by Mark Lowery
Contents
Title Page
By Mark Lowery
Dedication
End of Term
What I REALLY Wanted
Monday
Morning – We Become Famous and Gamble Uses the Swimming Pool
Lunchtime – The Menu Is Explosive, and Jason Does a Runner
Tuesday
Gamble Finds Out about His Future and We Have Another Visitor
Wednesday
Gamble Is Useful and I Am a Terrible Human Being
Thursday
Morning – Gamble Is Helpful and I Show Off My Skills at Rounders
Evening: The Night of the Prom – My Fairy Godmother Arrives and I Go Out for a Kiss
Epilogue
About Mark Lowery
Copyright
BY MARK LOWERY
The Roman Garstang Adventures
The Jam Doughnut that Ruined My Life
The Chicken Nugget Ambush
Attack of the Woolly Jumper
The Great Caravan Catastrophe
Revenge of the Spaghetti Hoops
Charlie and Me: 421 Miles from Home
To Sar, Jam, Sam and Ol
A lot of people wish they were famous.
They dream of being singers, movie stars, YouTube vloggers or people who hold the world record for peeling bananas with their ears.
They dream that one day magazines and the internet will be full of stories about who their new boyfriend is, or what kind of cheese they like, or how they lost loads of weight by only eating soil.
They dream that everywhere they go people will recognise them: photographers snapping away as they leave the house, fans mobbing them as they ride their bike, total strangers begging them for selfies as they try to use a public toilet.
It sounds like a nightmare to me.
Rosie Taylor in my class (AKA the worst person who has ever lived ever) is totally desperate for fame. Last Christmas, her dad paid for an aeroplane to fly around the whole country, pulling the following message behind it:
Follow @RosieTaylor – she is a far twinklier and more beautiful person than you or anyone else you know #queenofcelebrities
But the message was so long and flappy that, during take-off, it got caught in the wheels of the plane and ripped in half. As a result, people looked up into the sky that day and saw an aeroplane flying past, pulling a tattered banner behind it that read:
Follow @RosieTaylor – she is a far t
She got a million followers within just a few hours. Unfortunately, she was so upset by all the rude messages and comments she received that she had to close down all her social media accounts and start again. You can probably guess the kinds of things that people sent to her, so I won’t repeat all of them here. My favourite was ‘Are you friends with Donald Trump?’
But that’s the problem with fame. No matter how hard you try, you can’t really control what you’re famous for. One of my (two) friends, Darren Gamble, got on the national news last year after he broke into a hospital and tried to steal a dead person.
Yes, that’s correct. A dead person.
Luckily, the dead person was actually just asleep in his wheelchair, and he woke up screaming before Gamble could drive him off in a stolen ambulance.
If that’s the kind of thing you have to do to be famous, then it’s not for me. In any case, I hate the thought of people knowing who I am. All I’ve ever wanted is to have a quiet life and to be left alone.
Unfortunately, what I want and what I get are very rarely the same thing.
My name’s Roman Garstang, and my final week of school was ruined by a famous person. Oh, and some evil spaghetti hoops, but I’ll tell you about them later.
It was my last week in Year Six. My plan was to leave primary school without any fuss:
Clear my tray.
Give Mrs McDonald that manky three-year-old box of chocolates from the back of the cupboard that nobody will eat because the label’s in Russian.
Go home.
Have a few doughnuts to celebrate.
Set fire to my uniform in the back garden, while dancing around the flames in my pants.
You know, all the usual stuff.
No drama. No stress. No excitement.
But it didn’t work out like that.
I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t I want a fuss? Why am I so bothered about having a quiet life? Leaving primary school is a big deal. Any normal person would want to celebrate and have a party. I must be about as much fun to be around as a sack of diarrhoea.
I don’t care if people think I’m boring. I want my life to be boring. I’ve had enough excitement recently. In the last few months I’ve:
– shaved a guinea pig,
– caused a flock of old people to riot,
– been weed on inside a giant floating plastic ball,
– had a flying badger fall in love with me,
– and been in a stolen car as it dragged an exploded caravan through a field with a naked man hanging off the back.
See. If you were me, you’d want a boring life too.
In fact, there was only one thing I was looking forward to during the whole of my last week at school.
My school has a brilliant tradition. It’s called YEAR SIX RANDOM MENU WEEK. During the last week of the school year, the Year Sixes who are leaving get to choose what everyone in the school eats for lunch.
So, the week before, the school cook came into class and got each of us to write down our dream lunchtime menu. She said that she’d cook the best ones, but we had to be sensible. Most people wrote boring stuff like cheeseburgers and hot dogs. Gamble put ‘roadkill kebabs’. Rosie Taylor’s suggestion was: ‘Mince up Roman and turn him into meatballs’.
I think that I came up with the absolute best choice of all, even if I do say so myself:
MAIN COURSE
Sausage, baked bean and cheese doughnut
DESSERT
Raspberry jam doughnut
Oh yes. Double doughnut.
I love doughnuts. And when I say I love doughnuts, I don’t just mean I love eating doughnuts. I mean that my dream is to one day marry a lady-doughnut and have a whole bunch of human-doughnut children.
After all of the terrible things that’d happened to me recently, I’d completely stopped eating any other food. Mum was getting worried. Apparently, it’s a ‘bad thing’ if you eat thirteen doughnuts a day and nothing else.
So, a few weeks before the end of term, she’d started stuffing all of my meals inside doughnuts so I would eat more. It sounds strange but it worked!
I’d gobbled down meat pie and mash doughnuts. I’d stuffed my face with roast dinner doughnuts. I’d even eaten a salad doughnut (although I had picked out all of the salad first and replaced it with jam. I’m not mental).
But the best one of all – the ultimate, most supersonic, world champion doughnut meal – was the sausage, baked beans, cheese and jam doughnut.
This might seem horrible but let me tell you, it is DEEEELICIOUS (even better than a raspberry jam doughnut, and that is saying something)! Imagine: all the sweet, fluffy joy of a doughnut, mixed with cheesy, beany, sausagey goodness. Seriously, it’s probably the greatest thing ever invented. Better than the wheel. Better than the internet. Better than the beard.
And if you don’t believe me, try one! The recipe is simple:
1. Take six jam doughnuts.
2. Slice three of them in half. Scoop out the jam and some of the dough.
3. Save the jam. Eat the dough.
4. Stuff each hollow doughnut with a sausage and a spoonful of beans.
5. Put the top half of the doughnut back on.
6. Spread the
jam on top and sprinkle with grated cheese.
7. Put under the grill until the cheese and jam start to bubble.
8. Eat.
9. Have the other three jam doughnuts for dessert.
10. Try not to explode with happiness.
Yum-yum. Lovely.
A double doughnut and some quiet time: were they too much to ask for from my last week at school?
What do you think? This is me we’re talking about.
We Become Famous and Gamble Uses the Swimming Pool
‘So, Year Six,’ cooed Mrs McDonald, my teacher, ‘welcome to your final ever week at primary school!’
Everyone cheered.
Well, apart from Miss Clegg (Darren Gamble’s teaching assistant). She didn’t just cheer. She jumped up on her chair and started singing: ‘Oh yeah! Five more days and he’ll be gone forever!’
Miss Clegg is meant to look after Gamble and keep him out of trouble, but she hates him and she’s completely useless at her job. Last month he drank the ink out of the school photocopier and she didn’t try to stop him or anything. In fact, she even sat down to watch with a bag of popcorn and said: ‘Oooh. This should be good – that stuff’s extremely poisonous.’
‘Miss Clegg, please,’ said Mrs McDonald.
‘Oh, sorry!’ grinned Miss Clegg, who was now robot dancing. ‘Got carried away.’
She flopped back down in her seat to reveal Gamble sitting next to her. His little bald, peanut head was twitching up and down, and two filthy rivers of tears were pouring down his face. I hadn’t seen him this upset since the school confiscated his samurai sword.
‘Darren. What’s wrong?’ asked Mrs McDonald, concerned.
Miss Clegg sniffed. ‘His pet maggot probably ran away cos it couldn’t stand the smell.’
‘No!’ wailed Gamble, ‘I’m upset cos I don’t want to go to high school in September. I want to stay here with you, Mrs McDonald, cos I love you!’
I felt sorry for Gamble. He sounded so sad and sweet and delicate. But then he ruined it by turning back to Miss Clegg and growling, ‘So shut your gob, you big, hairy gorilla’s boob!’
‘Oh, Darren. I’ll miss you too,’ said Mrs McDonald, trying to ignore the last bit. Gamble gets away with loads of stuff, otherwise Mrs McDonald wouldn’t have time to breathe. ‘But don’t worry. You’ll still have your friends. Like Roman.’
I forced a smile. Gamble is fifty per cent of my friends. Despite everything, I do kind of like him, but he does scare me a bit. He’s like a puppy that can hop on to your lap and lick your face one minute, then suddenly bite you or go to the toilet in your shoes the next.
And yes, Gamble actually does do all of those things.
Gamble bashed his desk with his fist. ‘You’re right, Mrs McDonald. At least I’ll have my best mate, Roman. We’ll be together forever!’
Before I could move, he’d jumped out of his seat, scrambled across two tables, dived on top of me and clamped on like one of those blobs that live in rock pools.
‘I’ll never let you go, Roman!’ he howled.
‘Great,’ I croaked, trying not to breathe through my nose.
Miss Clegg looked at me. ‘You’ll have to get the army to blow up your jumper after that filthy little beast’s been near it.’
Normally, Gamble would’ve retaliated at this comment, but Mrs McDonald distracted him by asking, ‘Who wants to hear our big news?’
Darren jerked his head back, leaving a sticky slug trail on my jumper. ‘Are we allowed to smoke cigarettes in class from now on?’
‘Er … no,’ said Mrs McDonald.
He let go of me and tramped back to his place, muttering, ‘What’s the point of being here?’
‘Are we finally going to bury Roman alive?’ asked Rosie Taylor, the worst person in the world. ‘You can get this stuff that’ll totally dissolve his body in three days. There’ll be – like – nothing left of him. Hashtag: as if he never existed.’
‘Oh, stop being horrible Rosie,’ said Vanya Goyal, who was sitting next to me.
Vanya is the other fifty per cent of my friends. She’s a lot better than Gamble though.
In fact, saying that Vanya and Gamble are my best friends is like saying that my two favourite foods are 1) doughnuts and 2) spiders that drop into my mouth when I’m asleep. I.e. one’s lovely and I really like them, the other one’s disgusting and I don’t have any choice over them at all.
‘Yeah, Rosie, stop being horrible to Roman or I’ll bite your eyes off,’ said Gamble.
Rosie pursed her slug’s bum mouth and folded her arms across her new black-and-white fur coat.
‘Ahem, Rosie,’ said Mrs McDonald, ‘is that jacket school uniform?’
Rosie rolled her eyes. ‘Course not. It’s panda fur.’
Mrs McDonald’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. ‘What? As in real fur from a real panda?’
‘Er. I think that’s what panda fur means,’ replied Rosie in an OMG-how-dumb-are-you voice. ‘Daddy bought it to cheer me up after Roman ruined my cousin’s wedding.’
I said nothing. A week before, my cousin had married Rosie’s cousin. Rosie had completely disgraced herself at the wedding. She’d stolen my dad’s car and driven it right through the crowd, while dragging the smashed-up caravan and naked man behind it.
Apparently, you’re not meant to do this at someone else’s wedding.
Somehow this was all my fault, though, and since then she’d been worse than ever.
‘You do realise that pandas are an endangered species, don’t you?’ said Vanya. ‘People shouldn’t be making jackets out of them.’
Rosie snuggled into the coat. ‘I did feel bad about the panda at first. But it is a gorge-tabulous jacket. Plus we used its eyelids to make super-cute earrings so it like didn’t die for nothing. Hashtag: it’s what it would’ve wanted.’
There are no words to describe how dreadful she is.
‘But about this news …’ I said, starting to feel a little bit on edge. ‘Is it the Random Menu? Do you know it yet?’
‘No,’ said Mrs McDonald, ‘you’ll find that out each day at lunchtime.’
Lunchtime?! How could they make us wait that long? My belly would’ve shrivelled up and fallen out by then.
Vanya squeezed my arm. ‘Don’t worry, Roman,’ she whispered, ‘I’m sure your doughnuts will be on there.’
I smiled as bravely as I could. She always knows how to cheer me up.
‘The news is even more exciting than that,’ said Mrs McDonald.
Yeah right, I thought. Nothing could be more exciting than a double doughnut. Not even a baby with a moustache.
She continued, ‘You may remember we sent a letter home to your parents a few weeks ago, asking if you were allowed to be filmed for something.’
We all looked at her blankly. Nobody reads the letters that get sent home. Normally I shove them in my bag and wait for Mum to dig them out a few days later.
Mrs McDonald pointed towards the door. ‘Line up, everyone. Miss Clegg – put Darren into his reins. This is going to be the most incredible last week of term EVER.’
Oh No No No No
Out on the playground, the big gate on to the road was wide open. This explained why Gamble had to wear his reins. The last time someone left a gate open, he tried to run away to Canada to ‘live among the wolves’. He got as far as the local park, where he was found farting on a one-legged pigeon.
There were three people waiting for us on the playground: two women and a man. One of the women had a camera on her shoulder. The other was holding a long pole with a furry microphone on the end.
The man had an iPad in his hand. He was wearing an open-neck shirt and jeans, and his long hair was dragged back into a ponytail.
‘Hey, guys!’ he said, grinning at us. ‘I’m Trevor.’
‘O to the M to the G!’ announced Rosie Taylor, leaping in front of the camera. ‘Is she filming us? Are we on TV? Hi, fans. It’s me – Rosie Taylor!’
The camerawom
an sniffed. ‘No. It’s not on yet.’
Rosie tutted. ‘What’s the point of having a camera if you’re not beaming pictures of Rosie Taylor around the globe? Hashtag: give people what they want.’
‘Well …’ continued Trevor, ‘I’m sure Mrs McDongle told you …’
‘McDonald,’ said Mrs McDonald.
‘Please don’t interrupt,’ said Trevor, his smile twitching slightly with irritation. He seemed like the kind of person who gets stressed out easily. ‘You are going to be starring in your very own TV show. We’re filming it this week and hopefully it’ll be on telly next month.’
The whole class went crazy-wild. People were dancing around and hugging each other. Rosie began slapping on make-up. Gamble strained at his reins, eyes bulging and mouth foaming like a rabid dog. Kevin Harrison was so excited he ran straight to a bin with his hand over his mouth. Of course, Kevin is always throwing up, which is why his nickname is Ali Blargh Blargh and the Forty Heaves.
‘Before we start,’ said Trevor, calming us down, ‘there are six rules for making the perfect TV show. Number one: act natural.’
‘Natural?’ asked Gamble, ‘You mean strip off naked and that? Cool.’
A few people giggled.
I didn’t. I knew he wasn’t joking. Gamble is always whipping off his clothes. Like when we went to the cinema together and he ‘felt hot’ during the film. It was bad enough that he was nude. But he absolutely did not have to run down the aisle and do a handstand right in front of the screen.
‘No. As in, don’t show off. Pretend the camera’s not here.’
He was saying this to Rosie Taylor, who was posing and pouting her lips. I think she was trying to look beautiful, but she looked more like a squid that was suffering from painful wind.
‘So … why are you filming us? What’s so special about our last week at school?’ asked Vanya Goyal. Vanya is always asking questions. She likes to understand everything. I sneaked a smile at her. I’m proud that my best friend is the smartest, coolest girl in the class.
‘Aha!’ said Trevor, pulling his mobile out and speaking into it. ‘And roll.’