'The Gingerbread Man' told by Nanny Piggins

Early one morning, while waiting for the chocolate shop to open, Nanny Piggins tells the story of her great Aunt Marg from the olden story days and how she baked a Gingerbread Man who came to life and was very reluctant to agree to being eaten.

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Bedtime Stories with me R.A. Spratt.  Today's story is 'The Gingerbread Man' told by Nanny Piggins.

Here we go...

It was very early in the morning. Very very early. So early that it was still dark, and because it was dark and it was winter it was also very very cold. Nanny Piggins and the children should have been at home tucked up in their nice warm beds dreaming about whatever hot baked treats they would be having for breakfast – perhaps chocolate chip pancakes or cinnamon buns or chocolate chip pancakes and cinnamon buns. But they were not doing this because they were sitting in the freezing cold inside Mr Green’s car, parked outside their local chocolate shop. 

The shop did not open until 9am, so there was absolutely no reason for them to be there so early. No sane reason. But Nanny Piggins had an insane reason. The chocolate shop had run out of chocolate covered caramels earlier in the week, largely because Nanny Piggins had been in there and eaten them all. 

She had now indured three whole days without. And she was not good an enduring. When Nanny Piggisn endured it was a dramatic process that involved a lot of sighing, a lot of complaining and a certain amount of wrestling if she suspected the chocolate shop owner was holding out on her. 

But Mr Bellamy had promised Nanny Piggins that he was expecting a new shipment first thing on Friday morning, and it was Friday morning which was why it was 4.45am and Nanny Piggins was sitting outside the front door of the shop waiting for the closed sign to be flipped to open.

‘You know,’ said Derrick. ‘I’m pretty sure if we went home, went back to sleep for four hours. We’d still make it back here in time for the 9 o’clock opening.’

‘But by then there would be a massive line of desperate chocolate lovers wrapped around the block,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Are there that many chocolate lovers who are really that desperate?’ asked Samantha.

‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I know, walking about in day to day life you will come across any number of deeply silly people, and ridiculous nincompoops. But there are still a lot of deeply sensible people out there. And any sensible person must love chocolate, so how could they not be here first thing on the first day that the chocolate shop has cobbers again?’

The children were finding it difficult to follow this logic. Although, to be fair, it was painfully early in the morning so they would have found it hard to find logic, even if it was logical. And Nanny Piggins logic definitely - was not.

‘What are we going to do while we wait?’ asked Michael.

‘We could wrestle?’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I just happen to have my hot pink wrestling leotard on underneath my dressing gown.’

They were all still wearing their pyjamas and nightwear.

‘Maybe not,’ said Samantha. Nanny Piggins was a very enthusiastic wrestler who had invented several wrestling moves herself. Samantha did not want to be held in a triple trotter lock before she had had any breakfast.

‘Why don’t you tell us a story?’ suggested Derrick. He thought this was a safer option. Last time Nanny Piggins had demonstrated a wrestling move in the car, it had cost a fortune getting the upholstery repaired.

‘Alright,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It’s probably best I do tell a story to take my mind of things. It’s easy for you because you’re just human. But I’m a pig, with a sense of smell several thousand times greater than your own. So it is incredibly hard for me to sit here, right outside a chocolate shop without leaping out, smashing the shop window and guzzling all the delicious smelling chocolate I can find.’

‘You’re very brave, Nanny Piggins,’ said Michael.

‘I know,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘Actually my terrible hunger reminds me of the story of my great great great cousin Marge.’

‘Did she break into a chocolate shop?’ asked Samantha.

‘No, she was a peasant in the olden days,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘She and her husband lived off a small plot of land. They were so so very poor that they were forced to eat…’ Nanny Piggins stopped speaking while she struggled to contain her emotions. ‘… those poor pigs. They were forced to eat… vegetables.’

‘Oh,’ said Derrick. Now Derrick knew that there was actually nothing terrible about eating vegetables. Under the right conditions they could in fact taste lovely. Especially if they had been baked in fat and covered in liberal amounts of salt. But Derrick was sensitive enough to understand that his Nanny did not see things that way and this moment called for sympathy rather than accuracy, ‘Oh dear. That’s terrible.’ 

Nanny Piggins sobbed. ‘When I think of all they had to endure. Carrots, celery, cabbages…’ Nanny Piggins broke down and wept a little at this point. ‘It was such a brutally hard life. One day they had had a particularly bad wheat crop. When it was all milled up it only made 1 cup of flour. Now what can you make with just one cup of flour?!’

The children didn’t answer. They knew it was a rhetorical question. Nanny Piggins was a maestro of baking. If anyone already knew exactly what you could make with 1 cup of flour it was her. ‘It’s not enough for a cake. They didn’t have any eggs anyway, so they couldn’t even have made a cup cake.’

‘They could have made bread,’ suggested Michael.

‘Michael Green!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins. ‘How dare you! She was a Piggins. She may have been achingly poor and starving but she had standards. She would never bake bread. Not when she could combine it with butter and sugar and make a cookie!’

‘A cookie?’ said Samantha. 

‘Yes, and with one cup of flour you can actually make quite a large cookie,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And Marge had a bit of an artistic streak. She wasn’t content with making a boring old round cookie. Besides she did still have a teaspoon of powdered ginger in her spice rack so she decided to make a gingerbread man.’

‘Yum,’ said Michael. He particularly liked gingerbread men. Apart from being delicious, there was something fun about eating their legs and arms off.

‘Precisely,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Yum indeed. So Marge set to work mixing the ingrediants.’ 

She was so hungry it was a chore not to just break down and eat the dough. But her husband had worked hard in the fields that day and she wanted to surprise him with a treat when he came in. 

She shaped the gingerbread dough into the shape of a man, gave it raisins for eyes, peel for a mouth and more raisons for the buttons down his front. 

Obviously her husband would never eat these because they were fruit and therefore disgusting. But they did make it look festive. So she popped it on a baking tray and put it in the oven for 25 minutes at a moderate temperature. 23 minutes later her husband was just coming from the field.

‘What is that heavenly smell?’ he asked. ‘Is that you my dear, are you wearing a new perfume.’ He was quite the silver tongued smooth talker as you can tell. 

Marge just laughed, which is the best way to respond to all men when they say such ridiculous rubbish… that or stomping on their foot, whichever you think is more appropriate in the moment. 

‘Oh no,’ said Marge. ‘I have baked you a treat. I have baked you a gingerbread man.’

‘Oh my goodness,’ said her husband. ‘That is a wonderful surprise. I haven’t eaten gingerbread in years. Not since the great gingerbread zeppelin crash a decade ago.’ 

Samantha, make a note, remind me, that is another story I must tell you later, the story of the time a great massive hot air balloon loaed with cookies crashed into the forest. Samantha jotted this down.

‘I’ll just fetch it from the oven,’ said Marge. She picked up her oven gloves and opened the over door. The divine smell grew even stronger as a waft of warm air billowed out into the room. 

Marg was just reaching in to extract the tray when suddenly the gingerbread man jumped out.

‘No way!’ exclaimed Michael. 

Now, Michael was seven years old so he had been to preschool and proper school he had heard the story of the gingerbread man many times, but even so, it is always shocking to hear tell of a snack coming to life.

‘Hello,’ said Marg.

‘Hello,’ said the gingerbread man. ‘Are you going to adopt me and raise me as your son?’

‘Well no,’ said Marge. ‘I think you’re getting this confused with the story of Pinnochio. We were just going to eat you.’

‘What? All of me?’ asked the gingerbread man.

‘We’re pretty hungry,’ said Marg. ‘So yes.’

‘We’d leave your head to last if you like,’ said her husband. ‘Unless you wanted us to eat it first.’

‘I think it would be best to eat it first,’ said Marg. ‘I don’t want to have a conversation with his head while I’m eating his legs.’

‘Well I don’t want to be eaten or have a chat,’ said the gingerbread man. ‘I’m out of here.’

And with that he took off sprinting out of the kitchen and down the garden path.

‘Hey come back here,’ called Marg.

But the gingerbread man had the taste of freedom now. He could feel the wind in his raisons, the sun on his crust. He was having fun. He called back to her without slowing down for a second, ‘Run run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man!’

At this point Nanny Piggins stopped talking, snuggled down under her doona and closed her eyes.

‘Hey, wait,’ said Derrick. ‘You can’t stop there. It’s just getting good.’

‘What do you mean I can’t stop there?’ asked Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ve just told you an amazing story of a baked treat coming to life, having a conversation with his creator then demonstrating elite level athleticism and you want more.’

‘But how did it end,’ asked Michael. ‘Didn’t Marg chase after him.’

‘I beg your pardon!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Marg was a Piggins! Pigginses do not run.’

‘You run all the time,’ Samantha reminded her. ‘When you’re chasing the ice cream van or trying to get to Hans bakery before he closes.’

‘Pish,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘That’s different. That’s when there is a desperate medical crisis.’

‘How is getting ice cream a desperate medical crisis?’ asked Derrick.

‘The ice-cream man would have a desperate medical crisis if he didn’t stop and sell me some,’ said Nanny Piggins.

The children nodded. They believed this to be true.

‘No, he might be a gingerbread man, he might be delicious and they may be hungry,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But there was no way they were going to be tricked into taking exercise. Certainly not cardio vascular exercise which is always the most unpleasant type of all. It involves so much panting and sweating. How could they have enjoy eating anything if they were forced to endure that first.

So the gingerbread man ran off down the road with no one giving chase. Until he came to… a jaguar.

‘A jaguar?!’ said Michael. ‘you mean like the big cat from Africa? What was a jaguar doing in farming land?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I didn’t ask. I suppose he was going on holiday. Perhaps he liked to paint water colour pictures of idealistic rural scenes. It’s really none of our business what Jaguars choose to get up to in their leisure time. But the jaguar was there. It was around about morning tea time. He was feeling peckish just as he looked up and saw a gingerbread man running towards him. 

Of course, at first, he assumed that he had just gone bonkers, perhaps from too much time in the sun and he was seeing things. But the gingerbread man kept coming closer and soon he could smell him and hear him chanting, ‘Run run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the gingerbread man.’

Now I don’t know if you’re aware of this but jaguars are actually very fast at running. So when he heard this the jaguar actually thought. “I bet I can”. 

He sprang to his feet and leapt after the gingerbread man sprinting as fast as he could. He raced down the country lane at lighting pace. But do you know what? He couldn’t do it. The gingerbread man just laughed and ran faster and faster. The jaguar tried running faster and faster too, but he could not keep up. The gingerbread man was too fast. So the jaguar collapsed in a ditch and the gingerbread man kept running.

‘And that was it?’ asked Derrick. ‘The Gingerbread Man got away.’

‘Well no,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It just so happens, that on that very morning, an Olympic marathon was being held in that neighbourhood.’

The Olympics were being held just down the road?!’ asked Michael.

‘I know it’s quite a coincidence isn’t it,’ said Nanny Piggins. All the roads were blocked off to cars, and pedestrains lined either side of the street, just as all the best runners in the world ran down through the village towards them. They were expecting the lead runner to be from Kenya or perhaps Ethiopia or maybe Japan. The world’s best runners often come from those parts of the world. 

So they were astonished to see, leading the pack, a ten inch high baked gingerbread biscuit. And the other runners weren’t going slowly. They’d been running for two hours already so they were ravenously hungry. They would have all dearly like a bite of gingerbread. 

But the gingerbread man was taunting them. ‘Run run as fast as you can. You can’t catch me. I’m the gingerbread man.’ And he was entirely right. The best runners in the world. Running as fast as they possibly could, could not catch the gingerbread man. He raced off into the distance leaving them in his wake.

‘And then he got away and lived happily ever after?’ asked Samantha.

‘Well no,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Eventually the gingerbread man, ran out of road. The road came to a river. It had rained a lot recently and the water was too deep for the gingerbread man to wade across. And being made of absorbant biscuit dough, he couldn’t swim because he would dissolve. He had no way of crossing. 

And while he had outrun Marg, the jaguar and all the Olympic runners, he knew they would not be far behind and he needed to get across. That is when he spotted a fox asleep on the river bank.

‘Oh dear,’ said Michael. Experience had taught him that stories never go well once a fox enters the action.

‘Excuse me Mr Fox,’ said the gingerbread man, because he could be polite when he wanted something. ‘Could you please swim me across this river.’

‘Now the fox was not a fool and he loved to eat things, particularly things he wasn’t supposed to,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘So naturally he said…’

‘Why of course, climb up on my back and I will swim you across the river.’

‘You do promise not to eat me?’ asked the gingerbread man.

‘Absolutley,’ said the fox. ‘Trust me. You can always trust a fox.’ This is a huge lie by the way. You can never trust a fox. Particularly if you are a chicken. Being delicious is such a burden. 

So the gingerbread man stepped forward and was just about to swing his leg over the foxes back when…’

‘The fox spun around and ate him?’ guessed Michael.

‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘He never got a chance. At that moment they heard the deafening roar of a motor bike engine. The gingerbread man looked up to see Marge fly over the hill on her Triumph motorbike, skid to halt right next to them and snatch up the gingerbread in her hand.

‘You can run faster than me and a jaguar and a whole pack of Olympic runners but you can’t outrun a 240 horsepower engine.’

‘What did the gingerbread man say?’ asked Samantha.

‘Nothing,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘He didn’t get a chance because Marge bit his head off. And let that be a lesson to you children. Never make your lunch into an animate being, it only leads to exercise which never help digestion. The end. Oh look, the chocolate shop is open. Let’s go!’

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