Nanny Piggins
and the Great Voyage
Brilliant ideas often came to Nanny Piggins when she was asleep. To be strictly accurate, they came to her when she was awake, lying in bed with her eyes closed not wanting to get up yet. Either way, bed was a place of creative genius for her. And so it happened on this particular day, as she snuggled beneath her doona, that Nanny Piggins was struck with wonderful inspiration.
She shook Derrick, Samantha and Michael awake. All three of them were also asleep on Nanny Piggins' bed because they enjoyed a lie-in too. And they knew Nanny Piggins' room was the only place their father would not harass them about it. He was too embarrassed to go into a woman's bedroom. I know this barely makes sense to a sane person. But it is not uncommon for older men to be afraid of beautiful young women. Even if they are pigs.
'Wake up!' cried Nanny Piggins. 'We've got no time to waste.'
'What's going on?' asked Derrick.
'Is the house on fire again?' asked Samantha.
'I don't think so. That's not why we have to get up,' urged Nanny Piggins. 'We have to get up because I've had a brilliant idea.'
The children immediately perked up. Nanny Piggins' brilliant ideas were always much more brilliant than anybody else's.
'What is it?' asked Michael. 'Have you figured out how we can try space travel after all?'
'No, not that,' admitted Nanny Piggins. 'Although I have been thinking about it. No, I've had an idea about what we can do in the meantime.'
'What?' asked all three children.
With Nanny Piggins, anything was possible. She might suggest building a catapult, or entering a tango competition, or selling one of their father's law degrees so they could have some money to go to the arcade.
'Let's go to the beach!' declared Nanny Piggins.
This was a surprising suggestion. It was five years since the Green children had been to the beach. They assumed their father did not want to take them because it reminded him of their mother's tragic boating accident. In truth, he did not take them because he was too cheap to pay for three children's bus tickets, and he did not like the effect the sea breeze had upon his hair.
Even though, strictly speaking, the children would not classify going to the beach as a 'brilliant' idea, it was definitely a wonderful idea to them. And they also knew from experience that Nanny Piggins had a talent for turning even ordinary ideas into brilliant realities. So when she urged them to get dressed as quickly as possible or she would take them on the bus still wearing their pyjamas, they hastily did as they were told.
Nanny Piggins and the children looked quite a sight on the bus because they had so much luggage. Nanny Piggins did not believe in leaving things to chance. She insisted on bringing anything that could possibly be necessary to ensure a wonderful day at the beach, which, to her mind, involved a lot of equipment. They had two large suitcases full of gardening implements for building sandcastles, binoculars for invading the privacy of other beach goers, pea shooters for tormenting annoying people and plenty of cakes and lemonade to sustain them (just in case all the shops at the seaside were shut because everyone in the area had simultaneously caught a cold).
The Greens lived a long way from the coast. Mr Green did not like being close to nature. Seeing things bigger and more powerful than himself, like the ocean, made him feel that he was not quite in control. This was, of course, true, but he did not like to be reminded of it.
The bus journey was long and windy. The children were wedged between the suitcases, which jolted into them every time the bus turned a corner. But they did not notice the discomfort because they were enjoying looking out the window so much. Of course, looking out a window can be dull. But not when you have someone like Nanny Piggins giving you a running commentary.
'Look at that woman's head!' Nanny Piggins exclaimed. 'It's a wonder she has the courage to go out in public. I'd strap a cat to my head before I'd leave the house with hair that colour. And look at that man's trousers! There's nothing to hold them up. Do you think he had his bottom removed for medical reasons? Or that it got torn off in a terrible accident?'
Observations such as these made the time pass pleasantly until they came over the hill and saw, in front of them, the blue expanse of the ocean stretching out to the horizon.
'Great Balls of Fire!' exclaimed Nanny Piggins. She often said this when she felt very strongly about something but did not want to say a bad word in front of the children. 'We're all going to die!'
'We are?' said Samantha with genuine concern. She did not want to die in the middle of such a pleasant bus trip.
'Look! The edge of the land has broken off!' cried Nanny Piggins.
Derrick, with a flash of insight, realised Nanny Piggins was talking about the ocean. 'It's meant to be that way,' he reassured her. Being the oldest, it was his job to pretend to be responsible when adults fell apart.
'But the countryside has fallen away and there's nothing but all that blue stuff,' protested Nanny Piggins.
'It's all right. The blue stuff is the ocean,' Derrick explained. 'That's what you get at the edge of the land. Haven't you ever been to the beach before?'
Nanny Piggins never liked admitting she did not know something. But on this occasion she had to be truthful. 'No,' she conceded.
'You mean there's actually something you haven't done?' asked Michael in amazement. It seemed to him that his nanny was an expert on everything. She certainly knew a million times more than their father or any of the teachers at their school.
'Didn't your circus ever travel to the beach?' asked Samantha.
'No,' said Nanny Piggins sadly. 'You see, the Ringmaster had a morbid fear of octopuses, so we always avoided the beach and aquariums.'
The children nodded. They could see how a man would be afraid of octopuses.
'I've read about beaches in books, of course,' Nanny Piggins told them. 'So I know that beaches have sand. But I didn't realise a beach had an ocean as well.'
'They all do,' said Michael.
'And I didn't realise that an ocean would be quite so big,' said Nanny Piggins as she pressed her snout to the glass to get a closer look. 'Why, it's bigger than the cake factory in Slimbridge.' (The Slim-bridge cake factory was, to Nanny Piggins, the finest achievement in architecture ever in the world.)
Nanny Piggins and the children stared in wonder at the ocean as the bus wound closer towards it.
'I guess that explains why whales are so big,' mused Nanny Piggins. 'If you live in something as huge as the ocean, you wouldn't notice that you were big yourself. A whale would never have to worry about bumping his head on doorframes or finding trousers that fit.'
On arrival at the beach Nanny Piggins' enthusiasm for what she found there was divided. She was enormously in favour of hot chips with extra salt and vinegar but she was not entirely convinced about the charms of sand.
She opened up one of the suitcases and sat in the lid of it, eating ice-cream as the children built sandcastles. She could see the attraction of a sandcastle because you could run along the beach and jump on it. Destruction was always invigorating but she could not forgive sand for its uncomfortable ability to find its way into clothes and rub unpleasantly.
Then there was the water. Nanny Piggins was not a pig who scared easily but she was cautious in her approach to the ocean itself. It was so huge compared to her, for she was a petite little pig.
Fortunately, food always made Nanny Piggins feel brave. After some hot chips, ice-cream and four or five large cakes, she was feeling courageous so she and the children ventured towards the water. When the children started to wade in, she became alarmed. 'What are you doing?'
'Going for a swim,' explained Derrick.
'But what if you get eaten by a shark or a sea monster?' asked Nanny Piggins with genuine concern.
'Don't worry,' said Michael reassuringly as he took hold of Nanny Piggins' hand. 'Getting eaten by sharks and sea monsters is not nearly as common in real life as it is in books.'
So Nanny Piggins joined the children in going for a swim. And it was very pleasant. It was much more exciting than swimming in a pool because there were waves to knock you over if you were not paying attention. And unlike the public swimming pool, you could shriek and scream as loud as you liked because the sound was drowned out by the sea. Admittedly, the water did taste disgusting when Nanny Piggins tried drinking it. As a general rule Nanny Piggins tried eating and drinking most substances just on the off-chance that they were delicious. She thought it was very misleading that it was called 'water' when it tasted nothing like water from a tap. It was like calling sewerage 'ginger beer' just because they were both brown.
After the swim they all towelled off and sat on the beach, while Nanny Piggins came up with an idea for what to do next. The children expected her to suggest more sandcastles, or a game of soccer, or perhaps digging an enormous hole. That is what most normal people choose to do at the beach. But Nanny Piggins was not normal. A small sail boat caught her eye as it tacked its way across the bay.
'Since we've travelled all this way to get to the seaside,' mused Nanny Piggins, 'it would be very nice to go beyond the "side" and actually travel across the sea.'
The children looked at each other with mild concern.
'I wonder where we could get a boat?' said Nanny Piggins. 'Do you think we would have to commandeer one like pirates?'
'We could,' said Samantha, for she did not want to be discouraging. 'Or we could rent one.' Doing illegal things always worried Samantha, so she was usually the first to suggest a non-illegal alternative. 'There's a boat rental place over there on the pier.'
'What a brilliant idea!' said Nanny Piggins, because she was not an ungenerous pig and having so many brilliant ideas herself, she was always the first to recognise brilliance in others.
Nanny Piggins struck a happy deal with the boat rental man. In exchange for Mr Green's favourite wristwatch (which she just happened to have in her pocket), the rental man gave Nanny Piggins and the children his smallest sailing boat and a five-minute lesson on the principles of yachting. And so, despite having almost no idea what they were doing, they sailed off.
Nanny Piggins took to sailing instantly. Having lived her whole life in the circus, she was used to handling ropes and large sheets of canvas. In no time at all, she was happily guiding the boat across the water at a good speed.
The children were enchanted by the experience. The movement of the boat did make Derrick feel violently ill. But apart from that, they enjoyed the sense of freedom. It was like driving a car (which they had all tried because of Nanny Piggins' lack of respect for the concept of drivers' licences) except better because there were no roads you had to follow. It was amazing to stare down into the blue depths and think how there was nothing beneath them except water, fish and possibly the secret city of Atlantis.
'Where shall we go?' asked Nanny Piggins.
'Go?' questioned Derrick. It had not occurred to the children they had the option of going somewhere. They had assumed they would have to go out and come back to where they started. Like on pony rides, go-karts or any other children's amusement.
'All the seas and all the oceans in the entire world are connected together,' said Nanny Piggins, because she did know the important things about geography. 'So if we're here on the ocean, that means as long as we point the boat in the right direction we can go anywhere in the world.'
'Anywhere in the whole wide world?' gasped Michael. His mouth hung open as his mind overflowed with all the possibilities.
'Anywhere that has an ocean or a sea joining on to it,' confirmed Nanny Piggins, 'which is just about everywhere, except Luxembourg and Paraguay. We can go there another day.'
The children were too stunned too respond. There were so many options. Samantha had always liked penguins and would have loved to visit Antarctica. Derrick liked big stones and would have been fascinated by the giant heads of Easter Island. And Michael liked riding up and down in lifts so he would have loved the tall buildings of New York. But as they sat in the tiny boat, these things did not occur to them. Or rather, they occurred to them along with a thousand other ideas all at once so it was impossible for them to pick out just one idea of what to do. Luckily, at this point, Nanny Piggins had another brilliant idea. The third one of the day – which just shows what a good day it was!
'I've got it! Let's sail to China!' declared Nanny Piggins.
The children all thought this was a wonderful idea for a variety of reasons.
'So we can see the Great Wall of China?' asked Derrick.
'And visit the Chinese entombed warriors?' asked Samantha.
'And learn how to do kung-fu?' asked Michael.
'Oh yes, we'll definitely do all that,' agreed Nanny Piggins. 'But first of all, I want to go because I'm really hungry and I just love Chinese food.'
So it was agreed that they would set sail for China immediately. Nanny Piggins was not entirely sure which direction China was in but she knew the world was round and China was very big so she was confident that if they headed straight out to sea, they would bump into it eventually.
It was a windy day and they made quick progress. Within a few short hours they were a long way out to sea. The town they had set sail from shrank down to a tiny dot, then disappeared entirely behind them.
The children were not bored because Nanny Piggins had packed loads of novels and packets of biscuits into the suitcases. She had even packed fancy dress costumes. They had great fun for an hour or two dressing up as pirates and pretending to plunder imaginary ships. So even though it was getting to be late afternoon, they were not at all dispirited. They were all looking forward to finding out if the Chinese food in China was even better than the Chinese food everywhere else.
Unfortunately, at this point in the adventure, trouble began to arise. Mainly in the form of a big, nasty storm. Huge, black clouds gathered in the sky behind them. And a dark, grey curtain seemed to hang from the dense cloud mass. It was only when the clouds moved overhead that they realised the grey curtain was in fact very, very heavy rain.
Now Nanny Piggins and the children enjoyed rain as much as anybody who owns a pair of gumboots and knows how to jump in a puddle. But there is rain and then there is rain. And rain in the quantity they were experiencing it was most definitely overwhelming. They had to use their sand buckets to bail rainwater out of the boat. And while they did this, no-one was attending to the sail so the storm winds pushed them further and further out into the rough sea.
Obviously Nanny Piggins did not panic. She knew that when you are caught in a very small sailing boat in a very big storm, the worst that can happen is you are shipwrecked, and being shipwrecked is not so bad. All you have to do is spend years and years living on a desert island until you are eventually rescued by a passing ship. Then you return to civilisation and make a fortune writing a fictionalised account of your adventure. To Nanny Piggins' mind, this sounded like an enjoyable way to spend a decade.
The problem was, until they were shipwrecked, sitting in a tiny boat in a downpour was very unpleasant. Nanny Piggins had packed wet weather gear into the suitcases, so they were all wearing raincoats. Samantha was even wearing Mrs Green's fishing waders. But there is something about rain – when you get enough of it, it will always find its way in. They were just beginning to feel really cold and miserable and sorry for themselves when, through the rainy gloom, they saw the shape of a boat. Unlike their small sailing boat, this boat was engine-powered and it chugged through the rain towards them.
'Who do you think it is?' asked Derrick.
'It could be pirates!' said Michael.
'It's best not to get our hopes up,' instructed Nanny Piggins. She had always wanted to meet a pirate and being captured by one would be the most exciting way to make their acquaintance.
'If they are wicked, perhaps we should try and avoid them,' suggested Samantha. She did not mind being captured herself because she had great faith in her nanny's ability to rescue her, but she was worried about the pirates stealing her boo-boo, a security blanket hidden in the bottom left-hand corner of the blue suitcase, which was, to her, the greatest treasure in the world.
'I don't mind them capturing us,' said Nanny Piggins generously. 'As long as they drop us off in China before dinnertime. I'm getting hungry'.
As it turned out they had little choice in the matter. The wind was so powerful that, even though they had taken down all the sails, they were pushed straight into the side of the larger boat. It made a loud thud and left a nasty gash in the paintwork of both vessels, much to Samantha's concern.
'I hope they don't get cross,' said Samantha. She never liked it when people got cross.
'Perhaps we could board them and take them all prisoner,' suggested Michael. having had a sudden rush of blood to the head.
'Don't be silly,' reprimanded Nanny Piggins, 'They might be wicked pirates but we don't want them to think we're rude.'
At that moment two heads appeared over the side of the boat.
'Oh my goodness! They're Chinamen!' gasped Samantha. Because the two men looking down at them were certainly of Asian appearance.
'Don't be silly. Of course they're not,' said Nanny Piggins. 'They're Korean. Can't you tell the difference?'
To be fair to Samantha, even if she had been able to tell the difference, it would have been hard to tell it in a downpour, at twilight, on the open ocean. And Nanny Piggins did have a clue to help her correct recognition. She had noticed the Korean flag painted on the side of the ship.
'Ahnyong,' Nanny Piggins called up to the two men. This is how you say 'hello' in Korean. Nanny Piggins may never have been to the seaside but she had spent many long nights playing backgammon with two Korean trapeze artists. And they had taught her enough Korean to buy a chicken, rent a motorbike, tell someone to be quiet in the cinema and all the other things essential for day-to-day life in their country.
'Ahnyong,' the two men called back. They were no doubt surprised to find three children and a Korean-speaking pig adrift in the ocean. But they were hospitable seamen. They soon had Nanny Piggins, Derrick, Samantha and Michael safely aboard their ship. They also rescued the suitcases so boo-boo was safe too, much to Samantha's relief.
The Korean ship was a fishing boat with a crew of five men. They were on their way back to port when they had been caught in the storm. But their boat was much better equipped to cope with the turbulent weather than the tiny rental boat. The Koreans had a warm cabin below deck, a cupboard full of dry towels and most important of all, a kitchen from which the most delicious smells were emerging.
That night Nanny Piggins and the children learnt a valuable lesson. Korean food is every bit as good as Chinese food. Together Nanny Piggins, the children and the fishermen had a wonderful feast. They ate fresh barbecued fish with steamed vegetables and all sorts of wonderful and peculiar Korean pickles. Then afterwards, for dessert, Nanny Piggins opened up the suitcases and found another three chocolate cakes. It was a wonderful party. They played 'Pin the Tail on the Tangnagui' (which means 'donkey' in Korean) as well as 'Kim Says' (which means 'Simon Says' in Korean) and generally had a marvellous time.
They were all quite sad when the fishing boat pulled into the harbour and dropped Nanny Piggins and the children off by the taxi stand. Nanny Piggins tried to persuade the fishermen to come back to Mr Green's house for a late supper and dancing, but they were tired from a long day of fishing and rescuing small children, so they promised to come another time.
As they sat in the warm taxi winding their way home, Nanny Piggins sighed with contentment. 'Well, children, I must say, I never knew that a day at the beach could be so much fun,' she said. 'We really must do this more often.'
'Not too often,' said Samantha.
'No, just often enough,' said Nanny Piggins.
After a few yawns and some valiant attempts to keep their eyes open, the four of them were soon asleep. And in her dreams, Nanny Piggins started to come up with even more brilliant ideas for their next daytrip.