My Mum is a Loser (The Barry Loser Series) Read online

  First published in Great Britain 2012

  by Jelly Pie an imprint of Egmont UK Ltd

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

  Text and illustration copyright © Jim Smith 2012

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

  eISBN 978 1 7803 1270 5

  barryloser.com

  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, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title page

  Copyright

  Dinner time

  Fake crying

  Real crying

  My best friend Bunky was round for dinner and we were watching an episode of Future Ratboy, which is our favourite TV show in the whole wide world amen.

  In this one Future Ratboy and his sidekick Not Bird were being chased by Mr X in his giant robot octopus.

  ‘KII-IIIDS, DIIIIIINNER’S READY,’ shouted my mum through the hatch from the kitchen, but I just ignored her because I wanted to find out what was going to happen in Future Ratboy.

  ‘I’M GOING TO TICKLE YOU TO DEATH WITH MY OCTOPUS ARMS!’ screamed Mr X from inside his giant robot octopus, and he picked up a car that was being driven by an old man and threw it through a pet shop window.

  ‘Unkeelness level seventeen!’ shouted Future Ratboy, jumping through the broken window and helping the old man out of his car.

  Suddenly a hamster landed on Future Ratboy’s head and started nibbling at his mask.

  Maybe this was the episode I’d heard about and always wanted to see, where Not Bird has a karate fight with a hamster while Future Ratboy is getting swallowed whole by a snake.

  Then the TV went blank.

  ‘What in the name of keelness is going on?’ I yelled, because that’s what Future Ratboy says when something really annoying happens.

  I turned round and my mum was standing there with the remote control in her hand.

  ‘Your dinner is getting cold, Barry,’ she said in her trying-to-be-scary voice, but it didn’t scare ME, plus I was trying to look keel in front of Bunky, so I grabbed the remote control and put Future Ratboy back on and turned the volume up to ninety nine.

  ‘WAS THAT THE KEELEST FUTURE RATBOY EPISODE EVER OR WHAT!?’ said the voice that talks over the theme tune at the end of every show.

  I’d missed it and it was all my loserish mum’s fault.

  This isn’t the end of the story by the way.

  ‘I HATE YOUUUUUU!!!’ I screamed, and ran upstairs and started fake-crying in my bed while half looking around for Bunky, because he’s supposed to follow me everywhere like my dog.

  After about five million hours, I stopped fake crying and got up and peered out of my room.

  I heard my mum downstairs asking if Bunky wanted any more jelly and ice cream.

  ‘Ooh, yes please, Mrs Loser,’ said Bunky in his fakest nice-person voice, and I imagined my mum patting him on his head and whispering, ‘You’re so much better than Barry!’

  And that was when I came up with my brilliant and amazing plan.

  ‘ARRRRRGGHHH!!!’ I screamed, and fell on to the floor in the hallway with a thud and started counting to ten.

  My mum would probably be up the stairs by the time I got to three, but it’d be too late because her son would already be dead.

  By the time I’d counted to ninety nine, my left arm had started to go numb because it was under my stupid body, so I did one last death-wriggle and freed it, and then I was completely dead.

  By the time I got to two hundred and seventeen, my nose had started to itch from being face to face with the carpet, so I did a few blows out of my mouth towards it, which I think probably happens when you’re dead anyway. But it didn’t work, so I quickly reached up and scratched it.

  I’d lost count and had started imagining everyone crying at my funeral when I heard my mum coming up the stairs, although my eyes were closed so it could have been Bunky, except his knees don’t do a massive click every time they bend.

  I held my breath and waited for my mum to find me.

  ‘Oh no, Barry’s dead,’ she said, not even screaming or trying to pick me up and drive me to the hospital. ‘Oh well, we’ll just have to get another one won’t we. Bunky, you don’t fancy moving in do you?’

  ‘As long as I don’t have to become a Loser!’ shouted Bunky up the stairs.

  I couldn’t believe my dead ears. Suddenly I came back to life, like Future Ratboy in the episode where he freezes to death inside a fridge then thaws out like a sausage.

  ‘What am I, an empty can of Fronkle that you just throw in the bin?’ I shouted, miming someone drinking a can of Fronkle then throwing it in a bin and walking off as if they’d completely forgotten about it already.

  Bunky bounced up the stairs and stood behind my mum, smiling and slurping on a can of Fronkle.

  ‘How come he gets to have his dinner and pudding and a can of Fronkle?’ I shouted, but my voice went all high and wobbly and my legs gave way from starvation and I collapsed to the carpet, which was warm from where I’d been lying.

  ‘Because he didn’t shout at his mum and run off upstairs,’ said my mum, and I looked at the tea towel that was hanging off her shoulder and felt a bit bad for being such a horrible son.

  ‘It was your favourite and everything - chicken kiev with chips and peas,’ said Bunky, shaking his head and patting my mum on her tea-towel shoulder.

  My mum looked tired all of a sudden, and I didn’t want her to cry, plus I was really hungry and bored of being in the upstairs hallway, so I decided to say sorry for being so annoying.

  ‘I’M SORRY MUM, I LOVE YOOUUUU,’ I wailed from the floor, reaching my hand up into the air like one of those old statues you see when you have to go round a museum.

  I went to pull myself up on my mum’s jumper, but grabbed the tea towel instead.

  It slid off her shoulder, and I fell on the carpet again and the tea towel settled on my head the way snow does on a dog poo.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to be a Loser?’ my mum said, looking at Bunky, and they both started laughing at me, and I joined in, even though it wasn’t funny at all.

  This is the end of the story by the way.

 

 

  Barry Loser, My Mum is a Loser (The Barry Loser Series)

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