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she concentrated hard. ‘Beating a flying armadillo shouldn’t be too difficult.’
    ‘But you can’t do it,’ said Samantha. ‘You don’t have a cannon. And your old circus is miles away. And even if it wasn’t, the Ringmaster would never lend you his cannon.’ (The children had met the Ringmaster so they knew he was a very wicked man indeed.)
    ‘Piffle,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘Finding a cannon is the easiest thing in the world.’
    ‘It is?’ asked Derrick, who would not mind having access to a cannon for dealing with Barry Nicholas, the school bully.
    ‘Of course,’ said Nanny Piggins. ‘They always have them at war museums.’
    The children could not deny this because there were indeed several large cannons outside the war museum in town.
    ‘But they aren’t for people to use,’ said Samantha.
    ‘Of course they are,’ argued Nanny Piggins. ‘Why else would they leave them outside, if they didn’t want people to borrow them?’
    ‘Um …’ said Samantha as she tried to think of a better explanation, then realised there wasn’t one.
    ‘But if we take a cannon from the war museum, won’t the war veterans think that is very rude?’ asked Derrick.
    ‘If you had survived some bloodthirsty and horrific war, would you rather see a cannon stuck outside a museum where grubby children and tourists climb all over it, or at Dead Man’s Gorge blasting a pig further than any pig has ever been blasted before?’
    The children had to assume that, like them, the veterans would want to see the flying pig. So later that day Nanny Piggins and the children caught thebus into town and went to borrow a cannon. They took Boris with them, because if you are planning to move a gigantic cannon, it is handy to have a seven-hundred-kilogram bear with you to help with the heavy lifting.
    There were several cannons to choose from outside the war museum so Nanny Piggins picked the biggest (her usual policy when choosing anything). Now you might think that security guards, the police or even just good-hearted bystanders would stop this ‘borrowing’ from taking place in broad daylight. But, as it turned out, the sight of a pig, a bear and three children taking a cannon from outside the war museum was so strange that no-one thought to challenge them.
    (Now I must make one thing clear – Nanny Piggins does not encourage theft. She knows stealing is wrong. It is always, always wrong. But borrowing is okay. And as Nanny Piggins always says – if you must borrow something without asking, do it in broad daylight. It gives it a veneer of respectability.)
    There was some trouble getting the cannon home. It was a World War I fifteen-inch Howitzer and weighed about six tons, so there was no way it was going to fit through the door of the bus. Plus they were not sure whether the bus driver wouldgive a cannon a ticket. Nanny Piggins thought they should if they allowed baby pushchairs on the bus. But the children suspected that the bus driver would see baby pushchairs and cannons as belonging to two separate categories.
    Fortunately the dilemma was solved when Nanny Piggins had a brilliant idea. She got Derrick to distract the bus driver by pretending he had been bitten by a venomous snake. And while he writhed on the floor in pretend pain, Nanny Piggins took the belt off her dress and tied the cannon to the back bumper of the bus. So the cannon was dragged back to Mr Green’s house without any problem (although the bus did not get above five kilometres an hour the whole way).
    Back at home, Nanny Piggins, Boris and the children considered what to do next. ‘We’ve got a cannon,’ said Derrick, ‘so is that it? Are you all ready for your duel?’
    ‘Not quite,’ admitted Nanny Piggins. ‘I haven’t been blasted out of a cannon for months. I’m out of shape.’
    Boris patted Nanny Piggins comfortingly on the hand. ‘I didn’t like to say anything. But I’m glad you know.’
    ‘What shape do you need to be to be blasted