Buch lesen: «The Barry Loser Series»

Contents

Cover

Copyright

Title Page

Pirate camp

Great Aunt Mildred

Party time

The stink

Wiping someone else’s bum

Time to grow up

Donald Cox

Mogden Pier

Clowny Wowny

Captain Two Fingers

Sally Bottom

Morag Barnacle

Nettle forest

’Ere we are

Loser in the middle

Gordy-wordy

The missing poles

Renard Dupont

Toilet mopping

Very bad news indeed

Renard’s idea

Snoring Morag

Trying to get out of actukeely doing anything

Futur garçon de rat

The broken mirror

Abracadabkeels

Run for it

Loser Island

The clues

Bogie Islands

Smelly bogies

Everyone dig!

Smallest treasure chest ever

Biggest letdown ever

The storm

Furry hand

Giant woodlouse

Brilliant and amazekeel idea

Real-life Donald Cox

Fake fingernails

Mr Verkenwerken, nature expert

Donald Cox’s Luxury Wooden Lodges

Giant Sabre-toothed Woodlouse

Nose droop

Darren’s phone

Loser Camp

About the author and drawer

Praise for my other books

Back series promotional page

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.

‘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.

‘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!’

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.

He says there’s a whole chest of it, buried somewhere on the island. Not that we ever found any when we were there.

‘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.

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.

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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

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.

‘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.

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.

‘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!’

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.

‘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.

‘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 . . .

‘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.

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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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!’

‘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.

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.

‘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 . . .’