’ ‘Save ten per cent of your income.’ ‘Buy your wife some flowers once in a while.’

  ‘Which one are we meant to be shocked by?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘The second one from the bottom!’ said Nanny Piggins.

  Michael read it aloud: ‘Dear Aunt Alice, I put on a couple of kilos over Christmas and I just can’t lose it again. I’ve tried three different diets but nothing works. What should I do? Yours, Frumpy’

  ‘Now read the response,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  Samantha read: ‘Dear Frumpy, Why don’t you take up jogging?’

  ‘Can you believe it?’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Jogging, I mean jogging!’

  ‘What’s wrong with jogging?’ asked Michael. He had never tried it himself but he wasn’t aware that there was anything terribly wrong with it. ‘I thought you said people who wanted to lose weight should exercise.’

  ‘But not jogging!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It is the most humiliating and degrading of all sports. It’s even worse than beach volleyball. And you have to do that wearing a bikini and sticking your bottom out for everyone to look at.’

  ‘But lots of people jog,’ said Derrick. ‘Presidents do it.’

  ‘I know,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That’s the tragedy. They have no-one in their lives to tell them how stupid they look bouncing up and down. And all that sweating! So disgusting. But that’s not the worst thing about jogging.’

  ‘It’s not?’ asked Samantha. She thought bouncing and sweating sounded pretty bad.

  ‘The worst part is that it’s so utterly, miserably boring,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Just pounding along the road, one foot in front of the other, desperately trying not to think about the pain in your legs.’

  ‘But you run all the time,’ Derrick pointed out.

  ‘That’s different,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I run away from dangerous things like police officers. Or I run towards delicious things like ice-cream vans. That’s exciting and purposeful, whereas jogging is just painful and pointless.’

  ‘So what are we going to do about it?’ asked Samantha.

  ‘We’re going to kidnap Aunt Alice,’ declared Nanny Piggins.

  ‘What?’ exclaimed all three children.

  ‘Nanny Piggins,’ said Derrick. ‘You can’t!’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘She’s had it coming for months now.’

  ‘You can’t kidnap her, it’s illegal!’ said Samantha. ‘Seriously illegal. You’ll get more than community service if you get caught.’

  ‘Pish!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve been kidnapped lots of times and I’ve never come to any harm.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re circus folk,’ argued Derrick. ‘The advice columnist isn’t. She won’t like it.’

  ‘Oh piffle,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘All I’m going to do is throw her in a sack, drive her down to the local jogging track and make her do fifty or sixty laps to see how she likes it.’

  Nanny Piggins hit the brakes and the car screeched to a halt.

  ‘Here’s where she lives,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Now pass me that sack, rope and gaffer tape.’

  ‘How did you get her address?’ asked Samantha. ‘I thought the editor had ordered his staff not to give it to you.’

  ‘Hah!’ scoffed Nanny Piggins. ‘He was easily dealt with. I just baked him one of my quadruple fudge cakes and when he passed out from a calorie high, I rifled through his address book.’

  Nanny Piggins took her equipment and bounded out of the car.

  ‘We’ve got to stop her,’ said Derrick.

  ‘How?’ asked Samantha. ‘She’s never listened to reason before.’

  ‘If only we had our own sack, rope and gaffer tape, we could kidnap her,’ said Michael.

  ‘She is always urging us to take those things to school,’ said Samantha repentantly.

  ‘Come on,’ said Derrick, ‘we’d better catch up with her. The least we can do is yell “run” when Nanny Piggins kicks in the door.’

  But, somewhat to Nanny Piggins’ disappointment, she never got to kick in the door. Because before she even pressed the doorbell the door swung open, revealing a nice old lady.

  ‘Hello,’ said the old lady. ‘Have you come to sell me something? Do come in and tell me all about it.’

  ‘Do you often get four door-to-door salesmen turning up wearing balaclavas?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘No,’ admitted Aunt Alice, ‘but I don’t want to second-guess your sales tactic. Now come on in fo
r a cup of tea. I’ve got some lovely flapjack I baked this morning.’

  At the mention of baked goods the steam entirely went out of Nanny Piggins’ anger. ‘Flapjack? Where?’ she asked. ‘Never mind. I’ll find it,’ she shouted as she pushed past Aunt Alice and ran into the house, looking for the kitchen.

  They soon found Nanny Piggins chomping her way through half a tray of golden, sticky treats. ‘Not bad,’ conceded Nanny Piggins. ‘But that does not excuse your dreadful behaviour.’

  ‘It doesn’t?’ asked Aunt Alice. ‘What have I done?’

  ‘You’ve given out simply terrible advice,’ accused Nanny Piggins, popping another square of flapjack in her mouth.

  ‘Oh, I know,’ said Aunt Alice, helping herself to a square of flapjack too, ‘but it’s so hard thinking up what to say. I get bored with myself sometimes.’

  ‘But that is a terrible attitude,’ accused Nanny Piggins. ‘These people turn to you for help. You can’t let them down.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ said Aunt Alice. ‘I don’t let real people down. You see, I don’t just make up the answers, I make up the letters too.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Nobody writes to the newspaper wanting advice anymore,’ said Aunt Alice, ‘and when they do, the things they ask about are rarely fit for print.’

  ‘They’re about exercising?’ guessed Nanny Piggins.

  ‘No, it’s all about relationships,’ said Aunt Alice, ‘and I’ve been single my whole life, so I don’t know much about all that sort of stuff. That’s why I make up the questions as well as the answers. It’s easier that way.’

  ‘That’s awful,’ denounced Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to get you fired.’

  ‘Not out of a cannon?’ queried Michael.

  ‘No, from her job,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Please don’t,’ said Aunt Alice. ‘I rather like having a job and earning money. It helps me to pay for food and such like.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘I’m not a cruel pig. I’ll make sure you get another job that suits you much better.’

  And Nanny Piggins was true to her word. By five o’clock that afternoon she had been to see the editor again, woken him up from his fudge-cake-induced slumber by giving him a slice of coffee cake, and insisted he sack his advice columnist.

  The editor was, at first, resistant. Aunt Alice had once given him excellent advice on how to get a blueberry stain out of white woollen carpet, so he was very loyal to her. And since he never read her column (he was a very lazy editor), he did not realise how rotten it had become.

  ‘But she’s a sweet old lady,’ protested the editor. ‘I can’t sack her. The union will come after me.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you leave her penniless on the street,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘You’re not?’ said the editor.

  ‘No, I think you should give her a job she is actually qualified to do,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘Her flapjack is really very good. The best I’ve ever tasted cooked by a human. So I think you should give her a cooking column.’

  ‘I suppose I could do that,’ said the editor, ‘but what about the advice column. It’s been part of the paper for eighty years. I can’t cut that.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll write it for you.’

  ‘You?’ said the editor.

  ‘Why not me?’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘You can read and write?’ asked the editor.

  ‘Of course I can!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘What are you trying to imply.’

  ‘She is actually very good at writing,’ said Derrick, chipping in to help his nanny. ‘Particularly angry letters and rude letters. She writes those most days.’

  Nanny Piggins nodded with agreement. ‘And I get into lots and lots of trouble all the time. So I have plenty of advice I could give people.’

  ‘You do?’ asked the editor sceptically.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘For example, given my current legal predicament, I could now advise anyone wanting to eat a slice of birthday cake not to tightrope walk between two buildings.’

  ‘You would?’ asked Samantha, relieved to hear her nanny sounding so sensible.

  ‘Yes, I would advise them to blast themselves from a cannon instead,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The police never would have been able to prove it was me if I was just a blur of speed across the sky.’

  Eventually the editor decided he would give Nanny Piggins a go as his new advice columnist. He was sure that whatever she wrote, while not necessarily being good advice, would certainly be entertaining advice. And that’s all that mattered to him as a newspaper man. Plus Nanny Piggins bribed him with promises of more fudge cake, so she soon had her way.

  Nanny Piggins was looking forward to her first day at work as a professional advice columnist. She had been giving people unsolicited advice for years, free of charge, so it seemed only fair that she now be paid for the service. She had bought herself a typewriter. (She did not like computers because they did not make a loud ‘ping’ at the end of every line.) And of course she had bought a very large supply of chocolate (the most essential supply for any writer). Now she and the children just had to await the arrival of the first sack of mail asking for advice.

  ‘It’s just like waiting for Santa to come,’ said Nanny Piggins excitedly, ‘only instead of getting a bunch of rubbishy plastic toys, we’re getting something really good – lots of sordid stories about people’s real lives.’

  ‘I don’t think you’re meant to enjoy reading about other people’s problems,’ said Samantha dubiously.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Of course you are. That’s what all forms of entertainment are based on. It’s why soap operas are so good. It’s wonderful enjoying the misery of others. It makes you forget about your own problems for a while.’

  ‘I can see the postman,’ Boris’ voice crackled over a walkie-talkie. He was stationed up on top of the roof as lookout.

  ‘How many sacks has he got?’ asked Nanny Piggins, speaking into her own walkie-talkie.

  ‘Only one, I think’ said Boris. ‘It’s hard to tell from this distance.’

  ‘Here,’ said Nanny Piggins, giving Michael a big slice of the most delicious-looking moist chocolate mud cake. ‘Run down the road and take this to the postman. It’ll give him the energy to hurry up.’

  Nanny Piggins danced excitedly from one trotter to the other. It showed enormous strength of character on her part that she was able to resist the urge to burst out of the house, run down the road and just snatch the sack from the postman. But she knew she should not, because the postman had taken out a restraining order against her. (He had not wanted to but his wife insisted because Nanny Piggins kept leaping out of trees and giving him haircuts. They were fashionable haircuts, but his wife didn’t like it when her husband came home looking like a European soccer player. If it weren’t for the postal uniform she wouldn’t recognise him.)

  Finally they heard the thud of a sack being dropped on their doorstep, the knock at the door and the pitter-patter of rapid footsteps as the postman ran away. Nanny Piggins wrenched open the door and looked down, only to be slightly discouraged. There was a sack of mail. But it was a very small sack.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked. ‘I thought there’d be a lot more troubled people than that.’

  Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children enjoyed their morning reading all the mail. They were, at first, disappointed to discover just how many of the letters were from people complaining that they either could not get a girlfriend, or could not get a boyfriend. These letters were easily dealt with. Nanny Piggins was not going to waste newspaper column space on them. She simply forwarded all the letters from men complaining they couldn’t meet women t
o the women complaining they couldn’t meet men, and vice versa, so they could sort their problems out for themselves. But there were other problems that were far more tricky.

  ‘I’ve got one here from a woman who says, My husband cuts his toenails in the living room and never picks up the clippings. What should I do?’, read Samantha.

  ‘Ah, that is a good one,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘Derrick, sit at the typewriter and take this down: Cut off his cake supply!’

  ‘That’s a bit extreme,’ protested Samantha.

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘True, toenail clippings are tiny. But it’s what they represent. Any man who does not know that clipping his toenails all over the living room floor is disgusting is inconsiderate in the extreme and should be punished.’

  ‘Father clips his toenails in the living room,’ said Michael.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Nanny Piggins, nodding her head.

  ‘I’ve got a good letter here,’ said Michael. ‘I am the headmaster of a school but no-one has any respect for me anymore. Not since a pig has entered my life. She contradicts everything I say, wrecks school property and embarrasses me constantly. What should I do? Signed Headmaster Put-upon.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t think Headmaster Put-upon is his real name. I suspect this letter is secretly from Headmaster Pimplestock.’

  ‘It does seem likely,’ agreed Samantha.

  ‘Derrick, take this down,’ called Nanny Piggins. ‘Dear Headmaster Put-upon, my advice to you is to shut yourself in your office and don’t come out. You should be thankful to have a pig as a member of your school community. Pigs are better at just about everything than humans, so stay out of her way and just get on with it.’

  ‘Listen to this,’ said Boris. ‘This letter is from a woman who is worried that her identical twin sister is secretly running an arms smuggling business with her husband.’

  ‘Oh that’s easy,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The same thing happened to Brianna on The Young and the Irritable. All she needs to do is pose as a Columbian cartel chief, kidnap her husband and have their helicopter crash over a deserted tropical island. There, they can fall in love again while fighting off deadly snakes, starvation and her wicked ex-husband, Bridge.’