Nanny Piggins and the Rival Ringmaster Read Online Free PDF Page B

Nanny Piggins. ‘The doctor said Hans will be out of action for at least a fortnight. I can’t go a whole two weeks without eating another cake like that.’
    ‘But Nanny Piggins,’ said Samantha. ‘It’s one thing to gatecrash one wedding. But to gatecrash two weddings. That’s just naughty.’
    ‘Don’t worry,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I wasn’t planning to gatecrash two weddings.’
    ‘Good,’ sighed Samantha.
    ‘I was planning to gatecrash another three,’ said Nanny Piggins, taking out a crumpled list from her pocket. ‘The caterer gave me the skinny on where all the weddings are happening across town tomorrow.’
    ‘We’re going to gatecrash three weddings in one day?’ asked Derrick.
    ‘Don’t think of it as gatecrashing,’ advised Nanny Piggins. ‘Gatecrashing is wrong. No, what we are doing is providing entertainment in the form of our delightful company in exchange for a small sample of their wedding cake.’
    ‘Today you ate the entire second tier of the wedding cake all on your own,’ reminded Samantha.
    ‘For which the bride should thank me,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You know what humans are like. Always watching their weight. She should be grateful I saved her from having all that cake lying around her home tempting her.’

    And so, the next morning, Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children put on their best party clothes and headed out to celebrate the institution of marriage, again. Despite the children’s concerns about being thrown in jail for the serial theft of cake, they ended up having a wonderful day.
    All the weddings were very different. The Wong–Yap wedding had lion dancers (althoughNanny Piggins could not understand why they used men in lion suits and not real lions). The Fitzgerald– FitzSimons wedding had a bouncy castle, which was a good idea in theory, but not so good in practice at an event where people are eating large amounts of food. (Fortunately the maître d’ had a hose handy.) But the Lee–Edwards wedding was the best as far as Nanny Piggins was concerned because they had a chocolate fountain. You were meant to dip strawberries in it. But no-one noticed when Nanny Piggins stuck her whole head under the warm chocolately flow (although it did have a spectacular effect on her hairstyle, and her hat was lost for three hours, until the father of the bride dipped in a strawberry and drew out the elegant bonnet).
    Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children returned home that night, very tired and very full of cake.
    ‘Well, that was fun,’ admitted Samantha, ‘but we aren’t going wedding crashing tomorrow, are we? We have school. And no-one gets married on a Monday.’
    ‘No, there will be no more wedding crashing,’ agreed Nanny Piggins.
    The children were relieved. After four weddingsin two days they felt if they ate any more they would explode.
    ‘The wedding cakes were good, delicious even,’ continued Nanny Piggins. ‘But there was something lacking. I thought there was room for improvement.’
    ‘But you cried when you ate the chocolate orange layer cake at the Wong–Yap wedding because it tasted so good,’ said Michael.
    ‘Yes, but I was very hungry at the time,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It was only when I ate my eighth slice that I began to realise there was room for improvement. Where were the chocolate chunks? Where were the chocolate sprinkles?’
    The children had no answers for these rhetorical questions.
    ‘Why were none of the four wedding cakes entirely dipped in chocolate?’ asked Nanny Piggins.
    The children did not know.
    ‘It certainly would have been easy enough at the Lee–Edwards wedding. The chocolate fountain was right there,’ added Boris.
    ‘The world of wedding cake creation is obviously crying out for a new creative influence, a baker with a genius for cake, icing and visionary design,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘In short – they need me.’
    ‘What are you planning to do?’ asked Samantha,beginning to suspect that perhaps