Nanny Piggins and the Race to Power 8 Read Online Free PDF Page B

taking her life in her own hands?’
    As the Rolls-Royce swooped past the grandstand, Tyler wound down her window and called out, ‘Help me! I’m running out of petrol!’
    ‘Use the little lever in the glove box to pop open the boot!’ advised Boris. ‘For your own safety you need to placate her with cake.’
    So just as the Rolls-Royce glided to a stuttering stop, the boot popped open and Nanny Piggins leapt mouth-first into it. They could not see her, but they could hear her guzzling and they could see the car shuddering as she lashed about inside the boot, gobbling up every last crumb of cake.
    Tyler, visibly shocked by the experience, went over to join the others in the grandstand. ‘Well I think we’ve established that Nanny Piggins is already pretty good at running.’
    ‘She’s a gifted all-round athlete,’ agreed Boris. ‘People think being a flying pig is just a case of lying in a cannon waiting for the gunpowder to explode, but once you have been blasted, there’s an awful lot of jogging back to the starting point.’
    ‘The hard thing is going to be training her to run past the Slimbridge Cake Factory,’ predicted Michael.
    ‘All right,’ said Tyler. ‘I’ll plan tomorrow’s training session to focus on that.’
    ‘What are we going to do this afternoon?’ asked Derrick.
    ‘I think I’ll be spending most of the afternoon at the Rolls-Royce dealership getting it repaired,’ said Tyler. ‘In her haste to get as much cake in her mouth as possible, I think Nanny Piggins has eaten all the carpet and some of the electrical wiring.’

    So the next day’s training session started 500 metres down the road from the Slimbridge Cake Factory.
    ‘I don’t understand why I have to run past the factory,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’m sure I could pop in for a couple of dozen cakes, say hello to my dear friends on the assembly line, and still get back on track and win the race.’
    ‘It’s not a question of winning or eating cake,’ said Tyler.
    ‘Wash your mouth out!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins.
    ‘It’s a question of appearances,’ continued Tyler. ‘You’re a politician now. You need to present yourself as a healthy person. And healthy people don’t raid cake factories.’
    ‘Mentally healthy people do,’ grumbled Nanny Piggins. ‘If more people popped in to cake factories there would be more happiness in the world.’
    ‘And more obesity and more diabetes,’ chided Tyler.
    ‘I’d rather spend time with a fat diabetic,’ declared Nanny Piggins, ‘than a miserable skinny bones!’
    Tyler sighed. ‘Please never say that to anyone in the media.’
    ‘You can do it, Nanny Piggins,’ encouraged Michael. ‘All you have to do is run from here, straight down the road until you’re 500 metres past the factory.’
    ‘It’s only 1000 metres all up,’ added Derrick. ‘You run that all the time.’
    ‘Oh, I know I can do it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The problem is why should I do it?’
    ‘To beat Father,’ reminded Samantha.
    ‘Hmpf,’ grumbled Nanny Piggins. ‘Attractive as that idea is, it’s not as attractive as the reality of a Slimbridge Bavarian Chocolate Cake in my mouth.’
    ‘That’s why we’ve set up a trestle table laden with all of Slimbridge’s finest baked goods at the other end,’ said Boris.
    ‘How many of their baked goods?’ questioned Nanny Piggins.
    ‘Two hundred family-sized cakes,’ said Michael.
    ‘Hmm,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘All right, I agree to it.’
    They all climbed out of the car. Nanny Piggins shuddered when the sweet smell of cake hit her nostrils.
    ‘You can do it, Nanny Piggins,’ urged Samantha.
    ‘Of course I can,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.
    ‘Think of the cake at the other end,’ advised Michael.
    ‘Run as fast as you can,’ encouraged Derrick.
    ‘All right,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Here goes.’ With that she took off, sprinting down the road past the cake factory. And she did really well; she got a whole hundred metres