by R. A. Spratt
Nanny Piggins looked horrified.
Boris gasped. ‘Nanny Piggins was a circus star. She never put up a tent,’ he said. ‘That is what carnies are for. They get very cross with you if you try to encroach on their job description.’
‘Do you know how to put up a tent?’ Michael asked Boris.
‘No, sorry. Bear claws aren’t very good for doing practical things. Unless you count ripping people’s throats out and I don’t see how that would help in this situation,’ said Boris.
‘Maybe there are some instructions inside the bag,’ suggested Samantha optimistically.
An hour later, after much bickering, snatching and several instances of accidentally stabbing each other in the eye with a tent pole, they all sat around a beautiful roaring fire.
Nanny Piggins had made the unilateral decision to burn the tents.
‘There,’ said Nanny Piggins happily. ‘We’re much warmer now than we would be if we were inside the tents.’
‘But where are we going to sleep?’ asked Samantha.
‘We’ll just sleep in the open tonight,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘But what if it rains?’ asked Michael.
‘It will save you having to have a shower in the morning,’ said Nanny Piggins.
And so after they had toasted the seven bags of marshmallows that Nanny Piggins had stuffed in a secret compartment in the bottom of her handbag and told a few ghost stories (until Samantha begged them all to stop), they all went to sleep and slept for a total of 38 minutes before they were awoken by screaming.
‘Aaaagghhh-aagghhh-aggghhh!’ screamed Boris.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ asked Nanny Piggins as she fumbled for her torch.
‘I heard a noise,’ said Boris.
‘What sort of noise?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘A little crumply noise,’ said Boris.
‘Why on earth did that make you scream?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘What if it was a wild animal trying to sneak up and eat us?’ said Boris.
‘Boris, you’re a great big bear,’ said Samantha.
‘I don’t see why you need to bring up my weight issues,’ wept Boris.
‘No, I’m just saying, what sort of wild animal did you imagine would attack you?’ asked Samantha.
‘A hungry one,’ said Boris. ‘They could put me in their larder and feed off me for months.’
‘We’re two kilometres from the centre of Dulsford,’ Derrick reminded him. ‘I don’t think there are any wild animals around here. Except perhaps a stray cat, some frogs and maybe some snakes.’
‘Snakes!’ shrieked Boris, leaping into the air and into Nanny Piggins’ arms, flattening her completely.
‘Why did you have to say snakes?’ asked Nanny Piggins in a small voice. (It is hard to talk loudly when there is a 700 kilogram bear sitting on your chest.)
‘Only the small non-venomous kind,’ said Derrick, trying and failing to be reassuring.
‘But they’re so slithery and slimy,’ wailed Boris.
‘No they’re not,’ said Michael. ‘They’re not slimy at all if you touch one.’
‘He wants me to touch a snake, Sarah, oh help me!’ shrieked Boris.
To be fair, it was pitch-black and they were in the middle of the woods and it is much easier to degenerate into a hysterical weeping fool when you are isolated from civilisation.
Nanny Piggins eventually got Boris to calm down by throwing him in the stream. You might wonder how a 40 kilogram pig managed to throw a 700 kilogram bear anywhere. The simple answer is – levers. As Isaac Newton observed, with a lever long enough you could move the earth. Nanny Piggins only needed a twenty-metre-long branch to flip Boris into an icy pool.
‘There will be no animal attack tonight because I will not allow it,’ declared Nanny Piggins.
‘What about pygmies or cannibals?’ worried Boris.
‘We’re right next to town,’ protested Derrick.
‘All right, what about really angry lost motorists looking for someone to give them directions?’ panicked Boris.
‘No-one and nothing will attack us tonight,’ promised Nanny Piggins, ‘because I will stay up to stand guard over you all.’
‘You would do that?’ asked Boris, beginning to weep again. ‘You’re the best big sister a bear could have.’
‘Do I need to throw you in the stream again?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘No, thank you,’ said Boris, snuggling down into his sleeping bag. One bath was enough for him for the day.
They all went to sleep again. This time they slept for several hours before they were again awoken by screaming.
‘Aaaggghh-aggh-aggh!’ screamed Samantha. ‘We’ve been kidnapped.’
The boys and Boris sat up and looked around. It appeared that Samantha was right. They had gone to sleep under the stars but they were now definitely shut inside a native hut.
The door burst open. Now everyone screamed, for there, silhouetted in the doorway, stood a native chieftainess, wearing a skirt made of long grass, a coconut bra and a wild headdress fashioned out of feathers, leaves and string.
‘Good morning,’ said the native chieftainess, and with a sigh of relief, they all realised it was only Nanny Piggins.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Samantha.
‘What are you wearing?’ asked Boris.
‘How did we get to be inside a native hut?’ asked Derrick.
‘Oh, the hut,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘While I was watching over you last night I had a lot of time to fill, so I thought I’d whip up a wattle and daub structure. I saw a Cambodian stilt house once on a South-East Asian cooking show, so I had a rough idea of the architecture required.’
‘We’re in a stilt house?’ asked Michael.
‘Yes, so when you go outside, be careful,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Otherwise you might fall two metres and break your leg.’
‘Why are you dressed like that?’ asked Samantha.
‘My Chanel twin-set got wet when I was spear-fishing in the river,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘By the way, there’s fresh trout for breakfast.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t like camping?’ said Derrick. ‘That it was degrading to the human soul?’
‘Just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean I’m not very good at it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘In fact, when you’re as very good at as many things as I am, statistically it is highly likely that you will be good at lots of things you don’t like.’
‘Wait a minute. You said there were fish for breakfast. Surely you mean chocolate-covered fish?’ asked Michael. ‘Or chocolate-stuffed fish. Or fish with chocolate sauce.’
‘No, just fish,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I have decided that we are not going back to the house. We are going to stay here in the woods and live off the land.’
‘But how?’ asked Boris. ‘There are no marshmallow trees, or caramel bushes, or lemon bonbon flowers; none of the essential foods we need to survive. And what about honey? Where am I going to get honey if I can’t go to a shop? Honey doesn’t just grow in the wild!’
‘Actually, it does,’ said Derrick. ‘You can find honey in beehives, which are often in old trees or just hanging from a branch.’
‘Now Derrick is going delirious with crazy talk too!’ exclaimed Boris.
‘We’ll be fine,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We’ll eat the berries and fish we find in the woods, wear clothes we make out of water reeds, and entertain ourselves by playing “Last of the Mohicans”.’
‘It sounds like fun to me,’ said Michael.
‘It does?’ asked Samantha sceptically.
‘How do we start?’ asked Michael.
‘First of all I’ve decided that I am going to declare the woods to be a new country – Chocolatasia,’ declared Nanny Piggins.
‘How is that going to work?’ asked Samantha.
‘We’re all going to be the kings and queens of Chocolatasia,’ explained Nanny Piggins.
‘That sounds very
democratic,’ approved Derrick.
‘And I shall be the Chief Queen,’ added Nanny Piggins. ‘Once we are our own country we won’t have to follow any rules or laws, we can just do what we like.’
‘And how will that be different to what we usually do?’ asked Derrick.
Nanny Piggins thought for a moment. ‘Well, instead of having chocolate nine times a day – before, during and after every meal – we can eat five meals a day, allowing us a much healthier fifteen servings of daily chocolate.’
‘I think I’m going to like living in Chocolatasia,’ said Michael.
And he was right. Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children had a wonderful time creating their own civilisation. First of all they spent a good two hours running around the woods playing ‘Last of the Mohicans’, which involved a lot of chasing each other with pointy sticks. Then they got hungry, so Nanny Piggins took their fish out to the main road to try to barter it for chocolate (they had tried eating the fish, but all agreed it was too disgustingly fishy for that. Fish needs to be thoroughly coated in breadcrumbs, cooking oil and tomato sauce to take away its essential fishy taste).
No-one on the main road wanted to eat fish either but Nanny Piggins found that threatening to hit people with fish if they did not go and fetch her chocolate worked just as well (she lent them Mr Green’s credit card to do it).
So they were soon all sitting around the camp fire having polished off a 20 kilogram crate of chocolate and cake, discussing their satisfying morning.
‘I think I’m going to like running a country,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve often thought I’d be good at it, but I always assumed I’d have to take over a pre-existing country to find out. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to start my own country before.’
‘But, Nanny Piggins, what are we going to do about other essential things?’ asked Samantha.
‘What sort of essential things?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘Well . . . school,’ said Samantha.
‘You want to go to school?’ asked Nanny Piggins, astounded.
‘I don’t so much like the going to school part of going to school, but I do like learning things,’ admitted Samantha.
‘I like the eucalyptus drops you can get in the school canteen,’ admitted Michael.
‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I can see that the confectionary they sell in the canteen is probably the best thing about going to school. If you really want a school, we can always have one here. I’ll even kidnap a teacher if that would help.’
‘But what about friends?’ asked Derrick. ‘At school we all had friends. It is going to be hard to make new friends if we are all running around the woods wearing clothes made out of water reeds.’
‘Any friend who is going to be funny about spending time with you when you’re wearing nothing but dried foliage is not a proper friend,’ declared Nanny Piggins.
‘But what about electricity?’ argued Samantha. ‘Aren’t you going to miss that? The cakes you have baked for us over the open fire have been delicious, but don’t you miss having an electric oven?’
‘Pish!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I can build a wood-fired oven. My cakes will be just as delicious as they have ever been. We are forming a new civilisation and that is final. I’m the Chief Queen and what I say goes!’
‘That’s a shame,’ said Michael, looking at his watch.
‘What do you mean, “that’s a shame”?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘You should be grateful to be a founding citizen of what is sure to be the Nanny Piggins Empire.’
‘Don’t you mean the Chocolatasia Empire?’ asked Samantha.
‘Same thing,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘I just meant it’s a shame because The Young and the Irritable starts in twenty minutes and we’re going to miss it,’ said Michael.
‘Right, that’s it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I declare Chocolatasia to be over. Pack up, we’re getting out of here!’
Obviously Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children could not go home because their house was still full of toxic gas. And as much as Nanny Piggins loved The Young and the Irritable, even she was not prepared to risk asphyxiation just to find out if Ridge would finally pop the question to Bethany. (He had been agonising for weeks over whether he should ask her if she really was the reincarnated spirit of his mother’s dog, Rosie.) So they were still camping, but they had found a much more satisfactory camp site than the woods.
‘It was a brilliant idea to rebuild our hut inside Hans’ bakery,’ said Derrick, during an ad break.
‘Thank you,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier. If you are going to rough it and live off the land, the land inside a baker’s shop is a much more sensible place to be than the woods.’
‘Plus he lent you his portable TV,’ added Michael.
‘Hans is not just a culinary artist,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘he is also a wonderful man.’
‘A man who had a realistic idea of how much cake he would sell if he allowed Nanny Piggins to live in his shop for six days,’ added Samantha.
‘Yes, I just gave him Mr Green’s credit card to keep,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘Your father really was very naughty abandoning us and leaving us to forage for food, so he only has himself to blame if we have Hans’ most expensive treat – chocolate fudge hot cake with extra chocolate, extra fudge and extra cake at every meal for the rest of the week.
Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children were sitting on the bench outside the supermarket. They had been given a ‘time-out’ by the supermarket manager. He did not want to ban them from the supermarket entirely, because Nanny Piggins spent so much on flour, eggs, butter and other cake-making ingredients. He could not afford to lose her as a customer. But she had become so hysterically overexcited by the discovery of a new brand of cappuccino-flavoured chocolate in the confectionary aisle that he’d had to intervene. He had sent her outside to sit on the bench for 17 minutes (a minute for every block of chocolate she had eaten) while she calmed down. Then, if she apologised for scaring the other customers, she would be allowed back in.
Nanny Piggins would have dearly loved to denounce the supermarket manager and swear that she would never come back to his establishment again, but she knew lying was wrong. And there was no way she would be able to stay away when there were still 23 blocks of cappuccino chocolate sitting on the supermarket shelf.
‘Hmmpf,’ said Nanny Piggins sulkily as she kicked her legs back and forth and crossed her arms tighter while thinking nasty thoughts about the manager.
‘Three minutes have gone already,’ said Samantha helpfully, ‘so only fourteen more minutes to go.’
‘If I scared the other customers, it’s his fault,’ grumbled Nanny Piggins.
‘It is?’ asked Derrick.
‘If he is going to have such dangerously delicious chocolate in his supermarket he should warn people, with a letterbox drop to everyone in the neighbourhood and a full-page advertisement in all the major newspapers,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Then he should put up protective barriers around the display in case there is a crush.’
‘To prevent people from getting hurt?’ asked Michael.
‘I was thinking to prevent the chocolate getting hurt,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but it could protect the people too. Now we have to sit out here and wait forever.’
‘We could play a game to pass the time,’ suggested Michael.
‘Like what?’ asked Nanny Piggins, unbending. She liked games.
‘I-spy,’ suggested Michael.
Nanny Piggins groaned. ‘I’d rather slip into a coma. I know that game. It has absolutely nothing to do with spies at all. It’s just a deceitful way to teach children spelling skills and dress it up as fun. I refuse to condone such a thing.’
The children did not know what to say next. And Boris was not in a position to speak at all (because his head was stuck under the bench in an attempt to hide. He did not like being yelled at, even when it was only someone as unimposing as a s
upermarket manager).
‘Twelve minutes to go,’ said Samantha, looking at her watch.
‘Why don’t we see if there is anything interesting on the community noticeboard?’ suggested Michael, pointing to the public bulletin board on the wall across from them.
‘I’m not allowed to get up from the bench,’ said Nanny Piggins petulantly.
‘I am,’ said Michael. (He was not in the aisle when Nanny Piggins caused her scene. He was too busy reading comics in the stationery aisle.) ‘I’ll read them aloud to you.’
This suggestion piqued Nanny Piggins’ interest. She liked the community noticeboard. She had once seen an advertisement for an aquarium, which had proved an excellent purchase. It housed her extensive cockroach collection comfortably. She liked her cockroaches to be happy and well rested, just in case Headmaster Pimplestock should annoy her and she had to drive down to the school and dump a couple of hundred of them into the glove box of his car.
‘All right,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That’s a good idea.’
Michael went over to the noticeboard and started reading from the bottom up (he was not a very tall boy).
‘Guinea pigs for sale,’ read Michael.
‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Guinea pigs can be useful. They are very good at impersonating rats. And if you’re patient you can train them to defuse bombs in confined spaces. But they do poo everywhere, which is a mark against them.’
‘Yoga lessons at the community centre,’ read Michael.
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t need to bend my head back behind my kneecaps to relax.’
‘Hey!’ protested Boris, pulling his head out from under the bench. ‘I’m teaching those yoga lessons.’
‘And I’m sure they’re very good,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘for people who do need to bend their heads behind their kneecaps to relax.’
‘Which is actually quite a lot of people, let me tell you,’ said Boris. ‘Modern life seems to do strange things to a human’s central nervous system.’
‘Here’s one!’ said Michael. ‘Open entry for the regional chess championship.’