I am still not a Loser. Jim Smith
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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.
Jealous
little
hairs
‘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