Hello and welcome to bedtime stories with me, R.A. Spratt. Todays’ story is…
‘The Little Red Pig’ as told by Nanny Piggins
Here we go…
It was late in the Green house, Derrick, Samantha and Michael had gathered around to hear a bedtime story from their beloved Nanny. Her brother, Boris snuggled in too. He may be a fully grown ten foot tall Kodiak bear but he was also Russian, so he enjoyed a good tale.
‘Children,’ began Nanny Piggins. ‘I shall now tell you a terrible story of hardship. It comes from the olden story days when life was so much more bitterly hard that the things we are forced to endure now, which are bad enough, let me tell you.
Ever since the supermarket got those very rude automatic checkout that fuss about unidentified objects in bagging areas I feel that a degree of civility has gone from our society.
But anyway in the olden story days things were even worse. The story I am about to tell you took place so long ago that the bakery had not been invented yet.
‘How terrible,’ whimpered Boris.
‘The cake mix had not been invented yet,’ continued Nanny Piggins.
‘Oh dear,’ said Derrick.
‘Not even self raising flour had not been invented yet,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Gosh,’ said Michael.
‘It is a testament to the amazing resilience of pigs that people were able to survive at all,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘What did pigs have to do with people surviving?’ asked Derrick.
‘People are pigs,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘They are?’ asked Derrick. ‘I thought people were people and pigs were pigs.’
‘That’s a very pigist attitude,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘If pigs are people,’ said Michael. ‘Does that mean that people are pigs?’
‘Oh no,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I love humans. Well…. I love you three humans. But generally speaking humans have a long way to go before they’re on par with pigs. Don’t take it personally. It’s a senses thing.’
‘Because our sense of smell isn’t as good?’ asked Michael.
‘Yes, no sense of smell,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘And no dress sense either. So few people buy from the top designers in Paris.’
‘You don’t see many pigs dressed in French designer clothes either,’ said Michael.
‘Only because they like to lead an active lifestyle and they don’t want to get mud on the fabric,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Anyway, I digress,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I wasn’t meant to be talking about the shoddy dress sense of humans. I was meant to be telling you a tale about the brutal dietary hardship of the olden story days. When it wasn’t just cake that needed to be made from scratch, but the ingrediants had to be made from scratch too. I shall tell you the story of little red pig.
‘Little Red Pig?’ said Derrick. ‘Is that anything like the story of Little Red Hen?’
‘Yes, it is remarkably similar,’ agreed Nanny Piggins. ‘That hen was a terrible plagorist.’
Michael did not want to appear ignorant so he leaned across and quietly asked Boris, ‘What’s a plagorist?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Boris. ‘Maybe it’s a game you play with a jaw and a wrist.’
‘A plagiarist is someone who steals someone elses ideas or words and uses them as their own,’ said Samantha.
‘Oh,’ said Michael, wrapping his head around this idea.
‘It happens to us Piggins’ a lot,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘People always want to get their hands on our cake recipes. Did you know, that Genghis Khan only formed the Mongul horde and rampaged all the way across Asia, the Middle East and Europe because he heard that my great Aunt Berta in Belgium had a particularly find chocolate gateaux recipe that he was desperate to plagiarise.’
‘Is that true?’ asked Derrick. There had been nothing about this in any of the history books he had ever read.
‘Oh yes,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Genghis was very proud of the deserts he served at his dinner parties. He may have destroyed entire civilisations. But it’s hard to stay angry with a despot just because he likes to maintain high dessert standards.’
‘Little Red Pig just happened to be a great great great times forty seven greats aunt of mine,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘Was she red?’ asked Michael. Nanny Piggins was pink. He had never seen a red pig. But Nanny Piggins relatives were incredibly glamorous so it wouldn’t surprise him if they were capable of anything.’
‘No silly, there’s no such thing as a red pig,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Except for great counsin Gerta who went to Fiji and fell asleep on the beach. She got sunburned so badly she was the same shade of red as a stop sign. But red suited her and she didn’t look a jot less fabulous. And, it made it much easier to spot her in a crowd.
No, Little Red Pig was a normal black coloured pig. She was called red because she wore a fabulous red cocktail dress designed for her personally by Yves Saint Laurant.
‘She always wore the same dress?’ asked Samantha.
‘No, Yves created six dresses for her, one for each day of the week,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘But there are seven days in the week,’ observed Michael.
‘On the seventh day she liked to rest,’ explained Nanny Piggins. ‘And her favourite place to rest was in a nice boggy mud hole, she wore her bathers for that. Coco Chanel designed those. Little Red Pig didn’t care for Coco’s designs as much. Black may be slimming but who wants to look slim when you could look fabulous.’
Anyway, Little Red Pig was a Piggins so of course naturally she did like a slice of cake. But as I say there were none readily available in cake form. She would have to make her own from scratch.
But she was a determined pig. You don’t wear cocktail frocks in farmyard unless you are determined to maintain standards.
So, she was prepared to do what it takes. The farmer had spilled some wheat outside the barn. He couldn’t be bothered picking it up (he was not a piggins), so Little Red Pig took it and planted it in a patch of earth.
The other farmyard animals saw what she was doing, digging and tilling the soil. And they laughed.
‘Are you farming?’ asked the Horse
‘What for?’ asked the Cow.
‘The farmer gives us all our food,’ pointed out the Sheep.
‘I am planting these seeds so I can grow my own wheat,’ explained Little Red Pig. ‘It is rather hard manual labour. I’m not used to using a hoe. Would you like to help me do the work?’
The farmyard animals laughed some more.
‘Not likely,’ said the Horse.
‘No way,’ said the Cow.
‘Not your nelly,’ said the Sheep.
A few days later the farmyard animals saw her watering the patch of earth.
‘What are you doing now?’ they asked.
‘I’m watering my seeds,’ said Little Red Pig. ‘According to the latest scientific break analysis, H2O is a vital ingredient to photosynthesis the process by which plants convert sunlight into carbohydrates necessary for their growth. But the watering can is a little heavy. Would you like to help?’
‘Not likely,’ said the Horse.
‘No way,’ said the Cow.
‘Not your nelly,’ said the Sheep.
And they went off laughing.
Little Red Pig tended her wheat over the weeks and eventually she had grown a lovely tall stand of the crop. She got a scythe and set to work harvesting.
‘What are you doing now?’ asked the farmyard animals.
‘I’m harvesting, can’t you see you great ninny?’ said Little Red Pig. She got a little testy at this point because there is only so much mouth-breathing ignorance one pig can take. ‘Do you want to help? If not, push off!”
‘Not likely,’ said the Horse.
‘No way,’ said the Cow.
‘Not your nelly,’ said the Sheep.
The animals left laughing.
It took Little Red Pig all day but by night fall she had collected all her wheat and taken it back to her home where she ground it up into flour and set to work baking a cake.
Naturally she was a Piggins so she already had Norwegian butter, Belgian chocolate and Jamaican sugar in her pantry. She combined all these ingredients and started to bake. The wonderful aroma wrapped around the farmyard.
All the farmyard animals could smell it. It was the most heavenly thing they had ever sniffed. And they had to spend a lot of time sniffing horrid things because they lived on a farm and you would be shocked to know how many animals who live on farms have no idea how to use a flush lavatory.
They all found themselves drawn to little red pig’s house and they watched in through the window as she opened the oven and drew out a staggeringly gorgeous chocolate cake. It was breathtaking. You know how the Mona Lisa is considered the most brilliant painting of all time?
‘Yes,’ said the children.
‘Well this cake was a million times more impressive artwork than that,’ said Nanny Piggins.
‘It was a work of culinary genius,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘It smelled so good it would put you into a coma of happiness if one sniff didn’t make you want to stay awake long enough to taste it.’
Little Red Pig turned around and saw that she had an audience.
‘What do you have there?’ asked the farmyard animals.
‘It’s a cake what do you think it is? A house brick?’ asked Little Red Pig.
‘It smells really good,’ said the horse.
‘It looks really good,’ said the cow.
‘I bet it tastes good,’ said the sheep.
‘Really, you think so?’ said Little Red Pig. ‘Would you like to try some?’
Yes, yes yes yes please,’ bellowed all the animals.
‘And she said no because they didn’t help her with any of the work?’ guessed Michael excitedly.
‘Michael, what have I told you about interrupting my stories when I get to the good bit?’ demanded Nanny Piggins.
‘Don’t do it unless I want a short sharp stomp on my foot,’ said Michael sheepishly.
‘Exactly,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘I’ll let you off this once, because all this talk of cake has probably addled your brain. But please do try harder in the future. Now where was I.’
‘The animals had just asked for a piece of cake,’ said Derrick.
‘And she was about to say no,’ said Samantha.
‘Ah, that’s where you’re wrong,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Cousin Little Red Pig said, Fine you can each have a slice…’
The farmyard animals cheering.
‘If…’ continued Little Red Pig. ‘You each give me one million dollars.’
‘What?’ said the Horse.
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ said the Cow.
‘We’re farmyard animals,’ said the Sheep. ‘We don’t have that kind of cash.’
‘Those are my terms,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You may have a slice for one million dollars. If you don’t want a slice, that’s fine. I will even give you a little bite each so you know what you’re missing out on.
The animals stepped forward as she carefully cut a quarter a teaspoon of cake and handed it to each of them to try. As soon as the cake touched their taste buds the farmyard animals realised they’d made a terrible mistake.
‘They realised they should have helped Little Red Pig grow her wheat?’ asked Michael.
‘No, they knew they had to get their hands on a million dollars each because the cake was so mind blowingly good there was no way they could live without it. They all ran off into the night to get a million dollars.’
‘How would a bunch of farmyard animals get a million dollars?’
‘A million dollars each,’ Nanny Piggins corrected. ‘I don’t know. I think there was some borrowing from wealthy elderly relatives, a bit of cypto-currency trading and perhaps some light bank robbery. Whatever it was, they all found the money and bought themselves a slice of cake.
And Little Red Pig took her millions and flew the French Riviera where a pig of with her fabulous sense of style was much more comfortable than a farmyard. The end time for bed.
But what’s the moral to the story?’ asked Michael.
‘The mole?’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘There were no moles in the story. It was about farm animals. Are you thinking of Wind in the Willows, that has a mole and a rat and a toad.’
‘No the moral,’ said Derrick. ‘The lesson you learn from hearing it.’
‘Oh, I don’t believe in stories that do things like that,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You need to develop a moral compass for yourselves. When you find yourself looking to fictional pigs for guidance, no matter how well dressed they are – you’re going to end up in trouble.
‘Come along, all that talk of cake has made me want to bake a cake,’
‘But you said it was bedtime,’ Samantha pointed out. It was nearly midnight.
‘Oh you’ll never get to sleep now,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘You need a nice heavy chocolate mudcake in your stomaches to weigh you down so you don’t roll around too much in your sleep. Come along. Last one to the kitchen is a rotten piece of tofu.
And they all took off running.
