Nanny Piggins and the Pursuit of Justice (18 page)

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 to 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.’

‘Here’s another one,’ said Samantha.
‘Dear Aunt Alice, I’ve got a white chocolate stain on my white blouse. I can’t see it, but I know it is there. How do I get it out? Yours Hygienically, Nanny Anastasia
.
’

‘You don’t suppose that’s from Nanny Anne, do you?’ wondered Michael.

‘Who else would want to get a chocolate stain
out
of their clothes?’ reasoned Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m forever trying to put chocolate stains in, just so I have a lovely snack later. Take this down, Derrick:
‘Dear Nanny Anne, for I know that is your real name. If you want to get out a white chocolate stain but can’t see it, simply put a milk chocolate stain right next to it, then suck on the whole area. When the milk chocolate is gone, so is the white chocolate.’

‘There’s one here from the Retired Army Colonel who lives around the corner,’ said Michael. ‘He writes,
Dear Aunt Alice, I’m desperately in love with the world’s most glamorous flying pig. How can I convince her to marry me
?’

‘Oh dear,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘This is an awkward situation. Derrick, type this up:
Dear Retired Army Colonel, Some things, like the aurora borealis or volcanic eruptions, are best admired from afar. Why not try dating someone your own age and species
?’

And so Nanny Piggins ploughed her way through the mail bag solving problems. When they finished the last letter they were quite sad.

‘Well that was fun,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I always knew humans had terrible problems – you can tell from the ridiculous way they dress – but
I never realised they were so clueless as to how to solve them.’

‘You’ve written pages and pages of material,’ said Derrick. ‘Now you just have to decide which ones you want published in the newspaper.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Obviously I want all of them published.’

‘But that’s not the way it works,’ said Samantha. ‘The advice column only ever prints five or six letters. You’ve answered nearly a hundred letters here today. If you printed them all it would take up the whole newspaper.’

‘And so it should,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘This stuff is much more interesting than that “world news” or “stock market analysis”.’

‘I don’t think the editor will see it that way,’ said Michael.

Nanny Piggins rolled her eyes. ‘Am I going to have to go down to his office and berate him again? This is really getting wearisome. Come on, if we get the two o’clock bus we’ll have an hour or two to spend in the lolly shop first.’

After much yelling and some foot stomping, Nanny Piggins and the editor reached a compromise. While he would not give over his whole newspaper to Nanny Piggins’ advice column, he did agree
to increase the space he devoted to it tenfold, giving her a double-page spread. (Because after Michael showed him some of her advice, he could not deny that it was much more exciting than anything else in the paper, including the world news, celebrity marriages and stories about baked bean factories exploding from gas leaks.)

The new advice column was an immediate success. Most advice columnists use moderation and carefully toned advice so as not to distress or upset the recipient. Nanny Piggins had no such qualms. She had no money so she did not care if she was sued. And she was a former flying pig, so death threats did not frighten her (when you’ve been blasted by a cannon, not much scares you). As a result, her column was a gripping read.

The following week a mailman drove up with a truck and unloaded three tonnes of mail all over their front yard.

‘How wonderful,’ said Nanny Piggins delightedly. ‘I told you the humans in this town were deeply troubled. I’m glad they’ve found time to write to me about it.’

So once again Nanny Piggins set to work solving problems. By the end of the third week on the job, you could see the effect of her work about town.
People were smiling more. Single men had found single women and were holding hands in the street. The headmaster had not left his office in a fortnight and the school was running much more smoothly. And Hans’ bakery was doing a roaring trade, since Nanny Piggins was telling so many people they could solve their problems if they just ate more cake. The Lord Mayor himself had called to thank Nanny Piggins. He had been trying to lose weight for twenty years, and now he’d lost ten kilos, all because his toenail clippings had triggered such a dramatic change in his wife’s cooking.

Everything was going very well until one day when Nanny Piggins and the children stepped out the front door and suddenly they were attacked, scooped up in a giant sack, and dumped in the back of a truck.

‘What’s going on?’ shrieked Samantha.

‘Don’t panic,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We’re just being kidnapped.’

‘Kidnapped?!’ exclaimed Derrick.

‘Yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s probably the Ringmaster, wanting me to come down to the circus and solve all his problems. Stuffing people in sacks is just his way of saying hello.’

‘But what if we’re not being kidnapped by one of
your ex-work colleagues,’ panicked Samantha, ‘and we’re being kidnapped by a sociopathic lunatic.’

‘I shouldn’t think it will make much difference,’ said Nanny Piggins.

Twenty minutes later Nanny Piggins and the children found themselves tied to chairs in a dark basement and confronted by their kidnapper. When she stepped into a shaft of light, they were shocked to see who it was.

‘It’s Miss Britches!’ exclaimed Derrick.

‘The Truancy Officer!’ exclaimed Samantha.

‘Ah yes, another one of my arch-nemeses,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve got quite a few these days.’

‘Silence!’ yelled Miss Britches.

‘Oooh, here we go, it’s starting,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘If you’re going to start berating us, could we please have a slice of cake first. It’s just that I’m feeling a bit peckish.’

‘There will be no cake!’ declared Miss Britches.

‘She’s going to torture us!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘That’s not very nice. What did I do? Turn up at a function wearing the same dress as you and make you pale in comparison? Or did I make you a cake so delicious you have never been able to enjoy another slice of cake since? I’ve ruined so many lives that way.’

‘You ruined my life with your terrible advice!’ declared Miss Britches.

‘Hang about,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That can’t be right. I only give brilliant advice, perfectly crafted to improve the life of the troubled recipient every time.’

‘Oh yes, you help
them
,’ said Miss Britches, ‘but have you ever thought how that advice affects the people around them?’

Nanny Piggins paused and considered this for a moment. ‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t,’ she admitted. ‘I just assumed that making people’s lives better would benefit the rest of society.’

‘Well, it hasn’t benefitted me!’ cried Miss Britches.

‘Okay,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘First of all, how about we start using our inside voices? Remember, I’m not a human, I’m a pig, so my hearing is twenty times better than yours, which means there is absolutely no reason to yell – unless I’m eating cake and you need to make yourself heard above my moans of delight.’

‘All right,’ agreed Miss Britches petulantly.

‘And second,’ continued Nanny Piggins, ‘why don’t you explain exactly what I’ve done. All this intrigue is very thrilling. But it is also very time consuming – time that could be much better spent eating cake.’

Miss Britches took a deep breath and started speaking at a normal volume. ‘My boyfriend wrote to you,’ she began to explain.

‘He’s not the one I told to take up trainspotting, is he?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Because I can understand why you would find that upsetting.’

‘No. You told my boyfriend to dump me!’ said Miss Britches.

‘Oh,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Why did I do that?’

‘You said that I was clearly a narcissistic maniac with anger management problems,’ accused Miss Britches.

‘You got that bit right,’ muttered Michael.

‘Hey!’ yelled Miss Britches.

‘All right, calm down,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But surely you’re better off without some weak-willed boyfriend who takes advice from a newspaper column. He’s clearly a twit. If you like I can write him another letter and get him to take you back.’

‘But that’s not all,’ said Miss Britches. ‘My boss at social services wrote to you too.’

‘I don’t like the way this is going,’ said Derrick.

‘What did I tell him?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘To fire me,’ yelled Miss Britches. ‘You said my terrible temper was scaring my co-workers.’

‘Is that all?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Well I’m sure we can find you another job.’

‘It is not all!’ cried Miss Britches. ‘You also told the man at my local bakery to cut me off, saying that such an angry customer did not deserve cake; you told my dry-cleaner to join the army; you told my landlord to evict me and my next door neighbour to climb over the fence and steal my clothes pegs.’