Barry Loser Hates Half Term

by Jim Smith

  ‘Bagsy not me!’ I cried, because who wants their tent to be in the middle of all the other ones, and I zoomed towards the little space, limping because my foot had just been stomped on by Stump Leg.

  ‘Wait for me!’ shouted Sally Bottom, speeding past me and diving into the space head first, and I stopped limp-zooming and scratched my bum, wondering what I was going to do now.

  ‘Looks like it’s Loser in the middle!’ chuckled a familikeels-sounding voice from behind me.

  I twizzled round on my good foot and saw Gordon Smugly - the even-meaner-than-Darren kid from my class at school - appearing from behind a tree.

  ‘Oh, I should’ve known YOU’D be here, Smugly,’ I said, because Morag’s all-new Pirate Camp was exackerly the sort of place where someone like him could get away with bossing kiddywinkles around.

  Gordon glided over to Morag, acting like he owned the whole island - which he didn’t, Morag did.

  ‘Welcome back to Pirate Camp, Loserface,’ he said, and Morag patted him on his head.

  ‘Smugly ’ere’s me first mate, in’t that right, Smugly?’ she said, and Gordon nodded.

  ‘Only because he hasn’t got any MATES on the mainland,’ I said, and Stump Leg did a little snortle.

  ‘Morag is thirsty, Gordy-wordy,’ said Morag, lowering herself down on to a log and doing a blowoff at the same time. ‘Make a nice mugga tea for ’er, would ya?’ she drawled, and I wondered why she was talking about herself as if she was another person.

  Gordon clicked his heels together and did a little salute, a bit like the ones me and Bunky do, except nowhere near as keel. ‘Coming right up, boss!’ he said, tapping one of the kiddywinkles on the head. The kiddywinkle was a boy who was wearing thick round glasses the width of a can of Fronkle.

  ‘You, boy, come with me!’ snapped Gordon, and the kiddywinkle trudged after Gordon, looking like he was enjoying his half term about as much as I was.

  I limped over to the space in the middle of the circle and dumped my rucksack down on the woodchips. ‘Unkeelest half term EVER,’ I grumbled, pulling my tent out from the bottom of the bag and emptying all the bits on to the ground.

  You know when you’re emptying all the bits out of your tent bag and there’s that clanging noise from the poles landing on the ground? That wasn’t what was happening right now.

  ‘Where’s the clanging noise?’ I said, looking for my poles. And then I remembered something.

  ‘Oh noooooooo!!!’ I cried, rewinding my brain to three Saturdays before, when I’d been using the poles in my garden, pretending to be Future Ratboy in the episode where his hometown, Shnozville, is being invaded by really tall, skinny, metal, pole-shaped aliens.

  I sat down on a log and put my head in my hands, staring at a woodlouse chewing on a woodchip.

  ‘What’s the matter, Barry Loser?’ said a little voice, and I looked up to see Sally Bottom wandering towards me with a cuddly Clowny Wowny under her arm. I could see her tent behind her, all put up with its poles included and everything.

  ‘Forgot my stupid poles,’ I mumbled.

  Sally darted off into the forest and came back three milliseconds later with two pole-length sticks. She stuck them into the ground, fished a bit of string out of my tent bag, tied the string between the two sticks and then draped my orange tent over the top of the whole thing.

  ‘TA-DA!’ she said, pressing her cuddly Clowny Wowny’s belly, and he did a blowoff.

  ‘Thankskeels, Sally,’ I said, stuffing my empty tent bag into my rucksack. A spare bit of string was hanging out of it, and I pulled it out and stuffed it in my pocket, because you never know when you might need a piece of string.

  Sally looked at me like I’d gone mad. ‘What does “thankskeels” mean?’ she said, scratching her bum, which is short for ‘bottom’, which is her second name, and one of my eyeball gobstoppers dropped out of my pocket and rolled along the floor, almost flattening that woodchip-eating woodlouse I was talking about earlier.

  ‘It’s what Future Ratboy says instead of “thanks”!’ I said, rummaging around inside my rucksack and pulling out my cuddly Future Ratboy, which I’d brought to keep me company once I’d eaten both my gobstoppers.

  I pressed Future Ratboy’s belly and he shouted ‘KEEL!’, and Sally stared at him like she’d never seen a cuddly Future Ratboy before.

  ‘Please tell me you know who Future Ratboy is,’ I said.

  ‘I know who Future Ratboy is,’ said Sally.

  ‘Phew, thank keelness for that!’ I sighed.

  ‘I don’t really,’ said Sally. ‘I was just saying it.’

  ‘OH MY UNKEELNESS!’ I cried. ‘How can someone not know who Future Ratboy is?!’

  I turned to my cuddly Future Ratboy and shook my head. ‘Sometimes I wonder what the world is coming to, Ratboy,’ I sighed, feeling like an old granny. Sally Bottom sat her bum down on my log, which was really only big enough for one loser at a time.

  ‘Don’t be sad, Barry Loser,’ said Sally, and I looked around at Pirate Camp. Stump Leg was kicking a tree trunk with her non-stump leg, while a couple of other kiddywinkles were throwing stones at an empty, crumpled-up can of Fronkle.

  Morag had wobbled off over to her pirate hut and was snoozing in her rocking chair on the porch, getting her toenails cut by a scared-looking kiddywinkle.

  ‘What in the name of unkeelness am I DOING here, Sally Bottom?’ I grumbled.

  ‘I thought your dad sent you to grow up?’ said Sally, and I laughed, but not the sort of laugh you laugh when you’re happy.

  ‘Excusez moi?’ said Sally in a French accent all of a sudden, and I twizzled my head round to give her a funny look, then realised it wasn’t her who’d said it.

  A skinny boy in a stripy jumper with a pointy nose was walking towards us.

  ‘Bonjour! My name, eet eez Renard Dupont . . .’ said the skinny boy in the stripy jumper with the pointy nose, holding his hand out to shake ours.

  That makes it sounds like me and Sally had one hand between us. We didn’t, we had four.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Renard,’ said Sally Bottom, getting up off my log and shaking his hand, and my log did a seesaw, tipping me on to the ground.

  ‘I’M DOING THIS ON PURPOSE!’ I cried, as I landed nose-first in a pile of woodchips, and I immedi-stood up and dusted myself down, not that there was any dust on me, it was mostly woodchips. And a couple of woodlice.

  ‘My name is Sally Bottom,’ said Sally Bottom. ‘And this is Barry Loser.’

  ‘My family, we ’ave just moved to, ’ow you say, Mogdon?’ said Renard. ‘I am sinking maybe I can be making new friends on zis island?’

  ‘You mean Mogden? That’s where we live too!’ said Sally, and I nodded.

  ‘Mogden is the keelest,’ I said, acting all keel because I’ve lived in Mogden my whole life and I know absokeely everything about it.

  ‘Zis Pirate Camp - so far eet eez very boring, non?’ said Renard, looking around.

  I did a little glance around myself and spotted Stump Leg, who’d stopped kicking the tree trunk and was scraping her stump through the woodchips. She was making an ‘S’ shape, and I wondered if she was spelling out her name, and it actually WAS Stump Leg.

  ‘BORING, YOU SAY, DO YA?’ boomed a voice, and we all looked up at Burt’s pirate hut. Morag had shooed away the kiddywinkle who’d been cutting her toenails, and was peering down at us.

  ‘Yeah, boring!’ shouted Stump Leg back at her. ‘What’re we sposed to do ’ere all week?’

  ‘DO WOT YA LIKE, YA LITTLE BARNACLES!’ grunted Morag, picking up a holiday magazine and flipping it open. ‘TOILET COULD DO WIV A MOPPING,’ she snuffled, pointing over her shoulder at a bucket with a smelly-looking mop sticking out of it, and we all looked around at each other, wondering what was going to happen next.

  What happened next was that Renard started walking over to the bucket and mop.

  ‘What are you doing, Renard?’ I said, because who in the name of unkeelness walks towar
ds a bucket and mop unless they’re being forced to?

  ‘Bof, it eez zis or sitting around on our bum-bums doing nothing, non?’ he said, picking the mop and bucket up and heading towards the toilet block, which was actukeely more of a telephone-box-sized cupboard over on the other side of the clearing.

  ‘BOF ?’ I said, wondering what ‘bof ’ meant, since I’d never heard the word before.

  ‘BOF !’ said Renard. ‘You ask zee silly question, I say “bof ”,’ he smiled, and we all followed him over to the toilet. ‘Ooh la la!’ he cried, as the door creaked open and eight million mosquitoes flew out, all of them doing blowoffs. Or at least that’s what it smelt like.

  ‘There must be SOMETHING better to do than this,’ sighed Sally Bottom, as Renard stuffed the bucket under the taps above the little sink, and I rewound my brain to all the times I’d been at Pirate Camp before.

  ‘When I was a kiddywinkle and Burt Barnacle was in charge, we used to sit around the campfire singing songs about trees,’ I said, thinking how keel that’d been - especially compared to mopping a toilet floor.

  ‘Who’s Burt Barnacle?’ asked Stump Leg, watching as Renard filled the bucket with water and heaved it out from under the taps, dumping it on the ground so that water sploshed all over his trainers. He picked up the mop and swung the wooden pole around, pretending he was dancing with a really skinny old granny wearing a greasy stinking wig, and everybody did a sniggle.

  ‘Burt Barnacle is a REAL pirate - with a beard and EVERYTHING!’ smiled Sally, saying what I’d said to her in the nettle forest. ‘Except he’s a cloud now,’ she said, pointing up at the sky, and Stump Leg gave her a funny look.

  ‘Bof ! Singing about trees eez for leetle babies, non?’ said Renard, dunking the mop into the bucket and slopping it on to the toilet floor, and a woodlouse who’d been gnawing on a toilet roll tube did an eek and scuttled away from the granny’s wig.

  ‘That’s not all we did!’ I said, not wanting Renard to think Burt Barnacle was a loser or anything. ‘There was also pirate face-painting and pirate raft-making and lying under Burt’s giant skull-and-crossbones parachute while he whooshed it up and down and searching for hidden treasure . . .’

  Renard stopped mopping and leaned on the wooden pole. ‘Excusez-moi if my leetle ears are playing a treek wiz their owner, but did I just ’ear zee word “TREASURE”?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, except we never FOUND any,’ I said, and that was when I sensed something really annoying and smuglyish behind me.

  ‘What’s all this unkeelness about?’ sneered Gordon Smugly, appearing from behind a tree. He was supping on a mug of tea, trying to look all grown-up, but I could tell he didn’t really like it.

  The kiddywinkle with Fronkle-width glasses was standing next to him, holding a tray with sugar sachets, a couple of napkins and those stupid little plastic tea stirrers on it.

  ‘We was just saying how boring Pirate Camp is,’ said Stump Leg.

  Gordon started to take another sip of his tea, then changed his mind and poured the whole lot on to the woodchips. He went to put the empty mug on the kiddywinkle’s tray, then changed his mind AGAIN and placed it on top of his head instead, smiling down all smugly at Sally at the same time.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve been introduced?’ he said, reaching his hand out to shake hers. ‘Gordon Smugly - Chief Operations Manager here at Pirate Camp.’

  ‘Sally Bottom. Nice to meet you!’ said Sally Bottom, and Gordon blinked.

  ‘Sally Bottom?’ he said, looking like he couldn’t believe his luck. ‘As in, your second name is Bottom?’

  Sally nodded, and her lip started to wobble.

  ‘Goodness me! I thought old Barry here had an unlucky name, but BOTTOM - it’s like you’ve got a BUM for your surname!’ cackled Gordon, stroking his smug, ugly chin. ‘Not only that, but your first name sounds a bit like “smelly”, so really, your name is SMELLY BUM!’

  A big fat tear rolled down Sally’s face.

  ‘You can talk, SMUGLY!’ I shouted, saying the ‘UGLY’ bit of his name extra loud. ‘At least Sally Bottom’s got some friends!’ I pointed at Stump Leg and Renard, and then me.

  Gordon’s eyebrows tilted into their sad positions, but only for a millionth of a billisecond. He ran his hands through his hair and opened his smug, ugly mouth. ‘Yes, well . . . you kiddywinkles have your fun while you STILL CAN,’ he drawled, doing a weird, non-smiley smile, and he picked his mug up from on top of the kiddywinkle’s head.

  ‘What’s THAT sposed to mean?’ said Stump Leg, and Gordon put his mug back down again.

  ‘Oh nothing,’ said Gordon. ‘Just that Morag is selling Mogden Island to Donald Cox.’

  ‘Donald Cox?’ I said, as if I was talking to Bunky. ‘Donald Cox, the man who builds buildings all over Mogden?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right - Donald Cox,’ said Gordon.

  ‘What are you talking about, Smugly?’ I said, even though it was pret-ty easy to work out what he was saying.

  ‘Let me spell it out for you, Barold,’ he sneered, looking down at me like I was a woodlouse. ‘Morag Barnacle is selling Mogden Island to Donald Cox, and as soon as Donald Cox gets his hands on it, he’s going to turn it into a luxury holiday resort.’

  He whipped a shiny-looking, folded-in-three piece of paper out of his back pocket and handed it to me. ‘Donald Cox’s Luxury Wooden Lodges!’ said the words at the top of the little brochure. Underneath was a photo of the clearing where we were standing right now - except instead of tents, there were brand spanking new wooden lodges.

  ‘Pirate Camp is OVER, Loser!’ snortled Gordon, and he turned round and slithered off.

  ‘Wot a loser!’ said Stump Leg, then she looked up at me. ‘Sorry Barry, not you - I was talking about Gordon Smugly.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Stump Leg,’ I said, sitting down on a log and glancing over at all the tents. ‘No more Pirate Camp - difficult to imagine, isn’t it?’

  ‘Eet eez quite easy for me to imagine, Barry,’ sighed Renard, dunking the mop back in its bucket. ‘Ever since I ’ave been ’ere, I ’ave been sinking . . . what eez zee point of all zees? UNTIL . . .’ and then he stopped talking, and we all waited for him to start again.

  ‘Until WHAT?’ said Sally Bottom.

  ‘Until I ’eard Barry talking about zee treasure!’ smiled Renard.

  ‘What treasure?’ asked the kiddywinkle with Fronkle-width glasses, who was still standing next to us with Gordon’s empty mug on his head. He was also still holding the tray with sugar sachets, a couple of napkins and those stupid little plastic tea stirrers on it.

  ‘Barry said he used to go on treasure hunts here when he was little!’ said Sally, lifting the mug off the boy’s head and putting it on the tray. ‘What’s your name, by the way?’

  ‘I’m Seymour,’ said the boy, and Stump Leg scrunched her face up.

  ‘Seymour?’ she said. ‘As in you can SEE-MORE?’

  ‘If you want,’ said Seymour, putting his tray down on a log.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be SEE-LESS?’ said Stump Leg, pointing at Seymour’s Fronkle-width glasses, and everyone sniggled.

  ‘Well if you’re going to be like that about it, I spose my name should be “SEE-THE-SAME-AS-EVERYONE-ELSE-THANKS-TO-MY-GLASSES”,’ said Seymour, and Stump Leg de-scrunched her face.

  ‘You got me there, See-more!’ she giggled, and she turned to me. ‘So, Barry, wot about this treasure, then?’

  ‘Hang on a millikeels, I didn’t say there WAS any treasure - we never FOUND any, remember?’ I said, not wanting to get the kiddywinkles too excited. As far as I knew, Burt had made the whole thing up.

  ‘But this is our last chance, Barry!’ said Sally. ‘Once Donald Cox gets here he’ll start digging holes EVERYWHERE to build his luxury wooden lodges. If WE don’t find the treasure, he DEFINITELY will!’

  ‘Come on, Barry - we’ll be rich and famous!’ shouted Stump Leg.

  ‘Yeah! Then we can BUY Mogden Island OURSELVES and pay someone NI
CE to take over from Morag!’ said Seymour.

  ‘Bof, zee treasure ’unt will be more fun zan mopping, non?’ said Renard.

  ‘But I don’t know where it is!’ I cried.

  ‘You MUST have SOME idea, Barry,’ said Sally Bottom, and I stroked my chin.

  I looked at all the kiddywinkles lined up in front of me and realised something. This was their last chance to have a keel time at Pirate Camp before it was comperleeterly knocked down by Donald Cox.

  ‘Well, I spose I might have a TEENY WEENY one . . .’ I said, looking at Burt’s rickety old pirate hut.

  ‘The reason we could never actually FIND any treasure . . .’ I said, twizzling my head back round to face the kiddywinkles, ‘is that Burt said he could never remember where he’d put the treasure MAP!’

  ‘There’s a MAP?’ said Seymour, his glasses steaming up with excitement.