Nanny Piggins and the Wicked Plan by R. A. Spratt Read Free Book Online

outof a cannon?’ asked Michael, thinking of the shapes he had learnt about in geometry – squares, circles and trapezoids.
    ‘That’s not what she means,’ explained Samantha. ‘When someone says they’re “out of shape” they mean they haven’t been exercising.’
    ‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins, contradicting her. ‘When I say “I’m out of shape”, I mean I’m out of shape. My shape’s become all lean and skinny. To be a flying pig I need to be rounder.’
    ‘Really?’ said Derrick, as he looked at Nanny Piggins. His nanny already ate more than a football team trapped in a lift for three days with nothing to eat but a packet of breath mints. He could not begin to imagine how much she would consume if she was actually trying to gain weight.
    ‘Oh yes, if I am going to be blasted an enormous distance tomorrow morning, I must immediately start eating,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You see it’s all to do with physics. You remember what I taught you about Isaac Newton?’
    ‘He was the man who invented gravity,’ said Michael. ‘Which is why it hurts if an apple falls on your head.’
    ‘Exactly,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Newton also said that force equals mass times acceleration.’
    ‘What does that mean?’ asked Derrick.
    ‘It means that if you’re fat you’ll fly further,’ explained Nanny Piggins.
    ‘Really?’ asked Samantha. She did not know much about physics but she was pretty sure it was more complicated than that.
    ‘Of course I’m sure,’ said Nanny Piggins.
    ‘Plus the fat helps cushion your landing if you miss your target,’ added Boris.
    ‘Now quick, Samantha,’ instructed Nanny Piggins. ‘You had better call Hans at the bakery.’
    ‘What should I tell him to send round?’ asked Samantha.
    ‘The truck,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘stocked full of everything from the shop. And tell him to start baking as many cakes as his oven will take. This is an emergency.’
    And so Hans baked and baked. And Nanny Piggins ate and ate. And the children watched with awed fascination. Perhaps more than all the other things their nanny did brilliantly, Nanny Piggins was phenomenally good at eating. It was a sight to behold. If eating was an Olympic sport, Nanny Piggins would have been the gold medallist every time. Which is probably the only reason they do not have eating at the Olympics, because they do notwant the athletes to feel bad about being beaten by a lady pig.

    By the time they arrived at Dead Man’s Gorge the next morning, Nanny Piggins had certainly managed to get herself ‘in shape’. She looked almost exactly like a huge round pink bullet. She had never had much of a neck but what little neck there was had now disappeared entirely.
    The children and Boris pushed their borrowed cannon into position next to Eduardo’s. Nanny Piggins could not help. She was too busy rolling on the ground groaning, ‘Urrrgh uggrrr,’ because of all she had eaten.
    ‘I am surprised you’re here,’ said Eduardo. ‘I expected you to run away and cower in fear.’
    ‘Oh shut up,’ moaned Nanny Piggins. Because for some reason, overeating exhausts the part of the brain that thinks of clever things to say.
    ‘Shall we begin?’ asked Eduardo.
    ‘I’m ready when you are,’ said Nanny Piggins, which actually turned out to be untrue.
    For a start, it took a while to get Boris to stop clutching Nanny Piggins to his chest and sobbing,‘Please don’t do it! It’s too dangerous.’
    Then there was another hitch. Eduardo climbed easily into the barrel of his cannon. After all, he was still working in a circus and was used to being blasted five times a night. Nanny Piggins, however, was out of practice. When she tried to get into her barrel, she soon discovered she had been a little overzealous about ‘getting into shape’.
    ‘You don’t fit,’ worried Samantha.
    ‘Thank goodness, let’s go home!’ said Boris.
    ‘Yes I do,’ argued Nanny Piggins, because she might be out of practice but