The Nanny Piggins Guide to Conquering Christmas (2 page)

‘You might have,’ said Michael, ‘but it wasn’t anything to do with what Father said.’

‘Father sends us to have our photo taken with Santa every year,’ explained Samantha.

‘Really?’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘How unexpectedly festive of him.’

‘It isn’t,’ said Derrick.

‘He only does it for the money,’ explained Michael.

‘Great Aunt Hilda sends us ten dollars each if Father posts her a photograph of us with Santa,’ continued Samantha.

‘What does she send if you don’t post her a picture of you with Santa?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘She sends us nothing,’ said Samantha.

‘Oh,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I thought you were going to say she sent you twenty dollars instead. But if she sends ten dollars to each of you, how does that benefit your father?’

‘He waits by the letterbox until it arrives, tears open our envelopes and keeps the money for himself,’ explained Derrick.

‘Good gracious, no!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘Are there no depths to which that dreadful man will sink?’

‘I’m sitting right here,’ protested Mr Green. ‘I can hear every word you’re saying.’

‘I think it is best for you if I pretend that is not true,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Given the wickedness of your postal theft, you deserve a short sharp bite on the shins. In fact 27 short sharp bites on the shins, one for every year you have stolen the Christmas cash from your own children.’

‘Where do you get the number 27 from?’ spluttered Mr Green. He did not want to be bitten at all, but certainly not that many times.

Nanny Piggins sighed. ‘The ages of your children,’ she explained. ‘Michael is seven, Samantha is nine and Derrick is eleven. Add that up and it makes 27 ten-dollar notes you’ve stolen since they were born.’

‘It’s only right that they should chip in for their room and board,’ said Mr Green. ‘They’ve been hiding behind those pesky child labour laws for years now.’

‘Is that what you spend the money on?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘On room and board? Or do you spend it on yourself?’

‘I do no such thing,’ protested Mr Green.

‘Oh, then I know what you do with it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You take their ten-dollar notes down to the bank and put it in a high-interest savings account, don’t you, because the only thing you love more than money is locking away money to earn even more money. Isn’t that right?’

‘You know, some people would call that fiscal responsibility,’ argued Mr Green.

‘People who steal Christmas presents from children should not look to fiscal responsibility to explain away their depraved behaviour,’ denounced Nanny Piggins.

‘Are you going to take them to get their Santa photo taken or not?’ asked Mr Green.

‘Of course I’ll do it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The bakery at the shopping centre is far inferior to Hans’ fine establishment, but they do give away free samples on their counter top, and if I take along my extensive collection of fake moustaches, I should be able to walk past helping myself at least two dozen times before they figure out what I’m up to and chase me off.’

So Nanny Piggins and the children caught the bus down to the shopping centre and they took Boris with them. He was very keen to come because he had never had his photo taken with Santa. He had tried one year, but as soon as he hopped up on Santa’s lap, Santa had been rushed away to hospital with a suspected broken knee.

‘Which do you think is my best side today?’ Boris asked the children, showing them first his left, then his right profile.

‘Um…’ said Derrick, not knowing what to say. Boris was a bear covered in brown fur so, to Derrick’s weak human eyes, Boris looked exactly the same on both sides. But Derrick had known Boris long enough to know that such an answer was sure to end in tears. In fact, almost any answer was sure to end in tears.

‘Oh Boris, we hoped you wouldn’t ask us that,’ said Samantha.

‘You did?’ asked Boris, bracing himself, ready to weep.

‘You are so handsome on both sides, it is almost impossible to tell the difference. We have been arguing about that very issue all week. Derrick and Michael actually came to blows about it. Then they looked at you again, and both changed their minds and almost came to blows arguing the exact opposite thing,’ said Samantha.

Derrick and Michael stared at their sister in astonishment. She was normally such a good girl. To see her fabricate the most spectacular and outrageous lie right before their eyes was a sight to behold.

They turned to Boris to see how he would react. Boris thought about it for a moment, then burst into tears. But it was all right, because they were tears of joy (a much quieter kind of tears), because he was grateful for such an extravagant compliment.

So Boris was only sobbing softly as they got off the bus and entered the shopping centre.

‘Right, let’s go to the bakery,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Shouldn’t we get our Santa photo taken first?’ asked Derrick.

‘Why?’ asked Nanny Piggins. As a general rule she did not believe in delaying eating.

‘Well, if the bakery has you thrown out by security we won’t be able to get the picture taken,’ said Derrick.

‘Hmm,’ grumbled Nanny Piggins. ‘I suppose that is the type of petty thing a sub-standard baker would do.’

They made their way to the central atrium on the ground floor where Santa’s grotto was located.

‘Urgh,’ complained Nanny Piggins. ‘Look, there’s a huge queue. It’s ridiculous.’

‘It’s Christmas; a lot of people want to have photos with Santa,’ argued Boris.

‘Yes, but if a speed camera on a highway can snap a picture of each passing motorist in less than a second,’ argued Nanny Piggins, ‘why can’t they use the same technology here. It would speed up the process, and give people more time to go and get free samples from the bakery.’

Fortunately Nanny Piggins was very good at whiling away time. She took out a jar of cockroaches, which she just happened to have in her handbag, and emptied them onto the floor, then took bets on which one would run up Santa’s leg and into his gumboot first.

A mere half hour later, after many of the more hygiene-minded mothers had whisked their children as far away from Nanny Piggins as possible, Derrick Samantha and Michael arrived at the front of the queue. They were just about to head for Santa’s lap when a young woman, dressed as an elf, stood in their way.

‘Which package will you be buying today?’ asked the elf.

‘I was thinking of buying a package of fudge from the department store,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Why do you ask? I don’t see that it is any of your business.’

‘No, I mean which package of photographs?’ continued the elf as she held up a board displaying a variety of photography packages. ‘You can get the
Rudolph Package
with one 8 by 10, six 2 by 3s, a key ring and a snow dome; the
Dasher Package
with two 8 by 10s, four fridge magnets and a light-up picture frame; or the
Blitzen Package
with five 8 by 10s, seven key rings, three fridge magnets and a bag of reindeer feed.’

‘I just want one photograph,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘You can only buy individual photographs with a package,’ said the elf.

Nanny Piggins’ eyebrows began to lower in suspicion. ‘How much are these packages of which you speak?’

‘The
Rudolph
is $39, the
Dasher
is $49 and the
Blitzen
is $69, and for an additional $5 you can have 10 calendar bookmarks thrown in with any package,’ said the elf happily.

‘$39 for one photograph – that is outrageous!’ declared Nanny Piggins.

‘I knew this was going to be good,’ said Michael happily.

‘But you don’t just get one photograph,’ protested the elf.

‘But I don’t want the other rubbish,’ declared Nanny Piggins. ‘I only want one photograph.’

‘You can only buy an individual photograph in combination with a package,’ said the elf once more.

‘I heard you say that the first time,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You have not seen me get hit in the head in the interim, have you? So I don’t see why you would think I had come down with amnesia.’

‘These are our prices,’ said the elf, her fixed smile starting to sag at the edges.

‘Never mind,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Luckily I have a camera in my handbag. I was planning to take a photograph of the baker’s chocolate éclairs so I could show it to Hans and we could have a good laugh about it later. But I suppose I shall have to take the photograph myself.’

‘You can’t,’ said the elf. ‘That’s not the way it works. You have to buy a package.’

‘I
have
to, do I?’ said Nanny Piggins, starting to sound menacing.

‘You’re going to wish you hadn’t said that,’ warned Derrick.

‘Nanny Piggins doesn’t like being told she has to do something,’ added Samantha.

‘If you aren’t going to buy a package, I am going to have to ask you to step out of the queue. You are holding everybody up,’ said the elf, starting to sound less festive and more like a school prefect.

‘Are you going to make me?’ said Nanny Piggins, starting to glower.

‘I bet Nanny Piggins is wearing her hot-pink wrestling leotard under her dress,’ said Michael happily.

‘Of course,’ said Boris. ‘She always does when she goes anywhere with security guards.’

‘Those are the rules,’ said the elf sternly.

‘I can understand that prisons and places even worse than prisons, such as schools, have rules,’ said Nanny Piggins, ‘but are you telling me there are rules in Santa’s grotto?’

‘There certainly are,’ said the impertinent elf, before turning to the other elf operating the camera. ‘Lisa, could you please call security?’

‘It must be a proud day for you as a representative of the elfin people, when you have three innocent children thrown out of Santa’s grotto and onto the street,’ accused Nanny Piggins.

‘I think she’d only throw us back on the shopping centre forecourt,’ said Derrick reasonably.

But Nanny Piggins was not in the mood to be reasonable.

‘I can see security approaching,’ said the elf. ‘Please don’t make a scene. You will scare the other children.’

‘Children,’ said Nanny Piggins, turning to the other children in the queue. ‘You aren’t so weak-willed that you will be alarmed by the sight of an exquisitely dressed pig wrestling with a burly security guard, are you?’

‘No,’ chorused the children in the queue. They had all fallen in love with Nanny Piggins during the long wait because, apart from the cockroach races, she had also handed out chocolates and told long and outrageous stories about her days in the circus.

‘I thought so,’ said Nanny Piggins, turning back on the elf. ‘You can’t make children stand in a queue for half an hour and expect them to be on your side of the argument. And you, Santa,’ Nanny Piggins called over the elf’s shoulder, which was not easy because Nanny Piggins was only four feet tall whereas the elf was five feet ten, ‘you should be ashamed of yourself – for gouging children with your excessive photo prices!’

There was another loud cheer behind Nanny Piggins, but this time from the mothers who were fed up having to spend such a large portion of their Christmas budget on stilted photographs of their children struggling to hold back tears as they endured being in close proximity to a holiday icon.

‘How dare you overcharge for your shoddy photographs!’ continued Nanny Piggins. ‘We all know children don’t even like having their photo taken with you because half of them spend the whole time screaming.’

‘It’s true,’ said Lisa, the elf who took the photographs. She had only been in the job for four days but through the lens she had watched many terrified children begging to be taken away from the terrifying red-suited stranger. She was seriously considering whether $15 an hour was worth witnessing such inhumanity all day long.

‘You sit there in judgement deciding whether children are naughty or nice,’ accused Nanny Piggins. ‘Well, I say that you, sir, are the “not nice” one to behave in such an outrageously capitalist fashion.’

There was now an even louder cheer and some applause behind Nanny Piggins as more shoppers had stopped to watch the spectacle.

‘Ho, ho, ho, Merrrry Christmas!’ said Santa, misunderstanding why everyone was cheering.