'Snoring Beauty' told by Nanny Piggins

Nanny Piggins tells the true story of 'Sleeping Beauty', the fairy who betrayed her, her irrational desire to get her ears pierced and the royal medical student who tried to cure her sleep apnoea.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to Bedtime Stories with me, R.A. Spratt. Today's story is 'Snoring Beauty' as told by Nanny Piggins.

Here we go...

‘Once upon a time, a princess was born. She was the most beautiful baby anyone had ever seen,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘I thought you didn’t approve of superficial judgements based on a appearances,’ said Derrick.

I don’t,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘For humans. Humans have so many other features you can judge them on. Like whether they’re a great big galloot, or a really aggravating nincompoop. Physical appearance should never come in to your judgement of a person.’

‘But wasn’t this princess a person?’ asked Michael.

‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I said she was the most beautiful baby anyone had ever seen.’

The children just stared at their nanny. Their brows creased as they struggled to follow her reasoning.

‘So naturally she was a pig,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Oooh,’ said the children, finally catching on.

‘Her eyes twinkled, her skin glistened and her cute little trotters wiggled,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘She looked good enough to…’

‘Eat?’ suggested Derrick.

‘How dare you!’ denounced Nanny Piggins. ‘We will have no talk of eating bacon or pork in this house.’

‘Sorry Nanny Piggins,’ apologised Derrick.

‘She looked good enough to cuddle,’ said Nanny Piggins giving Derrick one last firm glare.

‘The King and Queen were incredibly proud,’ continued Nanny Piggins. ‘They wanted to show off their baby to everyone. So they threw a party. Naturally they were hoping to get really good gifts, so they had to be careful about the guest list.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Samantha.

‘Well every family has those delinquent relatives who give terrible gifts,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The cheap ones who give you a second-hand book off their own bookshelf, or worse the ones who buy a poor child in Africa a goat.’

‘It’s nice to help poor people in Africa,’ said Samantha.

‘But I want a goat too!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Give them goats on their own birthdays. On my birthday, I want my own goat!”

They had clearly stumbled on a sensitive subject for Nanny Piggins, so Derrick encouraged her to move the story along.

‘So they invited nice guests,’ prompted Derrick.

‘Yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They invited all the fairies in the land. Which is very clever when you think about it. Because fairies are magical. So they’re not going to get you some lousy gift card to the nearest stationary shop. They’ll magic up something really good. And they were a hundred percent correct. As the fairies arrived they were all so enchanted by the beautiful little baby piglet that they magiced up the best present they could imagine. Dancing slippers that would make her be a spectacular ballerina. A comb that would make her hair perfect every single day even if she forgot to wash it for three weeks. A pure white pony that picked up its own poo and smelled of lavender bath salts. The King and Queen were over the moon. Their plan was working brilliantly, until an uninvited guest arrived. She was… bad fairy.

‘I didn’t know there was such thing as bad fairies,’ said Michael.

‘Yes, you don’t hear about them as much,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Because they’re too cheap and miserly to pay for a publicist.’

‘What do bad fairies do?’ asked Samantha.

‘Well you know how good fairies give children money in exchange for teeth,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Yes,’ said the children.

‘It’s disgusting and unhygienic and I’m pretty sure it must violate about a hundred medical waste disposal regulations,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And just think, they are the good fairies, the ones who take children’s teeth. So the bad ones are really really bad.’

‘How bad?’ asked Derrick.

‘Have you ever been walking along when suddenly you trip, and when you look down there’s nothing there?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

The children nodded.

‘That is the work of a bad fairy,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They use magic to lift up paving stones, then pull them back down again. To make people think they are too stupid to walk.’

‘That’s not too bad,’ said Michael.

‘Not to bad!’ exclaimed Nanny Piggins, ‘Do you know how many wrists get broken world-wide as the result of people tripping over nothing.’

‘A lot?’ guessed Samantha.

‘78,000 last year alone,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And the worst part is, they enjoy it. These bad faries love the sound of bones cracking, flesh squelching and people sobbing in pain. It’s music to their ears. So naturally, not ideal guests at a christening party.’

‘And because she had not been invited, this bad fairy in a very bad mood,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘She spat in the punch bowl. Knocked the cucumber sandwiches on the floor and purposefully stood on the Queen’s toe. Which was just spiteful because the Queen had a corn on that toe so it really hurt. Just when the King and Queen thought things couldn’t get any worse the bad fairy spotted the baby.

‘Let me see the little weeny baby,’ cried the bad fairy.

‘You won’t hurt her will you?’ asked the Queen nervously. She desperately wanted to throw the fairy out, but when the guards saw that the fairy was stomping on toes, they had all pretended they needed to go to the toilet at once so she wouldn’t stomp on them.

‘I won’t hurt the icky bitty baby,’ said the bad fairy. ‘I just want to give her a present.’

‘Common sense should have told the King and Queen to forget it,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They should have crash tackled the bad fairy right then and there. And dragged her out of the castle themselves. But the problem was – the King and Queen were greedy. Like many people who are incredibly rich and have everything, they only wanted more. Because they knew better than anybody how lovely it was to have lovely things. As soon as they heard the word ‘present’, they wanted that present. After all the bad fairy had already spat in the punch bowl, so they felt they had earned a present from her. 

‘Alright then,’ said the Queen. 

The bad fairy made her way over to the basinet and peered inside at the perfectly perfect little bundle of pink inside. The beautiful baby looked up at her wicked face and because babies have no ability to control depth perception at that age, she smiled. The bad fairy smiled back, but hers was a nasty smile. The smile of someone about to do something unfathomably naughty.

‘I curse you, so that with one prick of your finger you will fall into a the deepest sleep for 100 years!’ said the bad fairy. 

Everyone was shocked and horrified. The bad fairy cackled evilly and disappeared in a puff of smoke.

The King and Queen did not know what to do. They may have been silly but they loved their baby so much. They had to protect her. They ordered it - that all needles and pins be removed from the castle. 

But they still lay awake at night worrying, so they also ordered that all needles and pins should be banished from  the entire city and after that, the whole kingdom. 

People’s pants were falling down everywhere. Socks were full of holes and no shirt had more than half it’s buttons because no one could do any sewing.

But the baby was alright. And the people didn’t mind their pants falling down and their shirts flapping open because the baby grew up to be so beautiful and kind and really good at solving mechanical problems so she was forever fixing peoples washing machines and lawn mower engines. The people of the kingdoms just loved her. And over the years, they found with super glue and gaffer tape you didn’t really need sewing at all.

Eventually the princess grew into a beautiful young woman. At the age of eighteen she had beautiful long blonde hair, kind eyes and freakish awesome wrist strength so she was forever being called upon to open jam jars for old people. The world was her oyster. She could have done anything she wanted. Unfortunately, the one things she really wanted was…

To sew? Asked Samantha.

‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘To get a flu injection?” guessed Michael.

‘No,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘The one things she really wanted was to get her ear pierced.

‘Why?’ asked Samantha. Earrings looked nice. But not nice enough to go into a sleep for 100 years for.

‘Well you see the King and Queen, like so many super powerful oligarchs, had absolutely no common sense. Zero, zilch, nada.’ Said Nanny Piggins. ‘To protect the Princess. They had decided to never tell her about the curse.’

‘But that’s just silly,’ said Derrick.

‘I know!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘But have you ever noticed how many fairy tales are caused by people in a position of power being very silly indeed.’

Derrick, Samantha and Michael ran through all the fairy tales they could think of in their heads and they had to concede this was true of pretty much all of them.

‘So the Princess had no idea what the potential ramifications of getting an earring might be,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘She just thought it would be cool to have skull and cross bones dangling from her ear lobe. Obviously there was nowhere in her kingdom she could get it done because of the no needles or pins law. So she decided to visit the next kingdom. 

She saddled her horse and rode off into the forest.

The princess was just riding through the forest on her way to the next kingdom when she came across the bad fairy. 

The Princess had no memory of her own christening so she called out to her. ‘Excuse me madam, can you tell me the way to the nearest ear piercing salon?’

‘I do indeed,’ said the bad fairy. ‘It just so happens that I am a qualified ear piercer.’

‘She was?’ asked Michael.

‘No silly, she was a wicked liar,’ explained Nanny Piggins.

‘Oh,’ said Michael.

‘I just so happen to have a rusty nail handy,’ continued the bad fairy. ‘I can pierce your ears right now!’

And before the Princess has time to say no thank you, or do you have any Dettol to dip that in first. The bad fairy jammed the nail in her ear. A wave of exhaustion washed over her. 

‘What’s happening to me?’ asked the Princess.

‘You’re going beddy by time,’ said the bad fairy gleefully. ‘That will teach you not to invite me to your christenting.’

‘But I had no input on the guest list,’ yawned the Princess.

‘Tough,’ said the Bad Fairy.

With that, the Princess collapses in the meadow into a deep sleep. 

‘Now one day, Neville was riding through a forest,’ said Nanny Piggins. 

‘Was he a Prince?’ asked Samantha.

‘Well yes actually he was, how did you know?’ asked Nanny Piggins.

‘Princes seemed to spent a lot of time riding around in forests in the olden story days,’ said Samantha.

‘Was he looking for a Princess?’ asked Michael.

‘No actually, he was looking for somewhere quiet,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You see Prince Neville couldn’t stand all the usual princely duties. Eventually he knew he would have to become King, but until then he wanted to do something useful with his time, so he was studying to become a doctor. The problem was that Neville had nine younger brothers and sisters and there was never a moment of peace and quiet in his castle, so he had ridden out into the forest to find a quiet spot to read. 

This actually took him a while because most forest isn’t that comfortable. It looks nice in pictures, but when you actually sit on it the ground is damp, the fallen logs are full of bitey insects, the plants have prickles. 

So Neville road deeper and deeper into the forest until But eventually he came to a lovely spot by the river bank with thick grass and lovely warm sunshine. He got down from his horse, took out his books and was just about to start work when he heard it.’

‘Heard what?’ asked Derrick.

‘A dreadful noise,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘At first he thought it was a helicopter coming into land. Which was ridiculous because internal combustion engines had not been invented yet, let alone helicopters.’

‘Then he wondered if it was an avalanche, it was that deafeningly loud and the ground was shaking, but there were no mountains nearby and you can’t have an avalanche without a mountain. So Neville went in search of the sound. 

‘Why didn’t he just run away?’ asked Derrick. ‘If it was such a terrible noise?

 ‘You don’t understand because you only have two siblings and they are nice, trust me as a pig with 13 identical fourteenuplet sisters all of who are evil,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Finding a quiet and peaceful spot is a joy not to be underestimated. No, Neville had finally found a nice place to read, he was going to make whatever was making that noise go away instead. 

He was very determined for a Prince. It was no an easy task. As he walked towards the sound the forest got thicker, the bushes denser the trees taller, everything was darker. Eventually he came to a clearing and in the middle of the clearing was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.

‘The Princess?!’ exclaimed Michael. He couldn’t help himself. He was getting sucked into the romance of the story.

‘Yes, the beautiful Princess,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And she was making the most horrendous noise ever heard. She was snoring.

‘What?’ exclaimed the children. This had not been mentioned in other versions of Sleeping Beauty they had heard.

‘She sounded like chainsaw, that had not been maintained properly, and was being used to attack a set of bagpipes,’ said Nannhy Piggins. ‘It was the most utterly dreadful cacophony ever heard before or since.’

‘And yet, he fell in love with her at first sight?’ ssked Samantha.

‘Of course not,’ said Nanny Piggins. The poor man was seriously concerned that he was about to get industrial deafness. Romance was the furthest thing from his mind. But Neville was a doctor in training, and his doctor instincts kicked in.’

‘He knew that snoring can be a symptom of sleep apnea. So Neville hurried forward to see if the Princes needed any medical attention. When he got to her side, she did that thing people do sometimes when they’re snoring. Mid snore, she suddenly snorted loudly, then stopped.’ 

‘Now you have to remember, that Neville was only a medical student, not a fully qualified doctor yet. So he wasn’t sure what had happened to her. He hadn’t got to the chapter on treating princesses in enchanted sleep yet. He thought she had suddenly stopped breathing. And Neville did know what you are supposed to do when someone stops breathing.’ 

‘Call an ambulance?’ guessed Michael.

‘He could hardly do that!’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Telephones, nor ambulances had been invented yet. They didn’t even have hospitals back in the olden story days. So even if there had been telephones and ambulances, they could have just picked her up and driven her around and around the block. What good would that do?

‘So what did he do?’ asked Samantha. 

He decided to commence CPR,’ said Nanny Piggins.

‘Cardio Pulmonry Resusitation?’ said Derrick. He had been forced to learn how to do this himself at swim school. He hadn’t enjoyed it. He hadn’t imagined that his first kiss would be with an armless legless plastic mannequin.

‘The kiss of life,’ nodded Michael knowingly.

‘Precisely,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘He took a firm pinch of her nose, leaned over and clamped his lips over hers. But he never got a chance to breath out, because she instantly woke up. The spell had been broken.’

‘And she fell in love at first sight?’ asked Samantha.

‘No, she slapped him hard across the face,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘She immediately apologised profusely. She hadn’t meant to. But she had studied women’s self defense at the PCYC and she reacted reflexsively.’

‘Then he fell in love?’ guessed Derrick.

‘Well no,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Not straight away.’

You see, the Princess had slapped Neville rather hard, and his nose started to bleed. And at the first sight of blood, his knees went to water, his stomach churned and all the blood felt like it ran out of his head down to his shoes. He was utterly squeamish. 

Being a prince he had never had bumps and bruises like a normal child because who is going to knock over or tackle a royal prince? Seeing the blood gush from his nose, Neville fainted dead away.

Now you have to understand that the Princess had no idea what was going on. She had been asleep this whole time. As far as she knew she was on her way to get her ears pierced and she had drifted off.

But as she leaned over the Prince and looked at his face, she saw how kind his face looked – if rather pale at that moment – and she fell in love. So she leaned over and very carefully gave him a gentle kiss. 

Neville’s eyes flickered open and the Princess said… ‘I do.’ 

‘Do what?’ asked Neville. 

‘I do accept your marriage proposal,’ said the Princess. 

‘I didn’t propose,’ said the Prince. 

‘I know,’ said the Princess. ‘But I am a royal princess and kissing one of us is the same as proposing.’ 

‘I didn’t kiss you I was rendering first aid,’ said Neville, between the blood, the slap and the fainting he was very confused.

‘You were rendering first aid with your lips?’ asked the Princess.

‘It’s a genuine life saving technique,’ argued Neville. 

‘You not getting out of it with that excuse,’ said the Princess firmly.  

‘And he didn’t,’ said Nanny Piggins. But it didn’t take him long to realise that he didn’t want to. While it is wise to be wary of marrying someone stunningly good looking. But if you ever find someone who can fix a washing machine themselves and then you just have to snap them up right away. 

And so they all lived happily ever after, all the appliances in the kingdom were excellently maintained, and everyone had the very best medical care. 

The end, time for bed.

Thank you for listening. To support this podcast just buy a book by me, R.A. Spratt. There are plenty to choose from across the Nanny Piggins, Friday Barnes and Peski Kids series. You can order them through your local bookstore or go to my website, raspratt.com and click on the Book Depository banner. They've got all my titles and free international shipping. That's it for now, until next time. Goodbye.