Kitabı oku: «The Barry Loser Series»

First published in Great Britain 2016

by Jelly Pie an imprint of Egmont UK Ltd

The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN

Text and illustration copyright © Jim Smith 2016

The moral rights of the author-illustrator have been asserted.

ISBN 978 1 4052 6914 8

eISBN 978 1 7803 1432 7

barryloser.com www.jellypiecentral.co.uk www.egmont.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Group

56629/1

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It was the first Sunday of half term

and I was sitting in my sitting room

watching Future Ratboy with my best

friends, Bunky and Nancy Verkenwerken.

5

‘This is gonna be the keelest half

term EVER!’ I said.

‘Keel’ is how Future Ratboy, my

favourite TV superhero, says

‘cool’, in case you didn’t know.

6

‘YEAH!’ said Bunky, who’s sort of like

Future Ratboy’s sidekick, Not Bird,

except he’s not a bird. ‘I’m SO glad

we don’t have to go to babyish old

Pirate Camp any more!’

‘Me too!’ I said. ‘Pirate Camp

is for BABIES!’

7

Pirate Camp is the holiday camp that

me, Bunky and Nancy used to go to

every half term when we were

younger. It’s sort of like a nursery for

kiddywinkles, except it’s on Mogden

Island, which is an island in the middle

of Mogden Lake.

It’s owned by an unbelievakeely old

man called Burt Barnacle, who dresses

up as a pirate and goes on about

treasure the whole time.

8

He says there’s a whole chest of it,

buried somewhere on the island.

Not that we ever found any when

we were there.

9

‘I mean, who wants to sit around a

campfire singing songs about trees for

a whole week?’ said Bunky, waggling his

hands in the air, which is how he does

his impression of a tree.

‘YE-AH! Singing songs about trees is for

KIDDYWINKLES!’ I said, remembering

sitting round the campfire at Pirate

Camp with Bunky and Nancy, singing

about trees.

10

Sitting round a campfire singing about

trees wasn’t the only thing we did at

Pirate Camp, by the way. There was

also pirate face-painting, pirate

raft-making, lying under Burt’s giant

skull-and-crossbones parachute while

he whooshed it up and down, and

listening to him tell super-spookoid

ghost stories before we went to sleep

in our tents at night.

11

I was just realising that I actukeely

quite liked some of the stuff we got

up to at Pirate Camp when my mum

walked into the room carrying a

plateful of Feeko’s chocolate digestive

biscuits and three cans of Fronkle.

‘Here you go, kiddywinkles!’ she said,

ruffling my hair.

12

‘MU-UM! We’re not KIDDYWINKLES

any more!’ I said, sliding a biscuit off

the plate and slotting it into my

mouth.

‘Apologies for my mother,’ I said to

Bunky and Nancy, and they both

sniggled.

13

‘MAUREEN?’ cried my dad from

upstairs. ‘MAUREEN, DESMOND’S

POOED HIS NAPPY AGAIN!’

My dad was talking about my baby

brother, Desmond Loser the Second,

in case you didn’t know.

14

‘WELL, CHANGE IT THEN!’ screamed

my mum up the stairs, and she turned

back to us and started ringing. Which

was weird, because she isn’t a phone.

She’s my mum.

15

‘My new phone!’ smiled my mum,

pulling a huge great big shiny white

phone out of her pocket and sliding

her finger across the screen. ‘Loser

residence!’ she said, holding it up to

her ear.

16

‘What’s that I’m looking at?’ crackled

a voice out of the phone’s speaker.

‘Is that an ear or something?’

‘Ooh, must be a video call!’ said my

mum all proudly, and she took the

phone away from her ear and looked

at the screen. ‘Aunt Mildred!’ she smiled.

17

I hopped off the sofa and ran over to

my mum, tiptoeing a centimetre higher

so I could see the screen too. ‘Hi, Great

Aunt Mildred!’ I said, spluttering biscuit

crumbs all over Great Aunt Mildred’s

face, which was staring back at me.

It was at about this moment in the

history of the universe that I noticed

that Great Aunt Mildred’s nose was

about three times its usual size.

18

‘Are you OK, Aunt Mildred?’ said my mum. ‘Your nose looks a bit . . . puffy.’

‘That’s why I’m calling,’ said Great Aunt Mildred. ‘This little blighter bit me on the end of my hooter just now and the whole thing’s swollen up like an air bag!’

She held a jam jar up to the screen. Inside was a bright green beetle with six red legs and a humungaloid pair of pincers. ‘I was reaching for a banana when it jumped out of the fruit bowl!’ she warbled.

19

Bunky and Nancy slid off their bits of

the sofa and ran over to have a look

at Great Aunt Mildred’s nose. ‘She’s

right - it DOES look like an air bag!’

chuckled Bunky, as Nancy peered into

the jam jar on the screen.

‘Where are your bananas from?’ asked

Nancy.

‘Feeko’s Supermarket, of course!’ said

Great Aunt Mildred.

20

‘No, I meant what country!’ said Nancy,

and Great Aunt Mildred put the jam

jar down and wandered off, then

reappeared a millisecond later holding

a banana.

‘Sticker says “Grown in Smeldovia”,’

said Great Aunt Mildred, and Nancy

gasped.

‘I knew I recognised that insect - it’s a

Smeldovian Biting Banana Beetle,’ Nancy

said. ‘They’re extremely poisonous!’

21

I looked at Bunky and raised my favourite eyebrow.

‘Typikeel Nancy!’ I said, seeing as she

always knows stuff like that -

especially since she’d started going

along to her dad’s loserish nature club.

‘POISONOUS?’ gasped Great Aunt

Mildred, grabbing her nose. ‘What

does that mean?’ she whimpered.

‘It means I’m coming round right now!’

said my mum.

22

‘Call you when I get there!’ cried my

mum, reversing out of the driveway,

and we all waved. She’d thrown her

travel bag into the back seat of her

car, seeing as Great Aunt Mildred lived

about eight million miles away and

she’d have to stay until she was better,

which might be all week.

23

‘B-but, Maureen . . .’ warbled my dad,

bending over to pick up Desmond Loser

the Second. ‘What about my bad back?

I can’t look after Barry and Desmond

all on my own!’

‘Oh don’t be pathetic, Kenneth!’ said my

mum, honking the horn, and she was

gone. Which meant . . .

24

‘PARTY TIME!’ I shouted, running back

into the sitting room. I forward-rolled

on to the sofa and flopped my legs

over the back of it, settling down

to watch the rest of

Future Ratboy,

upside-down-stylee. ‘This half term is

gonna be AMAZEKEEL!’

‘It is NOT party time!’ shouted my dad,

marching into the room and plonking

Desmond on the carpet. ‘ARGH, MY

BACK!’ he cried, taking about three

hours to straighten up again.

25

Future Ratboy ended and I flipped myself backwards off the sofa, somersaulting through the air and landing bum-first on the coffee table.

‘I know - let’s jump up and down on

my mum and dad’s bed!’ I cried,

waggling my hands around like a tree.

‘Keelness times a millikeels!’ shouted

Bunky, and me, him and Nancy all

ran upstairs.

26

‘THAT’S ENOUGH!’ boomed my dad,

barging into the bedroom once we’d

been bouncing up and down on the

bed long enough for his bedside table

to have juddered halfway across the

room. He plonked Desmond down and

something went snap. ‘MY BACK!’ he

screamed again, waddling over to the

bed and flomping down on it, bent in

half like an L.

27

‘POOWEE, what’s that stink?’ snuffled

Bunky, jumping off the bed and

waggling his nose in the air, and we

all looked at Desmond.

Desmond’s face had turned red and

his eyes were rolling in their sockets.

28

‘Er, Da-ad? I think Desmond’s doing

another poo-oo?’ I said, sniggling to

Bunky and Nancy, and they both bent

in half like Ls too, except out of

laughter instead of pain.

‘RIGHT, THAT’S IT!’ shouted my dad

from the bed. ‘BUNKY, NANCY, YOU’RE

GOING HOME!’

29

‘Apologies for my father - I’ll call

you later,’ I said, as Bunky and Nancy

walked off down the road, and I

slammed the front door and stomped

back upstairs to my mum and dad’s

room. ‘THANK YOU VERY MUCH

INDEED!’ I shouted, once I got there.

30

My dad was lying on the floor, wiping

Desmond’s bum. ‘I can’t do this, Barry . . .’

he whimpered, still bent in half like an L.

‘You look like you’re doing fine to me,’

I said, thinking how there was no way

I was EVER going to have a baby,

seeing as it’s bad enough wiping my

OWN bum, let alone someone else’s too.

31

‘That’s not what I meant,’ said my dad,

passing me a plastic bag full of poo.

‘What DID you mean, then?’ I said,

except it came out as ‘Dot DID do deen,

den?’ because I’d stuffed two of my

spare fingers up my nostrils.

‘I can’t look after you and Desmond on

my own, Barry,’ said my dad. ‘I think

you might have to go to Pirate Camp

for the rest of half term . . .’

32

‘But I don’t WANT to go to Pirate

Camp!’ I shouted for the millikeelth

time, thirteen and three quarter hours

later. It was Monday morning and

I was sitting in the back seat of my

dad’s car on the way to Mogden Pier,

which is where the ferry for Mogden

Island leaves from.

33

‘Why not?’ said my dad. ‘I thought you

LOVED Pirate Camp.’

‘I USED to love Pirate Camp, but not

any more . . . it’s for BABIES!’ I cried,

and Desmond, who was sitting next to

me in his baby seat, started giggling.

‘You should fit in there just perfectly,

then!’ said my dad, and I screwed my

face up and stared at him in the

rear-view mirror.

34

‘What in the unkeelness does THAT

mean?’ I whined.

‘You’re a big brother now, Barry,’ said

my dad. ‘You can’t go screaming round

the house acting like a kiddywinkle any

more . . .’

‘I am NOT a KIDDYWINKLE!’ I shouted,

stomping my feet on the car’s carpet

and crossing my arms.

35

‘Yes, well, until you can prove you’ve

grown up a bit, I’m afraid you’ll need

to stay on Mogden Island with all the

other little babies,’ said my dad.

‘I bet MUM wouldn’t send me to

Pirate Camp!’ I shouted.

‘As a matter of fact, I spoke to your

mum on the phone this morning and

she thinks it’s a great idea,’ said my

dad. ‘Who knows - maybe you’ll

surprise yourself and enjoy it!’

36

‘Maybe you’ll surprise YOURself!’ I

shouted, which didn’t really make

sense, but I wasn’t in the mood to

care. ‘Thanks for ruining my half

term!’ I grumbled, and I stared out

of the window at the ginormous

billboard we were driving past.

37