I am Still Not a Loser

by Jim Smith

  First published in Great Britain 2013

  by Jelly Pie, an imprint of Egmont UK Ltd

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

  Text and illustration copyright © Jim Smith 2013

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

  ISBN 978 1 4052 6032 9

  eISBN 978 1 7803 1324 5

  www.egmont.co.uk

  barryloser.com

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

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Please note: Any website addresses listed in this book are correct at the time of going to print. However, Egmont cannot take responsibility for any third party content or advertising. Please be aware that online content can be subject to change and websites can contain content that is unsuitable for children. We advise that all children are supervised when using the internet.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title page

  Copyright

  Praise for my first book

  Hoverpoos

  Grandpa Hodgepodge

  Jealous little hairs

  Feeko’s Supermarket

  Cola Flavour Not Birds

  The Poo Chair

  Barold Loser

  The walk of loserness

  Mr & Mrs Smugly

  Noseypoos

  Rubbishest Sat ever

  Zeditis

  Playing it oodle

  Benjamin Bottle

  Mogden Museum

  Mogden Man

  Thingy-majigs

  White chocolate Not Bird moon

  Mr Scrapey-foot McLoser

  Three Thumb Barry

  Million Thumbs Barry

  The scary doorbell

  Ooooohs and Arrrgghhs

  Scrapey shoe marks

  The scream test

  Still the scream test

  Plastic leaves

  Self-checkout robot mum

  Thend

  About the comma putter-innerer

  You know when someone’s horrible to you in a dream and you wake up really annoyed with them? That’s what happened to me with my best friend Bunky.

  In the dream I was my favourite TV character, Future Ratboy, and Bunky was his annoying sidekick Not Bird.

  We were in the mayor’s office, which looked exactly like my granny’s house.

  ‘You’re the only ones who can save us from the hoverpoos!’ said the mayor, who was played by my teacher, Mr Hodgepodge.

  Hoverpoos were the invention of Professor Smugly, who in the dream was Gordon Smugly from our class at school.

  Gordon Smugly has the most perfect name for himself ever in the history of having a name, because he looks like a Gordon and is smug and ugly.

  Professor Smugly had given all the dogs in town his hoverpoo potion so that now, instead of their poos landing splat on the ground, they hovered ten centimetres above it.

  ‘They’re everywhere!’ said the mayor, screaming as a hoverpoo floated up and bumped into his sock.

  It was about the same size as Not Bird (Bunky) and the same colour (brown) and also floated (like birds can).

  ‘Don’t worry, Mayor Hodgepodge, we’ll stop Professor Smugly!’ I said, and I looked at his face to see if he was impressed, but he was too busy screaming and kicking at the hoverpoo to notice.

  Because it was a dream, all of a sudden we were in Professor Smugly’s laboratory and I’d turned myself into a fly, and was sitting on Not Bird’s beak.

  ‘What’s all this craziness about?’ said Professor Smugly, holding a test tube with brown bubbling potion in it.

  ‘Ooh, can I have a sip?’ said Not Bird, flying over to the test tube.

  He perched on the edge and dipped his beak in. ‘Ahhhhhhh,’ he said, and he turned straight into a hoverpoo.

  ‘Hmmm . . . a talking hoverpoo. That could be useful,’ said Professor Smugly, flicking me off Not Bird’s head.

  ‘Not Bird, how do you fancy being my right-hand man?’ he said. ‘Or should I say right-hand poo?’

  ‘But Bunky’s MY right-hand poo!’ I screamed, but because I was a fly it came out as a whisper.

  ‘Barrrrr-yyyyy, you’ll be late for schooo-oooll!’ my mum shouted up the stairs, and I woke up, not a fly any more, and late for school.

  ‘Thanks for making me late!’ said Bunky at the top of my road where he waits for me in the morning, and he wasn’t being sarcastic either.

  ‘Oh I’m SOOOO sorry, what, do you have to meet Professor Smugly or something?’ I said, in full Future Ratboy sarcastic mode.

  ‘Who’s Professor Smugly?’ said Bunky, picking his nose and eating it for breakfast.

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know, HOVERPOO,’ I said, and I gave him my evil stare.

  ‘What’s a hoverpoo?’ said Bunky, and he scrunched himself up into a poo shape and pretended to hover around, doing blowoffs, and I crumpled to the floor like a deckchair being folded up, weeing myself with laughter.

  The walk to school takes us past Granny Harumpadunk’s house, which I’ve been trying to avoid ever since she started going out with my teacher, Mr Hodgepodge.

  I usually manage to sneak past just before they have their disgusting morning kiss at the front gate, but because we were late, Bunky and me got there the exact millisecond their dried-up old lips started snogging.

  I closed my eyes to stop myself being sick and tried to tiptoe past, but what with Bunky doing his hoverpoo impression and me tripping over Granny’s empty milk bottles, and Mr Hodgepodge kissing Granny with his eyes open anyway, it didn’t really work.

  ‘Ooh, Hodge, you can give Barry and Blinky a lift!’ said Granny, so that was how we ended up in Mr Hodgepodge’s car.

  ‘Hodge’ is Granny Harumpadunk’s nickname for Mr Hodgepodge, who’s the happiest person in the whole wide world amen now that he’s going out with her.

  ‘Isn’t it the most incredibly beautiful day!’ he said, in his new woolly jumper that matches Granny’s.

  He was squeezing into the front seat of his car, all wheezing and blowing off, and I looked at Bunky’s eyes in the rear-view mirror and did a little snortle.

  I was a bit annoyed that we were getting a lift with Mr Hodgepodge, mainly because of how embarrassing it was, but also because I couldn’t go into Three Thumb Rita’s.

  Three Thumb Rita’s is the tiny sweet shop halfway between my house and school. It’s owned by Rita, who has an extra thumb on one of her hands, which sounds disgusting but actually isn’t once you’ve seen it every day for a million years.

  She even sells little Thumb Sweets, which are my complete and utter favourites.

  ‘Moooooooorrrrrrnnnniiiinnnnngggggg Riiiitttttaaaaa!’ I screamed out of the car as we zoomed past, because I didn’t want her to think I’d started going to another sweet shop because of her third thumb or something.

  I don’t think she heard or saw me though.

  ‘There’s Barry and Bunky with their new grandad!’ shouted Darren Darrenofski as we drove through the front gates at school, Mr Hodgepodge blowing off to the song on the radio.

  ‘I’m not with them!’ shouted Bunky out of the window as we parked, and he got out and zoomed off like a talking hoverpoo, not that it mattered because his first lesson was with me and Mr Hodgepodge anyway.

  ‘I thought we could do something really fun today!’ Mr Hodgepodge said once we’d all sat down at our desks. ‘As you know, my new girlfriend is Barry Loser’s granny, and this lesson is all about something she said last night!’

>   Everyone laughed, and I imagined Mr Hodgepodge accidentally treading on a couple of hoverpoos and floating off into the sunset, never to be seen again.

  ‘Well, we were watching TV, and there was an advert for one of these mobile phone thingymajigs,’ he said.

  Darren Darrenofski was scraping the back of my neck with his ruler. I turned round and he did a little burp and blew it into my face.

  ‘Barry’s granny was amazed,’ said Mr Hodgepodge. ‘ “Telephones you can carry around?” she said, “Ooh, what will they think of next!” ’

  If I wasn’t Barry Loser and Mr Hodgepodge wasn’t going out with Granny Harumpadunk, I would’ve laughed along with the rest of the class at his impression of an old granny.

  But I am. And he is. So I didn’t.

  ‘So today’s lesson is called What Will They Think of Next!’ Mr Hodgepodge said and he pointed at me.

  ‘Barry, what do you think they’ll think of next?’

  ‘Ooh, Barry first, what a surprise,’ said Tracy Pilchard, and her, Donnatella and Sharonella all started giggling, not that I cared, because this was exactly the kind of lesson I’m completely brilliant and amazing at.

  ‘I was thinking it’d be keel if when you thought of something, it popped up in a bubble above your head like in cartoons,’ I said, because that was what happened in a Future Ratboy episode once.

  ‘What’s “keel”?’ said Jocelyn Twiggs, and I rolled my eyes because everyone knows that ‘keel’ is how Future Ratboy says ‘cool’.

  I looked at Mr Hodgepodge to see if he was impressed with my keel idea, but he wasn’t even listening.

  ‘What about you, Tracy?’ he said after the length of a whole episode of Future Ratboy.

  He was staring at a photo of Granny he had on his desk.

  ‘I reckon they should make more jewellery,’ said Tracy, and Donnatella and Sharonella both agreed, even though they all had about five hundred bits of jewellery on already.

  ‘Gordon?’ said Mr Hodgepodge, and I looked over at Gordon Smugly for the first time since my dream. He was sitting at the back of the classroom, playing on his new phone.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Hodgepodge,’ he said, looking up from his game. ‘Well now, there has been something bothering me for a while, and I suppose this is as good a time as any to make it known, publicly, so to speak,’ he carried on, and I rolled my eyes so much that it made me feel dizzy.

  ‘I think they should make a Future Ratboy film,’ he said, and I felt all the little hairs everywhere on my entire body stand up on end.

  I think my little hairs are even bigger fans of Future Ratboy than I am, because whenever anyone else mentions him they get instantly jealous.

  ‘Yeeaa-aaah!’ said everybody, because it was actually a really good idea. A Future Ratboy film would be keel times a million.

  ‘What’s all this Future Ratboy business?’ asked Mr Hodgepodge, looking up from the photo. I was going to stand up and explain, seeing as I’m Future Ratboy’s number-one fan, but I was still a bit dizzy from my eye roll so I just sat there like a loser.

  ‘Future Ratboy is the keelest TV show in the whole wide world ever!’ said Bunky, copying what I was going to say.

  He looked at Gordon and did a little snortle, but only because he wanted a go on Gordon’s phone.

  ‘Well, I can see that Bunky and Gordon are quite the experts on Future Ratman!’ said Mr Hodgepodge, and I could feel all my clothes being pushed away from my skin by my jealous little hairs.

  The next day was Saturday, except I call it ‘Sat’, because I’ve started shortening my words to save time for keeler stuff.

  Sat is my favourite day because all me and Bunky do for the whole of it is play it completely and utterly keel. Like last Sat, when we went to the ginormous new Feeko’s Supermarket in town.

  ‘Let’s go to Feeko’s again!’ I said when I came downstairs for breakfast and found Bunky in the living room watching TV as usual.

  My dad was watching TV too, but through the window from the garden, which is where he usually is for the whole of HIS Sat.

  ‘Do we have to do that again?’ said Bunky, doing his loser face.

  ‘Do you want me to send you home?’ I said, and he stopped doing his loser face and started doing his worried one, because I sent him home last week for not saying I was his brilliant and amazing leader, and only let him back once he’d apologised.

  Going to Feeko’s Supermarket has been my favourite thing to do since I saw the episode of Future Ratboy where he went into one and bought a hoverpizza.

  ‘Wow, look Bunky, they’ve got that new washing powder from the advert on TV!’ I said as we walked into Feeko’s, except I was running a bit, because I was so excited.

  ‘Ooh, washing powder, excuse me while I wee myself,’ said Bunky, trying to be sarcastic but just coming across as annoying.

  ‘Salute it NOW!’ I ordered, and Bunky did his loser face, then a tiny little salute. Saluting stuff is my new favourite thing to do, by the way.

  A mum walked past with her kids and I rolled my eyes to her like mums do to each other, because in a way Bunky is like my child who I have to teach what is keel and what isn’t.

  As we walked up to the Ready Meals section to see if they’d started selling hoverpizzas yet, I sensed something familiar and annoying to my right.

  Looking down the Household Goods aisle, I saw Darren Darrenofski with his mum, who I recognised because she looked just like him except with permed hair and a dress on.

  Darren had wrapped himself in a whole tube of cling film and was caterpillaring along the floor like one of those insects with loads of legs that turn into butterflies that I can never remember the name of.

  Darren’s mum was watching him all calmly, but in the way mums look just before they start shouting. I leaned against a massive pyramid of toilet rolls and got myself cozy for watching Darren being told off.

  I was just about to order Bunky to salute Darren’s going-to-get-told-offness when he started dancing around all Bunkily and tapping me on the shoulder and shouting ‘Salute! Salute! Salute! Salute!’

  ‘There IS such a thing as over-saluting, Bunky,’ I said, turning round to look, then immediately realised that there wasn’t. ‘SA-LUUUUUUUTE!’ I screamed, and started running towards the thing I was saluting.

  You know how I said Three Thumb Rita’s Thumb Sweets were my favourites? That was before I saw Feeko’s Cola Flavour Not Birds.

  ‘Salute!’ I shouted in Bunky’s ear as I grabbed a packet, and he did a massive salute, twirling his hand around before it got to his forehead, which means that what you’re saluting is extra keel.

  We ran up to the checkout, blowing off with excitement, and bought five packets each, me buying six so that I had one more than Bunky.

  It was a self-checkout, which meant there wasn’t anyone serving you, so we beeped the packets through ourselves, the robot voice saying, ‘Colar. Flavar. Not. Birdz,’ eleven times.

  ‘Barry!’ I heard from behind me, in a loserish non-self-checkout-robot voice. I turned round and saw Granny Harumpadunk and Mr Hodgepodge standing behind two completely full-up trolleys.

  ‘I’m. Outta. Here,’ said Bunky in his rubbish self-checkout robot voice, and he zoomed off at Super Not Bird speed, probably because he didn’t want anyone thinking Mr Hodgepodge was his grandad, and I don’t blame him either.

  ‘I hope you’re not going to eat all of those at once!’ said Granny, grinning her false teeth at me.

  ‘What. Ever,’ I said in my self-checkout robot voice, backing off from Granny and Mr Hodgepodge in Future Ratboy slow motion, like in the episode where he was about to be eaten by a Giant Robot Grandma.

  I caught up with Bunky outside and was just about to say, ‘Salute. Your. Brilliant. And. Amazing. Leader,’ in my self-checkout robot voice when I saw something horrible.

  Sitting outside the coffee shop on the corner, playing on his phone and sipping on a can of Fronkle, was Professor Smugly, except this wasn’t a dream
so it was just plain old Gordon Smugly.

  ‘Gordon!’ said Bunky, spitting chunks of Cola Flavour Not Bird everywhere.

  ‘Ah, my fellow Future Ratboy expert!’ said Gordon, smugly. He was wearing a new pair of the Future Ratboy trainers I’d been asking my mum for for a million years.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you, Bunky,’ he said, over the top of his phone. ‘It’s about . . .’ He stopped speaking and looked at me. ‘Barry, do you mind?’ he said, putting the phone down on the chair next to him.

  There were three chairs, and now only one of them was empty.

  ‘Whatev,’ I said, which is short for ‘whatever’, and I went and sat on the edge of the pavement with my shoes in the gutter, hoping that my feet would get run over by a car because I’ve always wondered how much it’d hurt, plus if they did get run over I could blame Gordon Smugly.