by R. A. Spratt
The speculation soon ended when Nanny Piggins shoved the joystick and they lurched downward, plummeting to the ground. The children clutched their seats, although goodness knows why. Being attached to their seats would not save them if they ploughed into the ground at 500 kilometres per hour.
‘Shouldn’t you be bringing the plane into land at a more gentle angle?’ yelled Samantha, wanting to be supportive, but not wanting to die.
‘That’s the way some pilots do it, I suppose,’ yelled back Nanny Piggins, ‘but when you want to get where you’re going quickly, why faff about?’
The plane continued to spiral noseward to the ground until, at the last moment, Nanny Piggins yanked up the joystick, the plane pulled up horizontally and touched down gently on the island’s runway.
‘There, you see,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Perfect landing. I don’t know why people make such a fuss of airline pilots. Although I suppose it’s impressive that they can stomach all that airline food.’
‘Where are we?’ asked Derrick.
‘You haven’t brought us anywhere there are cannibals, have you?’ asked Boris. (Boris had borrowed a book from the library about Vanuatu, but he hadn’t realised it was a history book, not a guide book.)
‘Boris, you’re a bear,’ said Samantha kindly. ‘Even if there were still cannibals, they wouldn’t eat you.’
‘Why not?’ asked Boris, a tear beginning to well in his eye. ‘Don’t you think they’d like me?’
‘They wouldn’t dare eat such a good ballet dancer,’ said Derrick, helping his sister out of her social faux pas.
‘How lovely,’ said Boris, beginning to smile again. ‘It’s nice to know that even bloodthirsty man-eaters have an appreciation for the arts.’
‘Children, I have brought you here today for the most educational experience of your lives,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘I thought you said that learning to bake a chocolate cake was the most educational experience of our lives,’ said Derrick.
‘Then you said, learning how to break into the Slimbridge Cake Factory when you run out of cake ingredients was the most educational experience of our lives,’ said Samantha.
‘And then you said, learning how to plead with the Police Sergeant to let us off with a warning after we’d broken into the cake factory was the most educational experience of our lives,’ added Michael.
‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘That was an extremely educational field trip I took you on last week. But what we are doing today is even better.’
‘Are there any more sick bags?’ asked Samantha. ‘I think I’m going to need one in a second.’
‘Today you’re all going to try bungy jumping!’ announced Nanny Piggins. ‘And not with modern elastic cords, but with genuine authentic jungle vines.’
Samantha filled her sick bag (admittedly only partly from horror – she was still recovering from the considerable turbulence of the journey).
‘What?’ asked Derrick. He actually had about ten thousand questions he would like to have asked, but this one word seemed to sum them all up nicely.
‘We’re on Pentecost Island,’ said Nanny Piggins happily, ‘and we’ve arrived just in time for the annual land-diving festival, where villagers jump off a ten-storey platform with vines tied around their feet because they believe it will ensure a good yam harvest. We’re at the birth place of bungy jumping. Aren’t you excited?!’
Now Michael and Derrick used Samantha’s sick bag.
After considerable persuading (including some sobbing), Samantha managed to get herself excused on the grounds that she was a girl and that only men did land-diving. Then Boris argued for his own exclusion on the grounds that he was a fully grown Kodiak bear who weighed 700 kilograms and he did not want to damage any of the villagers’ nice vines. (It was a rare thing indeed for Boris to admit to his true weight, but necessity overcame vanity on this occasion.) Derrick asked to be excused on the grounds that he really, really did not want to die, and Michael got out of it by forging himself an absence note while the others were all talking.
‘All right,’ said Nanny Piggins, shaking her head sadly, ‘if you want me to have all the fun and take all the limelight, I’ll be the only one to jump off a ten-storey temporary structure and fling myself headfirst at the ground.’
‘We don’t mind,’ the children assured her.
‘Enjoy your moment in the sun,’ said Boris encouragingly.
When they reached the village on the southern edge of the island, the locals did not immediately allow Nanny Piggins to climb up the scaffolding and have a go, as she had expected. Several of them yelled at her and called her a ‘silly tourist’ and even more bravely ‘a silly pig’, until Nanny Piggins insisted on being taken to their leader (if she was going to start stomping on feet she wanted to start at the top). As soon as she met the Village Chief, things changed rapidly.
The children followed their nanny into the Chief’s hut, fully expecting to see her being patronised by an elderly man who did not want a tourist to make international news by jumping headfirst off his scaffolding and bashing her brains on the sand below. But as soon as Nanny Piggins entered the hut the most amazing thing happened. The Chief leapt to his feet and rushed over.
‘Are my eyes deceiving me?!’ exclaimed the Chief. ‘Is this a trick?! It can’t be you.’
‘I assure you I am me and have been all my life,’ said Nanny Piggins proudly.
‘I’m your biggest fan!’ exclaimed the Chief.
‘Really?’ asked Derrick. They knew their nanny was famous in nannying, cake-baking and circus circles, but they did not realise her fame had stretched to tiny Pacific islands.
‘You are Sarah Matahari Lorelai Piggins – the World’s Greatest Flying Pig!’ announced the Chief. ‘Can I please have your autograph?!’
‘Of course,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I had no idea that the chiefs of Vanuatu were so intelligent and well educated. It makes me ashamed I haven’t been here before.’
‘I saw you perform years ago when I went to an inter-chief governance conference in Fiji,’ said the Chief. ‘Your circus was doing a show and I saw you get blasted out of a cannon. You flew so far you ripped a hole in the tent and landed in a coconut tree on the next island.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I remember that. I only did it because there were three more performances to do that night and I heard there was a woman on the next island who had made a delicious vanilla slice.’
‘So have you come here to watch our land-diving?’ asked the Chief.
‘Watch? Ha!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve come to give it a go.’
‘Wonderful!’ said the Chief, clapping his hands together in delight. ‘That would be such an honour. I’m sure the World’s Greatest Flying Pig will also be the World’s Greatest Falling Pig.’
‘Thank you,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I like this man. He’s very charming.’
‘Come and see our scaffold,’ said the Chief. ‘We’ve built our tallest one ever this year. It’s 30 metres high.’
Unfortunately the mutual admiration drew to a close when Nanny Piggins stood next to the well in the central clearing and had a look at the Chief’s scaffold.
‘It is a very nice scaffold,’ said Nanny Piggins politely.
‘It’s certainly very high,’ said Derrick. It looked huge to him. Three times as high as the 10 metre diving board at their local pool and he would never dream of jumping off that either.
‘But I think you’ll find,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘that your platform is only 27.2 metres high.’
‘What?!’ exclaimed the Chief.
‘I’m sorry to break it to you,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but I have a very good sense for these things. When you have fallen out of the sky as often as I have, you get a very precise gauge for heights.’
‘Oh no,’ said the Chief. ‘That’s terrible.’
‘It’s not so bad,’ said Nanny Piggins encouragingly. ‘It’s still very high. I’m really going
to enjoy jumping off it.’
‘But you don’t understand,’ said the Chief. ‘The tower has to be 30 metres high – the higher the tower, the better the yam crop. That’s what my people believe. That’s the whole reason we do land-diving.’
‘I thought you did it because it was fun,’ said Derrick.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ said the Chief. ‘There’s nothing fun about plummeting to the ground at terminal velocity before having your legs half ripped out of their sockets. We only do it because we’re hungry and we want to make sure we have lots of food to see us through the winter.’
‘And 27.2 metres won’t cut it?’ asked Boris.
‘Our tower was 27 metres tall last year,’ said the Chief sadly. ‘We had plenty of yams at first, but the last couple of months of winter we were yamless. All we had to live off was the fish we caught in the sea.’
‘Ugh,’ shuddered Nanny Piggins. ‘What a dreadful story – having to live off fish when you could be eating deliciously sweet baked yams. That is the saddest thing I have ever heard.’
‘Sadder than that story you saw on the news about the chocolate factory in Bangladesh burning down?’ asked Michael.
Nanny Piggins sobbed. ‘All right, nothing is sadder than that. But this fish story is pretty terrible too.’
‘The tragedy is that we had plenty of marshmallows but no-one knew any good marshmallow and fish recipes,’ said the Chief.
‘Stop,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Don’t go on, you’re going to break my heart. I cannot allow another tragedy to unfold. Don’t worry, I will save your village.’
‘What are you going to do?’ asked Derrick. ‘Build an extension on their tower?’
‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I have a much better idea about how I can do the highest land-dive ever!’
Nanny Piggins borrowed a hand axe from the Chief, told the children to enjoy themselves on the beach and set to work. When she had not returned by dinnertime the children were concerned. It was not like their nanny to miss meals. But they knew from experience that she usually sewed chocolate bars into the hem of her dresses, so she was unlikely to starve. They were awoken the next morning by the sound of Nanny Piggins standing in the middle of the village calling, ‘Come on, sleepyheads, time to wake up and be amazed.’
The children stumbled out to see their nanny standing next to a new scaffolding, exactly the same height as the one made by the villagers.
‘Wow!’ said Michael.
‘That’s an exact replica of the other scaffold,’ said Derrick.
‘I know,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I have a photographic memory for tall structures. The first time I went to Paris I only had to see the Eiffel Tower once and I was able to make an exact replica out of iceblock sticks.’
‘Don’t you mean a scale replica?’ asked Samantha.
‘No, it was life-size,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It took a lot of sticks but I really like eating iceblocks.’
‘But why make an exact replica of the existing scaffold?’ asked the Chief. ‘If the first one wasn’t tall enough, what is the advantage of having two?’
‘You have to think laterally,’ said Nanny Piggins mysteriously.
‘What does “thinking laterally” mean?’ asked Boris.
‘Don’t stop and try to figure it out,’ advised Michael. ‘You’ll just miss the next confusing thing she says.’
‘To ensure a good yam harvest, the key is not the height of the scaffold, it is the depth of the drop, correct?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
‘That’s right,’ agreed the Chief.
‘And what goes down must first go up,’ continued Nanny Piggins. ‘So instead of jumping off the scaffold I’m going to use the scaffold to fire myself up into the sky!’
‘How?’ asked Derrick. ‘You didn’t bring a cannon with you, did you?’
‘No, they never let you take one on the plane in your hand luggage,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘no matter how much you yell at them.’
‘Then how are you going to fire yourself into the sky?’ asked Michael.
‘By using the two scaffolds as a giant slingshot,’ announced Nanny Piggins. ‘You’ll see I’ve rigged the bungy vines between the two towers.’
‘That’s crazy!’ said the Chief, ‘and I know crazy, I’m Chief of the bungy people.’
‘Pish!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s a mere trifle to a trained circus pig such as myself.’
‘I don’t think I can let you do this,’ said the Chief. ‘It sounds incredibly dangerous.’
Nanny Piggins laughed. ‘Chief, I hold you in the highest regard. Any man who is prepared to plummet to the ground in the name of food is a hero to me. But in this matter there is no “let” about it. There’s no way you can stop me slingshotting myself.’
‘She’s right,’ said Derrick.
‘It’s impossible to stop Nanny Piggins once she sets her mind to something,’ agreed Michael.
‘Unless you have a very large amount of chocolate,’ said Boris. ‘Then you might be able to delay her for a while.’
‘I don’t,’ admitted the Chief sadly.
So a short time later, Derrick, Samantha and Michael were watching their nanny as she climbed the scaffold.
‘Of all the crazy death-defying things Nanny Piggins has ever done, I think this is the craziest and most death-defying,’ said Michael.
‘Yes,’ agreed Derrick. ‘It’s even crazier and more dangerous than the time she tried to eat the ice-cream from a moving ice-cream van.’
‘Or tried to eat the cake out of the oven without turning the oven off first,’ added Samantha.
‘Or tried to leap onto the back of a moving sugar truck when she saw it passing under a bridge,’ added Michael.
Nanny Piggins was now hanging upside down, her legs wrapped around the vine as she made her way, hand over hand, out to the middle.
‘It’s not too late to change your mind!’ Samantha yelled up to her.
‘Never!’ declared Nanny Piggins (her voice sounding faint because of the great distance). ‘I have to do this. Not for me. But for the yams!’ Nanny Piggins let her legs hang down. ‘Boris, grab hold of my ankles!’
‘How?’ asked Boris as he looked up at Nanny Piggins dangling fifteen metres above his head.
‘Jump,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘I can’t jump that high,’ protested Boris.
‘There’s a honey sandwich tucked in my sock,’ called Nanny Piggins.
Boris launched himself upwards, grabbed Nanny Piggins’ ankle, found the sandwich and ate it. Now he was holding her ankle, his weight had dragged her down to just six metres off the ground.
‘Chief, I don’t suppose your men could lend a hand?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
After all the able-bodied men and a few of the heavier women were hanging off Boris’ legs, they just managed to pull Nanny Piggins down far enough so she was brushing the sandy ground.
‘I think we’re ready to attempt a launch,’ announced Nanny Piggins. ‘On the count of three I want you all to let go. And if you’re directly underneath Boris, make sure you let go and run. Don’t let my brother fall on top of you. Margot Fonteyn did once and she never danced the same again.’
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ said Boris defensively. ‘She was seventy-two at the time. Her bones were brittle.’
‘Let’s do this,’ began Nanny Piggins. ‘One . . . two . . . three – GO!!!’
Boris and the villagers let go, all collapsing in a heap on the ground, and Nanny Piggins was launched. The vine whipped a hundred metres in the air and at its peak Nanny Piggins released, continuing to soar upwards.
‘Wow!’ said Samantha. Even a worrywart can appreciate true poetry in motion.
‘That pig can fly!’ marvelled the Chief.
‘She must be 200 metres in the air and climbing,’ said Boris.
‘We are going to have so many yams,’ said the Chief.
‘Oh dear,’ said Derrick. ‘I’ve just realised the flaw in Nanny Piggins’ p
lan!’
‘What flaw?’ asked Samantha.
‘She let go of the vines, so there’s nothing to stop her hitting the ground!’ said Derrick.
‘Oh no,’ said the Chief. ‘The World’s Greatest Flying Pig is going to meet her end right here in my village. I’m going to be the laughing stock of the next inter-chief conference.’
‘Ha!’ scoffed Boris, surprising everyone because he was usually busy weeping when his sister engaged in one of her near-death experiences. ‘You underestimate my sister. You don’t get to be the World’s Greatest Flying Pig without knowing a thing or two about landing.’
‘Here she comes,’ said Michael, as he watched her flight peak at 600 metres before starting to drop. ‘She’s falling.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Samantha. ‘It doesn’t matter how much she knows about landing. She has shot directly upwards, so she has to fall directly down. We’re too far from the sea, the water won’t break her fall.’
‘Besides,’ said the Chief, ‘falling over water is cheating. It only helps the yams if you fall over land – that’s why they call it land-diving.’
‘Nanny Piggins knows what she’s doing,’ said Boris.
And he was proved correct. His sister did plummet to the ground at a frightening speed but she did not hit the ground, she kept falling – precisely into the one-metre-wide well in the middle of the village.
WHOOMPH!
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Samantha. ‘How did she manage to hit the well?’
‘And why wasn’t there a splash?’ wondered Derrick.
They all rushed over to see if Nanny Piggins was alive.
‘Are you all right in there?’ Michael called down.
‘Absolutely fine,’ called Nanny Piggins. ‘I filled the well with marshmallows last night. They made for a lovely soft landing, mmm-mm – delicious too!’
Everyone cheered.
‘I told you Nanny Piggins knew what she was doing,’ said Boris proudly.
‘But does it help the yams?’ asked Derrick. ‘She did land on marshmallows.’
The Chief considered this. ‘Yes, but the marshmallows were on land, so I think it counts. Plus the well is 15 metres deep, so she fell 615 metres, which means we are going to have the biggest yam crop ever!’