The Nanny Piggins Guide to Conquering Christmas (12 page)

‘It’s five minutes to ten,’ said Samantha. ‘Your sisters should be here any moment. That’ll perk things up.’

Nanny Piggins checked her watch. ‘If we all survive the next five minutes.’

The doorbell rang.

‘Who could that be?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘It must be your sisters,’ said Derrick.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Pigginses don’t arrive early. We devote every available minute of preparation time to ensuring that we look fabulous. Then we prefer to arrive a little bit late so that everyone is waiting in breathless anticipation.’

The doorbell rang again.

‘Come along,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Let’s see who it is. It’s not like this lot are going to do anything interesting while we’re not looking.’

When Nanny Piggins swung open the door she was immediately shocked and appalled, for there on the doorstep was her least favourite sibling (which was really saying something because most of her sisters were congenitally evil) . . . her brother.

‘Bramwell Piggins!’ said Nanny Piggins. (She had a way of saying her brother’s name that made it sound like the very rudest swear word.) ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘I heard you were having a family gathering,’ said Bramwell buoyantly, ‘so I thought I’d pop by and regale my delightful sisters with anecdotes about my latest exploits.’

‘You did no such thing,’ accused Nanny Piggins. ‘You came along because you knew that at any function I was hosting there would be impossibly delicious cake.’

‘There will? How lovely!’ said Bramwell. ‘Where’s the buffet table?’ he asked as he tried to edge his way around Nanny Piggins. But the fact that her brother had a slight weight problem (which is the polite way of saying he had an enormous weight problem) and was as wide as he was tall, was not going to deter Nanny Piggins from blocking his entry. She was a diminutive pig, at only 4 feet tall and only weighing 40 kilograms, but as she and Bramwell both knew full well, she could soon incapacitate him with a brutal noogie, wedgie, wet willie or any of the other forms of violence that are allowable in the eyes of the law between brothers and sisters.

‘You might as well let him in,’ said Derrick. (It was Christmas and therefore the time of being charitable.) ‘At least he’ll give the Greens something to talk about, or rather complain about.’

‘Yes, and I know what the topic of conversation will be,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Your Great Aunt Hilda will take one look at him and start talking about bacon sandwiches. She really is so predictable.’

‘Are we spit roasting pork for lunch?!’ exclaimed Great Aunt Hilda as Bramwell entered the room.

‘I have to give her credit,’ said Nanny Piggins begrudgingly. ‘I didn’t expect her to come up with new material.’

‘Madam, it is a delight to meet you,’ lied Bramwell, as he leaned forward to kiss Great Aunt Hilda’s hand. Not that he really wanted to kiss it. He used it as an opportunity to eat the slice of Christmas cake she had forgotten she was holding.

‘Piggins,’ said Mr Green. ‘What’s this pig doing here?’

Much as Nanny Piggins did not want her brother in her house either, she did not like being addressed as ‘Piggins’. After all, she was a lady, not a private schoolboy. And while it is extremely common for brothers and sisters to not like each other, the one thing that will always unite them is criticism from an outsider.

‘It is my house,’ declared Nanny Piggins. ‘I have every right to invite my brother to a holiday gathering.’

‘It is not your house, it is mine,’ spluttered Mr Green. ‘The deed is in my name.’

‘A slight technicality,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I think if you ask anyone on the street whose house this is, it is universally referred to as “Nanny Piggins’ place”.’

‘This is a family gathering – for
my
family,’ declared Mr Green.

‘But I’m the nanny,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That makes me part of your family. Haven’t you read any popular literature? Nannies and long-haired dogs are always considered to be so beloved that they are family members.’

‘Pish!’ said Mr Green, failing to think of a reasoned argument.

‘There,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘that’s my catchphrase. You’ve only picked it up because we’ve been living together for so long.’

‘What was that?’ asked Great Aunt Hilda, turning her hearing aid up. (Usually she left it turned off because she was so miserly she liked to conserve the batteries.)

‘Apparently Lysander has been living with a pig for years,’ said Uncle Waldo.

‘Doesn’t surprise me,’ said Great Aunt Hilda. ‘Who else would have him? Only decent woman he ever knew was his wife and he pushed her over the side of a boat.’

‘I did not push my wife over the side of a boat,’ said Mr Green. ‘She mysteriously went missing.’

‘That’s what they all say,’ said Great Aunt Hilda.

Fortunately the unpleasant conversation among the Greens was brought to an end by a window smashing as a smoke bomb was thrown into the room.

‘What’s going on?’ spluttered Samantha.

‘Aha!’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘I think my sisters have arrived.’

She was immediately proved correct by Wendy swinging through the broken window on an abseiling line and landing, cat-like, among the shards of broken glass.

‘Where’s my fudge?’ demanded Wendy.

‘Where are my other 12 sisters?’ demanded Nanny Piggins.

‘I’ve locked them in a minibus out the front,’ declared Wendy. ‘Show me the fudge and I’ll show you our sisters.’

‘Not another pig,’ wailed Mr Green as the smoke began to clear and he could see who Nanny Piggins was talking to.

‘No,’ agreed Nanny Piggins, ‘another 13 pigs. This is about to be the first gathering of the Piggins sisters since we shared a weaning shed all those years ago.’

‘How many years ago exactly?’ asked Derrick. He knew it was rude to ask but he couldn’t help but be curious.

‘Derrick!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You should never ask a lady her age! You certainly shouldn’t ask fourteen identically aged women their age, especially when many of them have advanced training in martial arts.’

‘Enough of the fiddle-faddle,’ snapped Wendy Piggins. (She wasn’t the only Piggins who made up words.) ‘Where’s the fudge?’

‘I hid it in an ingenious hiding place,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘To prevent fudgenappers?’ asked Wendy.

‘No, so I’d forget where I put it and not eat it myself,’ admitted Nanny Piggins.

‘So where did you hide it?’ asked Derrick.

‘That’s a good question,’ said Nanny Piggins. She rubbed her snout as she tried to remember. ‘The problem is I’m so good at coming up with ingenious hiding places, I sometimes accidentally outwit even myself.’

‘Imagine you were a box of fudge,’ suggested Michael. ‘Where would you hide yourself?’

‘That’s it!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘I gaffer-taped the fudge to the underside of the trapdoor down in the cellar.’

‘I think you’ll find it’s not there,’ said Great Aunt Hilda.

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘Is someone checking that this woman regularly takes her medication?’

‘When I arrive at Lysander’s house the first thing I always do is search every nook and cranny for snacks,’ said Aunt Hilda, ‘because I know you can’t rely on him to provide decent refreshments.’

‘You know, children, this is the first one of your relatives whom I actually like,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I like the cut of your jib, Great Aunt Hilda. Are you sure you’re really a Green? You could have been adopted. Perhaps you are a distant relative of a Piggins?’

At this moment the conversation was interrupted by a cabbage smashing in through the only unbroken window in the room.

‘Who on earth would throw a cabbage through my window?’ wailed Mr Green.

‘Oh dear,’ said Nanny Piggins and Wendy Piggins in unison. ‘Katerina Piggins!’

‘She’s the evil vegetable lover,’ Michael explained to the rest of the Green family.

‘The others must have escaped the minibus,’ said Wendy.

‘Brace yourself,’ Nanny Piggins warned the Greens. ‘You are about to meet my entire family.’

What followed was a spectacular Christmas function. A lot of food was eaten. Fortunately Hans the baker was a Buddhist, so he was quite happy to work on Boxing Day, and he was able to deliver a truckload of baked goods to appease the gathering of Pigginses. Mr Green tried to calm the guests by delivering his traditional Boxing Day tax lecture featuring transparencies of all his favourite deductions from throughout the year. But Deidre, being an evil inventor, took the overhead projector out into the garden, amplified its power and used it to toast marshmallows instead. Then Nanny Piggins’ Boxing Day dream came true when all the Pigginses and the Greens got into a massive fist fight in the garden.

The Pigginses of course enjoyed this enormously. Wrestling in the rose bushes is much more fun than traditional Boxing Day activities like playing board games or watching old movies. But even the Greens enjoyed the brawl. Aunt Hilda had been longing to punch Uncle Waldo on the nose for years and she finally got her chance. Cousin Jean seized the opportunity to grab Aunt Edith’s wig and chuck it in the next door neighbour’s birdbath. And even Mr Green snuck in a quick kick to his Uncle Seamus’ shin for giving him a second-hand bookmark for his Christmas present when he was nine years old.

Later that night, when all the extended family had gone home, Nanny Piggins and the children sat around the kitchen table eating ice-cream.

‘That was an excellent family gathering,’ said Nanny Piggins happily as she held an ice-cream pack to her blackened eye. She had accidentally hit herself in the face while wrestling Bramwell into Mrs Lau’s fish pond because she felt it was her civic duty to make sure Bramwell took a bath.

‘My favourite part was when Samantha emptied third cousin Iris’ handbag into Mrs Simpson’s worm farm,’ said Michael.

Samantha blushed. ‘She said something mean about my nose.’

‘Good for you,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Boxing Day is now my favourite public holiday.’

‘But you do understand that you aren’t really meant to do boxing on Boxing Day,’ Derrick reminded her.

‘Pish!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I don’t believe that for a second. Boxing is clearly the perfect thing to do the day after Christmas. A few fisticuffs and a bit of a wrestle is just the thing when your family has been getting on your nerves. It helps you build up your appetite for eating leftovers as well.’ (Not that there were any leftovers in the Green house. The thirteen Piggins sisters plus Bramwell saw to that, before disappearing into the night as suddenly as they had arrived.)

‘I can’t wait until next year,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘We should build an actual boxing ring. Your Great Aunt Hilda has quite the right hook. I saw the way she took on Wendy when they both lunged for the last square of fudge.’

‘Aren’t you sad that you only got to see your sisters for such a short and violent time?’ asked Derrick.

‘Not at all,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I know people say that Christmas is a time for families and togetherness, and that is true to some extent, but you have to very carefully limit just how long you spend with your family. Just as our families are the people we love most in the world, they are also the people who irritate us most in the world. And no-one wants to spend Christmas Day in prison facing thirteen counts of attempted pigicide.’

‘Don’t you mean fourteen, if you include Bramwell?’ asked Samantha.

‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘No court in the land would convict me for attempting to pigicide Bramwell. They would probably join in.’

Everyone knows that when you are sick it is very important to have lots of vitamin C. But the problem with vitamin C tablets it that they can be terribly dangerous. If you don’t choke on the tablet, you can strain your wrist trying to open the jar. This is why I urge all sick people to consume their vitamin C in the form of lemon cake. It is much better for you. Here is a lemon cake recipe so simple even very sick people can struggle to their kitchen and make it. (If you are having trouble getting to the kitchen to make lemon cake, I suggest a slice of chocolate cake first to give you the energy to get there.)