Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion

Previously on Nanny Piggins . . .

If you have just picked up this book and are wondering – Who are these characters? What's been going on? How can a pig be a nanny? – do not be daunted.

All you need to know is that Nanny Piggins (the world's most glamorous flying pig) ran away from the circus and came to live with the Green family as their nanny. The children, Derrick, Samantha and Michael, fell in love with her instantly. Who could not love a nanny who thinks that the five major food groups are chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, more chocolate and cake? Then before long Nanny Piggins' adopted brother, Boris the dancing bear, came to live in their garden shed (unbeknown to Mr Green).

There are other recurring characters – a silly headmaster, a perfectly perfect rival nanny, thirteen identical twin sisters, a besotted School District Superintendent and a wicked Ringmaster – just to name a few. But trust me, you will pick all that up as you go along.

The only other person you need to know about is Mr Green. He is not happy about having a pig for a nanny, or having children generally. Secretly he would like nothing more than for Derrick, Samantha and Michael to disappear into thin air, perhaps as part of a conjuring trick. But he realises that is unlikely, although not impossible, because it is essentially what happened to their mother, Mrs Green, on one very unfortunate boating trip.

Mr Green did try to remarry in an effort to get rid of Nanny Piggins and palm his children off on someone else, but that proved disastrous (for further details see
Nanny Piggins and The Wicked Plan
). So as this book begins, Mr Green is cooking up new schemes to make himself childless.

Best wishes,
R. A. Spratt, the author

• Previously on Nanny Piggins . . .
  
• By the Same Author
  
• Title Page
  
• CHAPTER 1 Nanny Piggins and the Foreign Exchange Student
  
• CHAPTER 2 Nanny Piggins Joins Neighbourhood Watch
  
• CHAPTER 3 Nanny Piggins' B&B
  
• CHAPTER 4 Nanny Piggins Treads the Boards
  
• CHAPTER 5 Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion
  
• CHAPTER 6 Nanny Piggins Joins the Ski Team
  
• CHAPTER 7 Nanny Piggins: A Biography
  
• CHAPTER 8 Boris and the Debacle at the Ballet
  
• CHAPTER 9 Nanny Piggins and the Cake Stall
  
• CHAPTER 10 Nanny Piggins and the Ominous Sounds
  
• CHAPTER 11 Nanny Piggins and the Evil Boarding School
  
• Copyright Page
  

'Can anyone remember what the figurines looked like?' asked Nanny Piggins.

'All I can remember is that they were ugly,' said Boris.

Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children were in the living room looking at the shattered remnants of the late Grandma Green's figurine collection. The ten miniature statues had accidentally been smashed in a particularly athletic game of charades. (Nanny Piggins had set a vase of flowers on fire when acting out the book title
Bonfire of the Vanities
. Then had to leap to safety before her hair was caught up in the inferno.)

'I think one of the figurines was a woman with a dog,' said Michael.

'I'm pretty sure those green bits were a mermaid,' said Derrick.

'And one was a milkmaid with a cow . . . or a goat . . . but definitely something you milked,' added Samantha.

'I know what we can do,' said Nanny Piggins. 'Let's recombine all the pieces to make one giant figurine of a monkey!'

'Why a monkey?' asked Boris.

'Everyone likes monkeys,' said Nanny Piggins.

The others nodded at the truth of this statement.

'Which just goes to show,' continued Nanny Piggins, 'you can scratch yourself, slap your head and bite tourists, but if you do it with enough charm, people will still think you're adorable.'

So they set to work. Nanny Piggins was extremely good with superglue. When you smashed as many Ming vases as she had in her time you needed to be. They had just reached the point where all ten of their hands were needed to hold everything in place while the glue set when Mr Green walked into the room.

'Wah!' said Boris as he ducked under the table. Then 'Ow!' as he realised he had just ripped out a chunk of fur, because he had accidentally super-glued his paw to the figurine. Fortunately Mr Green did not notice the ten-foot-tall dancing bear hiding under the table because he was a very unobservant man. And the brain tends not to process information that is impossible to believe.

'Hello, children,' said Mr Green.

They all immediately knew something terrible was wrong because Mr Green usually never spoke to the children except to tell them to 'Go away' or 'Be quiet' or to 'Stop pestering me for pocket money'. Also, he was smiling, a skill he was very bad at. Mr Green's smiles were frightening. Like a baboon baring his teeth right before he poos on his hand and throws it at you.

'Hello,' said Nanny Piggins conversationally. 'We were just polishing your beloved figurine. What do you think?'

Mr Green leaned forward and peered at it. They all held their breaths as they waited to see if he would notice the difference between the ten original figurines and the one giant one they were now holding.

'It looks lovely,' said Mr Green.

They sighed with relief.

'But –' he continued.

They held their breaths again.

'Has it always been furry?' Mr Green asked, looking at the brown tuft now stuck to the maiden's neck.

'Oh yes,' said Nanny Piggins. 'Imbedded bear fur is the signature mark of a genuine antique Staffordshire flatback.'

'Really? Well, my mother had quite the eye,' said Mr Green proudly. (It is funny how people grow fond of the relatives who once terrified them after they are safely dead.)

'Don't let us keep you from your tax law work,' hinted Nanny Piggins as she politely tried to get rid of Mr Green. 'I know you must have something dreadfully important to do in your office. Paperclips to straighten and re-bend, or some such.'

This comment slightly unnerved Mr Green because that is exactly what he had spent four hours doing only that morning, and then billed the time to a rich old widow who was too short-sighted to check her invoice.

'Oh no, I came in here to make an announcement,' he said. 'You children are very lucky.'

The children groaned. They knew something terrible was coming if their father thought they were lucky.

'What have you done?' glowered Nanny Piggins, suspecting him of trying to sell them for medical experiments again. 'The hospital told you clearly. They only accept donated organs from dead people.'

'No, this is another idea, even better. I've arranged a wonderful educational opportunity for the three of you,' continued Mr Green. He really was beginning to look very smug.

'What sort of wonderful educational opportunity?' asked Nanny Piggins, bracing herself to launch, teeth first, at his leg.

'Well, you see, a fellow at work was telling me about his son, and how he sent him away as an exchange student,' said Mr Green.

'And how does that effect Derrick, Samantha and Michael?' asked Nanny Piggins suspiciously.

'I thought it sounded like such a good idea I've enrolled them in an exchange student program!' said Mr Green triumphantly, whipping the paperwork out of his pocket and waving it in their faces. 'It's all arranged. Next week, they'll be off to Nicaragua for six months.' Mr Green was positively glowing with happiness. The idea of six months without his own children pleased him immensely.

'But I don't want to go to Nicaragua!' protested Nanny Piggins. 'I've been there twice already and while the turtles are nice and gallopinto is delicious, the humid weather makes it very difficult to do anything with my hair.'

'
You
won't be going,' said Mr Green.

'But what will Nanny Piggins do while we're away?' worried Samantha.

'Find a new job, of course,' said Mr Green.

'Noooooo!' yelled Michael. He would have flung himself at his father in a rage but, like Boris, he had accidentally glued his hands to the figurine.

'I'm sure Miss Piggins will find work somewhere else,' said Mr Green. 'Perhaps –' he started to laugh here as though he had thought of something funny – 'perhaps she can get a job . . .' Again he actually chortled, '. . . in a bacon factory.'

The children gasped and Boris banged his head on the dining table as he flinched away in horror. There was no greater insult to a pig than to mention the word 'bacon'. Mr Green's idea of a joke had mortally offended Nanny Piggins. If it were not for the fact that she, like Michael and Boris, had too much superglue on her trotters and was now stuck to the figurine, Mr Green would have been in terrible trouble. As it was, she dragged the giant figurine three feet across the table as she lunged towards him.

Mr Green cowered away. 'It is all legitimate. Lots of parents do it. It's educational,' he protested, the way people always protest when they have done something very bad and are about to be punished for it.

'I suggest you leave the room now, Mr Green,' said Nanny Piggins, 'to allow the children and me time to control our emotions.'

Emotions of all varieties scared Mr Green so he did as he was told. He scuttled away and drove back to the office.

'What are we going to do?' wailed Samantha. She was not normally given to wailing, but the prospect of six months in Nicaragua can have that effect on a girl.

'Obviously we will have to thwart your father,' said Nanny Piggins. 'It really is exhausting putting him in his place all the time. I wonder if we got him a futon whether we could persuade him to sleep in his office and never come home?'

'Do you have a plan?' asked Michael hopefully. He would actually have quite liked to go to Nicaragua, because he was an adventurous boy and he was intrigued by turtles. But he did not want to be separated from Nanny Piggins. She was the only family the children had. If you did not count their father. And none of them did.

'I have the beginning of an idea,' admitted Nanny Piggins, as she thoughtfully rubbed her snout (she had to rub it on her arm because, of course, her hands were glued to the figurine).

'What do we have to do?' asked Derrick, desperate to take some sort of action.

'Well, for a start we have to re-smash this figurine,' said Nanny Piggins.

'To teach Father a lesson?' asked Samantha.

'That is an added benefit. But the main reason is because we're all stuck to it. And I've run out of nail polish remover so I've got nothing to dissolve the glue,' said Nanny Piggins.

So after smashing the figurine back into a thousand pieces, and leaving it there because Mr Green did not deserve to have it refixed, the children went off to school. Nanny Piggins assured them that she would soon solve the problem. Two weeks was a lot of time. She was sure to think of something.

The family was sitting around the breakfast table the next morning, which was not a pleasant experience for Mr Green. He kept getting hit in the head with slices of toast. Michael claimed they were slipping out of his hands when he buttered them, but Mr Green suspected that his youngest son may have been throwing them intentionally. Suddenly, there was a knock at the front door.

'Who could that be?' demanded Mr Green.

'I expect it is someone at the front door,' explained Nanny Piggins slowly and clearly. 'They probably want you to open the door and speak to them.'

'One of you children go,' said Mr Green dismissively.

'The children shouldn't answer the door to strangers,' chided Nanny Piggins.

'Then you answer it,' said Mr Green.

'Very well,' said Nanny Piggins, primping her hair as she got up from the table. 'But if it is some one important come to give you a medal for services to tax law, are you sure you want the door to be answered by a pig, even if she is the most glamorous pig in the entire world?'

'All right, I'll do it myself,' grumbled Mr Green. As far as he was concerned, the fewer people who knew he housed a pig the better. Little did he realise, however, that while a great number of people knew Nanny Piggins lived in the house, almost no-one knew (or cared) whether Mr Green even existed.

Nanny Piggins and the children followed him, curious to see who would pay Mr Green a visit at breakfast time.

Mr Green flung the front door open. 'What do you want?' he demanded rudely. Then he immediately had to look down because the person he was being rude to was two feet shorter than he was expecting.

'Bonjour, Monsieur Green,' said the diminutive boy standing on the doorstep. 'My name is François. I am eleven years old and from Belgium. And I am to be your exchange student. It is a great pleasure to be welcomed to your country!' François then reached up, grabbed Mr Green's head, pulled him down and kissed him once on each check.

Mr Green practically went into shock as François picked up his little suitcase and entered the house.

'Bonjour, I am François,' François said to Nanny Piggins and the Green children.

'Bonjour,' said Derrick, Samantha and Michael.

'Thank you for welcoming me into your home,' continued François with impeccable politeness and a lovely little bow. 'I look forward to immersing myself in your culture.'

'What does immerse yourself in culture mean?' Michael whispered to Derrick.

'I think he wants to dip himself in yoghurt,' Derrick guessed.

'Now just you wait here,' spluttered Mr Green. 'What is the meaning of this? Coming into my house with a suitcase and speaking French. It just isn't acceptable.'

'But you are Mr Green, yes?' asked François, looking just the right amount of confused and hurt to make even Mr Green feel slightly guilty for raising his voice.

'Well, yes,' admitted Mr Green, secretly wishing he was not.

'And you signed up to join the "Friends-Around-the-World-Exchange-Student-Program", did you not?' François asked.

'He did indeed,' said Nanny Piggins. 'We all saw the paperwork yesterday.'

'Yes, but that was to send my children
away
,' protested Mr Green.

'Of course,' said François. 'But before your children go, you must first host a student in your home. That is the way the system works. Didn't you read the fine print of the contract?'

Mr Green had not. Which was unusual because he was a lawyer and it was his job to write fine print into contracts. So he should know better than anyone how devious fine print can be. But when he was at the exchange student office he had been so euphoric at the idea of six months without his children he had been too giddy for reading. Instead he had been busily fantasising about closing up the children's bedrooms and saving money by disconnecting the electricity to all but one room in the house.