Nanny Piggins and the Runaway Lion (10 page)

So after the coach and the captain strapped the skis to Nanny Piggins' feet, which took a lot of gaffer tape because ski boots are not designed to fit trotters (an oversight the manufacturers really should remedy), Nanny Piggins stood atop the ski jump. She looked spectacular. She was wearing her flying pig costume from the circus. It was made of skin-tight yellow leather with black and red stripes down either side, and a helmet that had 'Nanny Piggins – Flying Pig' written on it in diamantés.

Even the callous coach started to feel bad as he watched the petite and glamorous pig standing on the precipice, the wind rippling through her perfectly coiffured hair.

'You don't have to do this, you know,' said the captain. 'You can just ask the Ski Jumping Association to send you home. I'm sure they won't fine you or anything.'

Nanny Piggins turned and looked the captain in the eye. 'If I don't jump, will I have to walk all the way back down those stairs?' she asked.

'Yes,' conceded the Captain.

'Piffle to that!' said Nanny Piggins. With which she turned to face the valley and stepped over the edge.

The children held their breaths. Not out of fear, but from sheer admiration. Because as soon as Nanny Piggins set off it was clear she knew exactly what she was doing. Their nanny gave herself over to gravity and hurtled down the slope, her body extended forward, leaning into the wind. By the time she shot off the end of the jump, she had transformed herself into the shape of a bullet. Her snout stretched forward so she cut through the air like a hot knife through butter. The ski jumpers and coaching staff stared in astounded awe.

'She's never going to land,' exclaimed the captain.

'That is the most beautiful ski jump I have ever seen,' muttered the coach.

But their admiration was soon interrupted by a more serious realisation.

'She's going to hit the ski lodge!' screamed Samantha.

And Samantha was right. Nanny Piggins' ski jump was so good that she was not going to land in the landing area. She was going to overshoot it entirely and hit the ski lodge behind.

'What are we going to do?' asked Derrick, totally at a loss because his nanny was not there to tell him.

'I can't look,' said Samantha, although she was so paralysed with fear she could not move the muscles to close her eyes.

'It's all right,' yelled Michael. 'I think she's aiming for it!'

And indeed Nanny Piggins was. If the ski jumpers had not seen it for themselves they would never have believed it. For Nanny Piggins gracefully touched down just in front of the ski lodge, slid across the verandah and into the downstairs bar. Everyone was silent for a moment as they waited to hear the inevitable crash. But there was none.

'Quick, we've got to see if she's all right,' said Derrick.

The children and the ski jumping team hastily ran down the stairs and through the snow to the lodge to check on Nanny Piggins. But they need not have worried. By the time they got inside they found Nanny Piggins dancing along the bar, drinking hot chocolate and singing alpine folk songs, much to the delight of the other patrons.

'You're alive!' said Samantha.

'Of course I'm alive,' said Nanny Piggins, 'although I was worried there for a moment. I thought I was going to miss the ski lodge, which would have been terrible because I was starving.'

And so, having witnessed her superior ability, the other ski jumpers immediately embraced Nanny Piggins as a fellow team member. They wanted to make her team captain but she refused, because captains had to give interviews to journalists, and she always found it hard not to bite journalists on the legs (they are such terrible liars). She did, however, find time to totally overhaul the sport of ski jumping.

For a start, she convinced the ski jumpers to follow her own training regimen, which was to sleep as late as possible, to eat everything you can and to do absolutely no weight training, fitness training or ski training at all.

'It is very, very important to be well rested,' explained Nanny Piggins. 'If you are going to win you will need all your energy. And if you are going to lose, you might as well look fabulous, which means no bags under your eyes.'

She also completely changed the team's diet. The first thing she did was sack the team's macrobiotic chef. It took some time to explain to her what a macrobiotic chef was, but as soon as she understood, she chased him around the kitchen seven times with his own soup ladle. Nanny Piggins did not usually believe in violence, but cruelty to food brought out her disciplinarian side. She instituted a strict, high-calorie diet for all the athletes and coaching staff (which made her instantly beloved). She insisted on them eating double the amount of chocolate and cake she would normally recommend because they had been on macrobiotics for so long she needed to undo the damage.

And so, when the team arrived at the World Championships a fortnight later, they were happier and fatter than they had ever been before. And in a sport that involves plummeting, a few extra kilos does not hurt.

The Russians and the Norwegians were their main competitors and when they saw Nanny Piggins arrive at the ski jump venue they laughed openly. If Nanny Piggins had not had such a lovely time drinking hot chocolate and singing alpine folk songs for the past fortnight, she might have thought about punishing them. As it was, she knew that being beaten by a flying pig would be punishment enough.

The morning of the big competition soon arrived.

'Are you nervous?' asked Derrick.

'Why would I feel nervous?' replied Nanny Piggins. 'Obviously I feel bad for the other competitors because they will shortly be made to look like fools on international television. But I don't think they'll attack me. They'll probably just cry a lot and never want to see snow again.'

Now, the way the Ski Jump World Championships works is that each athlete gets two jumps. The distances are measured and points are given for form and style by an international panel of judges. Then all those numbers are combined in a complicated way that nobody quite understands by someone in a back room with a calculator and that is how the winner is decided.

The competition started early in the morning, but it took quite a while to get through all the athletes because the ones who jumped well took forever celebrating by pumping their fists in the air and showing off in front of the crowd, and the ones who jumped badly had to be scraped off the bottom of the hillside by an ambulance crew. Nanny Piggins was scheduled to jump last because no-one had ever heard of her before and if she made a botch of it they did not want her to damage the ramp before everybody else had had their turn.

So by the time Nanny Piggins stepped out on to the top of the ski jump, the Norwegians were in the lead, with the Russians close behind. She was again wearing her bright yellow jumping suit (Nanny Piggins was excused from wearing the team colours because she undeniably looked fabulous in yellow).

In the dressing shed behind her Nanny Piggins could hear the Norwegian coach sniggering with the Russian coach. One of them even had the audacity to make an oinking noise. Nanny Piggins made a mental note to deal with them later. But she was not going to be distracted now, because the crisp alpine air smelled clean and pure, and the updraft was strong and welcoming. The mountain was practically calling to her, saying, 'jump, Nanny Piggins, jump'.

And so she did. Nanny Piggins stepped over the edge, crouched low while she built up momentum and then launched off the end of the jump like a rocket.

There were no cheers, no boos and definitely no oinking noises. The crowd of ten thousand people watched Nanny Piggins fly through the air in completely silent awe. That was until the people in the main stand at the bottom realised she was going to overshoot the landing area (again) and crash into them. At this point people started screaming and trying to get out of the way.

But they should have had more faith in the world's greatest flying pig. The people in the top row at the back just heard her say, 'Duck, please!' as she shot through where they had been sitting, missing the back of their seats by less than a centimetre.

She then flew another fifty metres before landing in the drive-through lane of a fast-food restaurant, a block down the street. Naturally she picked up two dozen Merry-Meals for herself, the children, Boris and the rest of the team, before walking back.

The crowd roared cheers of approval as she re-entered the stadium. Even the people who had been forced to evacuate their seats did not mind. They had a story they would be able to tell their grandchildren in years to come – the time they had nearly been hit in the head by the world's greatest ski-jumping pig.

The Russians and the Norwegians did not look so smug now. They were too busy reading the rule book, triple checking to see if you really could enter a female pig in the Ski Jump World Championships.

'You did it, Nanny Piggins,' yelled Derrick excitedly. 'You jumped further than anyone else ever has in the history of the ski jump.'

'Really?' said Nanny Piggins. 'I wondered why they built that stand so close. It makes you wonder why all these silly men go into ski jumping if they're so bad at it. Perhaps it's just because they like the skin-tight body suits?'

'Your first jump was so much further than anybody else, you only have to complete your second jump and you'll win,' said Michael excitedly. He'd brought along a calculator and worked that out himself.

The second round was held that afternoon. Nanny Piggins spent the interim signing autographs and eating chocolate to gird her energy.

All the other competitors did their jumps and they tried their best, but their hearts were not in it. As Nanny Piggins had predicted, many of them were already crying and planning to give the sport up, having seen their entire life's work trounced by a female pig.

The Norwegian and Russian coaches scowled at Nanny Piggins as she walked towards the top of the jump carrying her skis. This time she did stop to speak to them.

'Gentlemen, I know competitive sport brings out the worst in humans, but in the future I advise you not to engage in pigist behaviour. It is unseemly. And as a pig, it is wearisome having to constantly be putting silly men in their place.'

'We don't know what you're talking about,' protested the Russian coach.

'Then let me explain,' said Nanny Piggins menacingly. 'If I hear an "oink" out of either of you again, you'll soon be making a very different noise when I sink my teeth into your shins.'

With that Nanny Piggins strode out onto the ski jump.

'You can do it, Nanny Piggins,' encouraged Derrick.

'We're so proud of you,' called Samantha.

'Throw in a somersault,' suggested Michael.

'And see if you can land in the ice-cream shop this time,' called Boris. 'I fancy a scoop of tuttifrutti!'

Nanny Piggins gave her entourage the thumbs up, then turned to look down the slope. She saw the crowd (now fifteen-thousand strong, because people had jumped in their cars and driven over to see the flying pig), and found the spot she was aiming for – the back row of the stand, now vacated in anticipation. Then she launched herself into the jump.