Barry Loser Hates Half Term

by Jim Smith

  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.

  First e-book edition 2016

  ISBN 978 1 4052 6914 8

  Ebook ISBN 978 1 7803 1431 0

  barryloser.com

  www.jellypiecentral.co.uk

  www.egmont.co.uk

  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.

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  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 . . .’

  ‘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.

  ‘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.

  ‘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.

  ‘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!’

  ‘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.

  ‘ANOTHER FANTASTIC DONALD COX DEVELOPMENT!’ boomed the words on the billboard, next to a mahoosive photo of a man in a suit with sunglasses on. That makes it sound like the suit was wearing sunglasses - it wasn’t, the man was.

  The man with the sunglasses on was Donald Cox, who’s been building buildings all over Mogden recently. In the photo he was standing in front of some skyscrapers, with his hands spread out like he was the king of Mogden.

  Behind the billboard, half a real-life skyscraper was sticking out of the ground. Men in yellow plastic hats were dotted around all over it, hammering planks and eating sandwiches.

  ‘Blooming Donald Cox,’ grumbled my dad, pressing the back-massage button on the side of his seat, and the whole thing started to vibrate.

  ‘You can’t go five metres without seeing his face these days,’ he said, and he turned left down Bunky’s road, which everyone knows is the shortest short cut to Mogden Pier.

  I pressed my nose up against the car window and spotted Bunky standing outside his house talking to Nancy and her dad, Mr Verkenwerken. Which didn’t surprise me, seeing as they’re next-door neighbours.

  ‘DONALD COX!’ I boomed, waving at Bunky. I’ve started calling Bunky ‘Donald Cox’ sometimes, by the way, because it makes him wee his pants with laughter.

  Bunky carried on standing there, chatting to Nancy and Mr Verkenwerken and not weeing his pants at all, and I realised I hadn’t wound my window down.

  I wound my window down and took a deep breath. ‘DONALD COX!’ I boomed again, and Bunky and Nancy jumped.

  ‘DONALD COX!’ boomed Bunky back, because he’s started calling me ‘Donald Cox’ too.

  ‘Help me, Donald - my dad’s kidnapped me!’ I shouted, imagining I was Future Ratboy, and I’d been captured by his number one enemy, Mr X, and locked up in the back of Mr X’s giant metal scorpion.

  ‘He’s sending me to Pirate Camp, Donald!’ I screamed, pounding my fists against the air, miming like I hadn’t wound the window down at all. ‘Meet me at Mogden Pier!’ I wailed, and I wound the window up again and went back to comperleeterly unenjoying my half term.

  ‘Ferry leaves in four minutes,’ said my dad, screeching to a halt next to Mogden Pier, and I sat in my seat wondering why my dad always says everything’s gonna be FOUR minutes, and not three, or five.

  ‘Maybe it’s because he’s got FOUR fingers,’ I mumbled to myself, as my dad undid his seatbelt. ‘Maybe if he had seventeen fingers, everything would take SEVENTEEN minutes instead!’

  I think I was just trying to put off getting out of the car.

  My dad walked round to Desmond’s door and lifted him out, careful not to make his back go snap again. ‘Come on, Barry, out you pop too,’ he chirped, trying not to sound like a horrible dad who was sending his number one son off to a prison camp on an island in the middle of a lake with none of his friends for the whole of half term.

  I slid myself out of the car and collapsed in a heap of Barryness on the tarmac.

  ‘Pleeease don’t make me go to
Pirate Camp!’ I cried, as a little girl from about three million years below me at school walked past with her mum on the way to the ferry, giggling at my loserosity.

  ‘Sorry, Barry,’ said my dad, holding Desmond’s bum up to his nostrils, checking if he’d done another poo. ‘Maybe when your Great Aunt Mildred’s nose shrinks back to normal and your mum comes home we can have another think.’

  The tarmac rumbled and Bunky and Nancy skidded their bikes to a stop and jumped off, panting from cycling all the way to Mogden Pier in less time than it takes to say this sentence.

  ‘What in the name of unkeelness is going on here?’ said Bunky, and I explained to him and Nancy how my dad was sending me to Pirate Camp because we’d been jumping up and down on my mum and dad’s bed the day before.

  ‘. . . so really it’s kind of you two’s fault as well,’ I said, getting up from the tarmac and heaving my rucksack out of the boot. My orange tent was strapped to the bottom, with the word ‘LOSER’ written on it in big black capitals.

  ‘But Pirate Camp is for kiddywinkles!’ said Bunky, and my dad was just about to open his mouth and say his thing about how that meant I’d fit in there just perfectly, when I spotted the tip of Darren Darrenofski’s nose.