Nanny Piggins and the Race to Power 8

by R. A. Spratt

  ‘Who could that be?’ asked Boris.

  ‘It’s six o’clock in the morning,’ added Derrick.

  ‘Perhaps it’s the milkman come to apologise for forgetting to leave the 14,000 sticks of butter I asked for,’ guessed Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Perhaps it’s someone else who’s been up all night baking cakes,’ guessed Samantha, ‘and they’ve come over to borrow a cup of sugar.’

  ‘I’d better answer the door right away then,’ said Nanny Piggins, leaping to her feet and picking up a bag of sugar. ‘There’s nothing worse than having your butter all measured out, then discovering there’s no sugar to cream it with.’

  The children followed as soon as they could. It took a moment because their legs were paralysed from having been sitting making cake for so long. So they reached the hallway just as Nanny Piggins flung open the front door.

  ‘What type of cake are you baking? Chocolate? Caramel? Lemon drizzle?’ asked Nanny Piggins collegially. But the words soon died on her lips, because the woman in front of her was clearly not the type to bake cakes. She was dressed in a grey office suit, stylish thin-framed glasses and a sleek fashionable haircut (the type that looks like you did nothing to it at all but really takes 45 minutes with a blow-dryer to achieve). She was rather short, but also extremely attractive, which is a look that is hard to pull off at six o’clock in the morning.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked Nanny Piggins, immediately on the defensive. She distrusted anybody who was well dressed before 10 am, unless they had not been to bed yet, but even then they should be slightly dishevelled from a long night of dancing.

  ‘I’m here to help you,’ said the professional-looking woman. ‘My name is Tyler Forrest and I’m your new campaign manager.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘I do like a woman with confidence. But there is a threshold of overconfidence beyond which I instinctively want to stomp on your foot, and you seem to have taken a giant leap over that threshold. You might want to be my campaign manager but you aren’t because I haven’t hired you.’

  ‘But you will,’ said Tyler. ‘Once you let me explain, you’ll see that you have no chance of winning without me. But if you hire me, we could go all the way, not just to mayor, but we could take this national – one day you could be prime minister.’

  ‘I just want to thwart Mr Green,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t want the responsibility of running an entire country. I already have a job looking after these three children. I know I’m good at multi- tasking but I’m not that good.’

  ‘No matter,’ said Tyler. ‘I will help you achieve this limited goal, for now.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘I work for the Emily Davison Electoral Society dedicated to supporting women running for public office,’ explained Tyler.

  ‘You do realise that Nanny Piggins is a pig?’ asked Samantha.

  ‘We’re prepared to overlook that,’ conceded Tyler. ‘To be honest, we have a hard time finding potential candidates. Most women have too much sense to want to be involved in politics, which is why we must redouble our efforts and throw them behind the silly ones.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but I don’t need you. I already have a brilliant electoral strategy. I’m going to give everyone in the electorate . . .’

  ‘Excluding diabetics and meanies,’ added Derrick.

  ‘Yes, excluding them,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m going to give them all a cake.’ Nanny Piggins smiled proudly at the ingeniousness of her brilliant idea.

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Tyler.

  ‘What do you mean “is that it?”’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Do you have any idea how good my cakes are?’

  ‘I’m sure they’re delicious,’ said Tyler, ‘but your plan will never work. You’ve already tied up the cake-loving vote because your dedication to cake and cake-related causes is well known throughout the town. But people who don’t like cake or, more seriously, don’t like themselves because of how much they do like cake, will only resent you if you give them a delicious, calorie-laden treat.’

  Nanny Piggins gasped. ‘You mean . . . I’ll be undone by dieters?!’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Tyler. ‘And at any given time as many as 93 per cent of the population think they are on a diet. That figure actually goes up immediately after Christmas.’

  ‘What do you mean “think they are on a diet”?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘Ninety per cent of people tell themselves they are on a diet,’ explained Tyler, ‘but actually only two or three per cent of those people actually eat less. It’s a complex psychological conditional called “kidding yourself”.’

  ‘I see,’ said Derrick, which was actually an example of ‘kidding himself’ because really he did not.

  ‘Anyway, if anyone who thinks they are on a diet finds a delicious chocolate mud cake in their letterbox, they will eat it, then they will be cross with themselves for eating it, then they will get cross at the person who gave it to them,’ continued Tyler. ‘There will be a massive electoral backlash and you’ll lose in a landslide.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s horrifying to think that so much wonderful cake could cause so much unhappiness.’

  ‘Which is why you need to triangulate,’ explained Tyler.

  ‘Triangu-whatie?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Triangulate,’ said Tyler. ‘It is an ingenious electoral strategy invented by former American President Bill Clinton, where you ignore the people who love you because they will love you whatever you do. Then you focus all your energy on pandering to the people who dislike you intensely.’

  ‘But who dislikes Nanny Piggins intensely?’ asked Michael. He found it impossible to believe that people could not love his nanny as much as he did.

  ‘Fitness fanatics and healthy eaters,’ stated Tyler.

  ‘My Achilles heel,’ gasped Nanny Piggins.

  ‘You need to win over the gym junkies,’ explained Tyler.

  ‘But to do so would be to go against all my principles, everything I believe in,’ said Nanny Piggins.

  ‘It won’t be so hard,’ argued Tyler. ‘You are a flying pig and therefore an elite athlete.’

  ‘True,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.

  ‘But that’s an extreme sport,’ continued Tyler. ‘You need to let the fit and healthy know you are one of them.’

  ‘How?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

  ‘By taking up jogging,’ said Tyler.

  ‘Noooooooooooo!’ screamed Nanny Piggins.

  Eventually, several minutes later, the children managed to calm Nanny Piggins down again, largely by feeding her several dozen freshly made cakes (which fortuitously were so close at hand).

  ‘I despise those who jog,’ said an emotional Nanny Piggins, ‘but to do it myself –’ she literally shuddered to think of it – ‘would be to defile everything I believe in, to betray every cake I have ever eaten.’

  ‘Do you want to be mayor of Dulsford?’ asked Tyler.

  ‘Not particularly,’ admitted Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Do you want to beat Mr Green, stop him from becoming mayor and ruining everything you don’t hate about this city?’ asked Tyler.

  Nanny Piggins thought about it for a moment. ‘Yes, yes I do.’

  ‘Then sacrifices have to be made,’ said Tyler. ‘In all campaigns, if you are going to win, the first thing that has to go is the candidate’s dignity.’

  ‘Pass me a slice of cake,’ said Nanny Piggins forlornly. ‘If I’m going to take up jogging I shall need the energy.’

  ‘Oh, you’re not just going to take up jogging,’ said Tyler. ‘I’ve entered you in the Town to Tip fun run.’

  At this point Nanny Piggins fainted (or fell asleep, it was hard to tell because she was very tired). Her brain obviously needed to shut down in order to block out the reality that she was now going to take up such a deeply unpleasant sport.

  Fortunately, Boris was able to wake his sister by slapping her in the face wi
th a cream pie, which only took him 45 minutes to whip up especially for this purpose.

  ‘But I can’t go in a fun run!’ protested Nanny Piggins. ‘It would go against everything I believe in.’

  ‘Exactly,’ agreed Tyler, ‘which is how you would win over an entirely new demographic to your campaign.’

  ‘Triangucake,’ nodded Boris.

  ‘But there’s nothing fun about running,’ argued Nanny Piggins, ‘unless it’s after an ice-cream truck, and even then the fun part is actually catching it, tying up the ice-cream man and eating all his stock.’

  ‘And the Town to Tip run is very hilly,’ argued Samantha.

  ‘And it goes right past the Slimbridge Cake Factory,’ added Michael. ‘Nanny Piggins has never been able to run past that, even in a locked car driving at 80 km an hour. She still finds it impossible to resist the urge to kick out the window and leap out.’

  ‘It’s true,’ admitted Nanny Piggins. ‘It means we have to travel in some very circuitous routes to get about town.’

  ‘That’s why you’ve got to train,’ said Tyler. ‘You’ve got an entire week until the race, which is plenty of time to build up your willpower.’

  The training regime started at 5 am sharp the next morning, when Nanny Piggins tried climbing out her window and running away, but Tyler was one step ahead of her. As a campaign manager she was used to dealing with politicians who were tremendously morally bankrupt, and always sneaking off to be naughty. So Tyler had the foresight to set up a net at the bottom of the drainpipe.

  She soon bundled Nanny Piggins up in the back of Mr Green’s Rolls-Royce and drove her down to the athletics track to begin training. The children and Boris got up early and went along too, because they knew they were to see a very rare sight indeed – Nanny Piggins not only taking exercise but also doing as she was told.

  Things did not start well. Tyler began by telling Nanny Piggins to do six laps of the field, then she blew a whistle. Nanny Piggins responded by yanking the whistle off Tyler’s neck, swinging it around her head and lobbing it up into the gutter of the grandstand.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere until I’ve had at least a dozen doughnuts,’ said Nanny Piggins, beginning to get that menacing look in her eyes that she always got when she was contemplating violence.

  ‘You’re not getting any doughnuts, full stop,’ said Tyler, who it turns out was capable of an equally fierce glower. ‘If you want to impress healthy people, you will have to stop jamming baked goods in your face at every available opportunity.’

  ‘I’ll jam your shin in my mouth in a minute,’ threatened Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Ladies, ladies,’ said Boris, bravely intervening. (He wasn’t too brave. He had worn steel-plated shin guards in anticipation of his sister becoming delirious with low blood cake levels and lashing out.) ‘Might I suggest a compromise?’

  ‘What?’ asked Tyler and Nanny Piggins.

  ‘You want Sarah to go jogging and, Sarah, you want to eat a piece of cake. I anticipated this impasse,’ said Boris. (He had been learning some big words at law school.) ‘I took the liberty of filling up the boot of the Rolls-Royce with Swiss rolls last night, so Tyler could drive the Rolls-Royce around the track and Sarah could chase it, thereby –’

  ‘There’s cake in the Rolls?!’ interrupted Nanny Piggins.

  Boris didn’t answer; he leapt on his sister, pinning her to the ground while flinging the Rolls-Royce keys to Tyler. ‘Quick, drive! I’ll delay her as long as I can, but I’ll only be able to hold her for a few seconds.’

  Fortunately Tyler had already taken off running. She snatched the keys out of the air and leapt in through the open window of the Rolls, screeching out onto the track and taking off.

  One particularly vicious nipple cripple to her hapless brother later, and Nanny Piggins gave chase. It was an extraordinary sight. Tyler sped around the track all morning and Nanny Piggins never lost pace. She was like a cyborg, ruthlessly, unrelentingly powering after her prey, lap after lap. They didn’t stop at ten, they kept going for fifty, then one hundred laps. Nanny Piggins completely focused on the cake and the cake alone.

  ‘Do you think she realises she could have run to Hans’ Bakery and back ten times over by now?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I don’t think she’s thinking about anything,’ said Boris. ‘She can smell the cake in the boot and it’s completely overpowered all rational thought in her mind.’

  ‘Does Nanny Piggins have many rational thoughts in her mind?’ asked Samantha.

  ‘Not many,’ admitted Boris, ‘but when she hasn’t had any breakfast, there are none at all.’

  ‘Hey look!’ said Derrick. ‘The Rolls-Royce is slowing down.’

  ‘What’s Tyler doing?’ asked Boris. ‘Doesn’t she know she is taking her life in her own hands?’

  As the Rolls-Royce swooped past the grandstand, Tyler wound down her window and called out, ‘Help me! I’m running out of petrol!’

  ‘Use the little lever in the glove box to pop open the boot!’ advised Boris. ‘For your own safety you need to placate her with cake.’

  So just as the Rolls-Royce glided to a stuttering stop, the boot popped open and Nanny Piggins leapt mouth-first into it. They could not see her, but they could hear her guzzling and they could see the car shuddering as she lashed about inside the boot, gobbling up every last crumb of cake.

  Tyler, visibly shocked by the experience, went over to join the others in the grandstand. ‘Well I think we’ve established that Nanny Piggins is already pretty good at running.’

  ‘She’s a gifted all-round athlete,’ agreed Boris. ‘People think being a flying pig is just a case of lying in a cannon waiting for the gunpowder to explode, but once you have been blasted, there’s an awful lot of jogging back to the starting point.’

  ‘The hard thing is going to be training her to run past the Slimbridge Cake Factory,’ predicted Michael.

  ‘All right,’ said Tyler. ‘I’ll plan tomorrow’s training session to focus on that.’

  ‘What are we going to do this afternoon?’ asked Derrick.

  ‘I think I’ll be spending most of the afternoon at the Rolls-Royce dealership getting it repaired,’ said Tyler. ‘In her haste to get as much cake in her mouth as possible, I think Nanny Piggins has eaten all the carpet and some of the electrical wiring.’

  So the next day’s training session started 500 metres down the road from the Slimbridge Cake Factory.

  ‘I don’t understand why I have to run past the factory,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m sure I could pop in for a couple of dozen cakes, say hello to my dear friends on the assembly line, and still get back on track and win the race.’

  ‘It’s not a question of winning or eating cake,’ said Tyler.

  ‘Wash your mouth out!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.

  ‘It’s a question of appearances,’ continued Tyler. ‘You’re a politician now. You need to present yourself as a healthy person. And healthy people don’t raid cake factories.’

  ‘Mentally healthy people do,’ grumbled Nanny Piggins. ‘If more people popped in to cake factories there would be more happiness in the world.’

  ‘And more obesity and more diabetes,’ chided Tyler.

  ‘I’d rather spend time with a fat diabetic,’ declared Nanny Piggins, ‘than a miserable skinny bones!’

  Tyler sighed. ‘Please never say that to anyone in the media.’

  ‘You can do it, Nanny Piggins,’ encouraged Michael. ‘All you have to do is run from here, straight down the road until you’re 500 metres past the factory.’

  ‘It’s only 1000 metres all up,’ added Derrick. ‘You run that all the time.’

  ‘Oh, I know I can do it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The problem is why should I do it?’

  ‘To beat Father,’ reminded Samantha.

  ‘Hmpf,’ grumbled Nanny Piggins. ‘Attractive as that idea is, it’s not as attractive as the reality of a Slimbridge Bavarian Chocolate Cake in my mouth.’

  ‘That
’s why we’ve set up a trestle table laden with all of Slimbridge’s finest baked goods at the other end,’ said Boris.

  ‘How many of their baked goods?’ questioned Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Two hundred family-sized cakes,’ said Michael.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘All right, I agree to it.’

  They all climbed out of the car. Nanny Piggins shuddered when the sweet smell of cake hit her nostrils.

  ‘You can do it, Nanny Piggins,’ urged Samantha.

  ‘Of course I can,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.

  ‘Think of the cake at the other end,’ advised Michael.

  ‘Run as fast as you can,’ encouraged Derrick.

  ‘All right,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Here goes.’ With that she took off, sprinting down the road past the cake factory. And she did really well; she got a whole hundred metres down the road before she suddenly broke stride, stopped, then leapt onto the cyclone wire fence and took off into the grounds of the factory.

  ‘I’m impressed she got as far as she did,’ said Michael.

  Later, after seven security guards dragged her out of the factory, the children reasoned with Nanny Piggins as she sat on the curb finishing up the last of the cake she had managed to stuff in her pockets.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ asked Samantha. ‘You knew there was plenty of cake waiting for you at the other end.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘but this cake was closer and it was calling me.’

  ‘The cake called to you?’ asked Tyler.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Nanny Piggins, eat me, eat me! it cried. It would have been rude for me not to respond.’

  ‘You don’t really think you can hear cake talking to you, do you?’ asked Derrick, beginning to worry about his nanny.

  ‘Of course I do!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll admit they don’t do it very loudly. But telepathically I can hear what they’d like to say to me loud and clear.’

  ‘I have been running campaigns for fifteen years and I have never come across a problem like this,’ said Tyler, also slumping down in the gutter and helping herself to a slice of cake. ‘We can motivate Nanny Piggins to run with cake but we can’t motivate her to run past a cake factory with cake.’ She stuffed an especially large slice of sponge into her mouth to punctuate this thought.