Barry Loser is the best at football NOT!

by Jim Smith

  ‘There there, Bazzy,’ she cooed, sliding her arm round my shoulders. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t heard, Miss?’

  Miss Spivak blinked. ‘Heard what?’ she asked, looking suspicious.

  ‘Poor old Barry’s had some terrible news this morning,’ said Sharonella. ‘Yeah, his . . .’ she stopped talking for a millisecond, trying to think of what to say. ‘His erm, hamster died again?’

  Miss Spivak looked at me. ‘Is this true, Barry?’ she asked, and I nodded, thinking back to all the times it had been, which was nine in case you’d forgotten.

  ‘Waaah,’ I cried, squeezing a fake tear out of my eyehole, trying to think of what to say next.

  ‘This hamster,’ said Miss Spivak, her eyes going all slitty. ‘What was its name?’

  Sharonella glared at me. ‘Quick Bazzy, come up with one of your amazekeel names!’ her eyes said.

  Or maybe she just whispered it out of her mouth.

  I crumpled my face up and flicked through my brain like it was a brochure for people looking for hamster names.

  ‘Erm, Plurgle Flurgle?’ I said. And even though I’d said ‘erm’ before it and put a question mark on the end, Miss Spivak nodded.

  The bell for break started clanging and we headed out the door towards the playground.

  ‘I’m sorry about Plurgle Flurgle, Barry,’ called Miss Spivak.

  ‘Thanks, Miss,’ I said, feeling all sad. Even though the whole thing was comperleeterly made up.

  I spent the whole of Wednesday and Thursday screaming my head off at the Mogden Maniacs, trying to get them ready for the big match. Then all of a non-sudden it was Friday afternoon.

  ‘So how we feeling about tomozzoid, Maniacs?’ I said, bouncing the official Mogden Maniacs football up and down in the playground.

  ‘Just chuck me the ball, Bus!’ shouted Bunky, who was standing right in front of me. ‘I’ve had enough of your bossing us around.’

  I shook my head, wishing I’d never started calling Bunky ‘Captain’ in the first place.

  ‘You really are getting too big for those boots of yours, aren’t you?’ I said, as Darren trudged towards Mogden School Tuck Shop.

  Mogden School Tuck Shop is the keel little tuck shop on the side of the playground that everyone’s mums and dads are always trying to get shut down because all it sells is crisps and biscuits and fizzy drinks.

  It’s actukeely an old toilet block with a hole cut in the front of it that acts like a hatch.

  Dolly the dinner dame was standing behind the counter, smiling like a really friendly, fat bollard.

  ‘Gimme a Cherry Fronkle,’ yawned Darren, handing her a golden coin.

  ‘You look like you could do with a pick-me-up, love,’ cooed Dolly, cracking open a can and plopping a straw into the little hole.

  ‘I’m pooped, Dolls,’ drawled Darren, leaning against the counter, and he pulled Dazzy Rascal out of his pocket. ‘This little fella’s running me ragged.’

  Dolly wiped the counter with a smelly old rag. ‘I’ll pretend I didn’t see that,’ she chuckled, and I stomped over to Darren, grabbing him by the collar.

  ‘What d’you think you’re doing, Darrenofski?’ I whispered. ‘You know these things are banned!’

  I grabbed his Freakoid and chucked it back into my rucksack. ‘That’s the last time you’ll see him before the game,’ I said.

  ‘Curse you, Loser!’ cried Darren, sucking on his straw.

  Sharonella dug a hexagon-shaped coin out of her pocket. ‘Packet of Thumb Sweets, Doll,’ she said. ‘Gotta keep me strength up for this stupid match.’

  Dolly swooshed the crumply packet across the counter and Sharonella ripped it open, stuffing a couple of sugary thumbs into her cake hole.

  ‘Ooh let’s have one, Shaz,’ smiled Bunky, jogging over.

  ‘Uh, uh, uh,’ I said, pushing his arm down. ‘No more of that rubbish for my team. If the Mogden Maniacs are gonna win tomorrow you’ll need to start watching what you eat.’

  ‘Boo!’ said Bunky as I snatched the packet of Thumb Sweets out of Sharonella’s hand and pincered a couple, slotting them into my mouth.

  ‘Oi, I paid hard-earned cash for them things!’ squawked Shazza.

  ‘Yeah give it a rest, Barold,’ sighed Gordon. ‘If Bunk fancies one of Sharon’s Thumb Sweets, let him have it.’

  I shook my head at Gordon. ‘Firstly, it’s “Bunk-Y” to you,’ I garbled, bits of chewed-up Thumb Sweet splattering out of my face hole.

  ‘And secondly . . .’ But I didn’t have a second point to make, so I couldn’t finish my sentence.

  Bunky smiled at Smugly. ‘Thank you, Gordon,’ he said, trying to grab the packet out of my hand.

  The crying sound from inside my rucksack was getting louder, but I was too annoyed to notice.

  ‘Gimme that blooming can!’ I boomed, snatching Darren’s Fronkle out of his trotter. ‘Chip Snyder’s Top Tip number eighty-eight: No carbonated beverages for people with crocodile-shaped faces.’

  ‘Well now you’re just making them up,’ said Stuart, and Darren nodded.

  ‘He’s losing it, Shmendrix,’ he said. ‘The kid’s not fit to be Coach!’

  I Pain-au-Choc’ed on the spot until I was facing Darren. ‘Oh yeah?’ I growled. ‘Well YOU’RE not fit to be a Mogden Maniac!’

  ‘Yes he is,’ said Bunky. ‘And by the way, Barry, I was the one who came up with that name.’

  I twizzled round on the spot again. Something about Bunky calling me by my real-life name was making me feel dizzy.

  Or maybe it was all that twizzling.

  ‘Right, that’s it!’ I cried, whipping my rucksack off my back and slinging it to the ground.

  ‘Careful, Loser!’ shrieked Bunky. ‘The you-know-whats are in there!’

  But I didn’t even care. ‘I’ve had enough of your cheek, “Captain”!’ I shouted. ‘Just because you can kick a ball in a straight line doesn’t mean you can talk to me like I’m a comperleet idiot.’

  ‘YOU can talk!’ cried Bunky. ‘You’re the one who’s been bossing us about all week!’

  Darren nodded. ‘It’s true, Loser,’ he burped. ‘’Snot exactly like we asked you to be our coach in the first place, was it?’

  ‘You wouldn’t even be a proper team if it wasn’t for me!’ I cried.

  ‘But we didn’t WANT to be a proper team, Bazzy,’ said Sharonella. ‘We were happy just knocking the ball around.’

  ‘Shazza’s right,’ said Stuart, doing a blow off. ‘The last thing I want to do this Saturday is play the Green Giants. Saturdays are my relaxing day. How can I relax when I’m running around on a football pitch? It’s just not relaxing!’

  Nancy was standing nearby, measuring the height of Dolly’s tuck shop. ‘Nancy, you’re a sensible young lady,’ I said. ‘Tell this lot they’re being stupid.’

  Nancy jotted down a number in her notebook and looked up. ‘Sorry Baz,’ she said. ‘But you can’t force people to do something they don’t wanna do . . .’

  My nose drooped, like there was a Crying-Freakoid-sized bogie stuck inside it somewhere near the nostril end.

  ‘FINE,’ I muttered, preparing to activate Operation Pain au Chocolat. Only this time, I wouldn’t be twizzling back round again.

  I reached down to pick my rucksack up, then remembered what was inside. I unzipped it and pulled out the wailing box.

  ‘Barry,’ whispered Dolly. ‘Be careful!’ But it was already too late.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting your Crying Freakoids back,’ I said, holding the box up in the air.

  The sound of an evil bollard click-clacking up behind me got louder and louder, then stopped.

  ‘I’ve got you this time!’ screeched a familikeels old voice as a walking stick tapped me on the shoulder.

  ‘I can’t believe Queenie confiscated our Crying Freakoids,’ said Stuart as the Mogden Maniacs headed out through the gates after school.

  ‘Thanks for reminding us, Shmendrix,’ said Gordon.

&
nbsp; I was walking behind them with Nancy, who was the only one I could be sure didn’t toterally hate me.

  ‘What’re we gonna DO?’ blubbered Sharonella. She’d been blubbering like that ever since Queenie had click-clacked off with my shoe box.

  ‘Ooh, I can just picture them now - stuffed in some stinky old drawer, crying themselves to death,’ cooed Darren, sounding like an old granny.

  Nancy, who was jotting down the height of Mrs Cornichon the lollipop lady’s lollipop stick, pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘How long DO they live for without patting?’ she asked.

  ‘Nobody’s comperleeterly sure,’ I said, not looking up. I itched my bum and blinked, trying not to imagine what poor little Barry Junior and his pals were going through somewhere deep inside the depths of Mogden School’s staff room.

  ‘Surely there’s something we can do to get them back, Bunk?’ said Gordon.

  Bunky shook his head. He was walking next to Gordon, and I wondered if maybe they were actual real-life best friends now. ‘It’s no good, Gord,’ he said. ‘Once that old dinner dame’s got her mitts on something, it’s toast.’

  I flicked through my brain, looking for a way to say sorry. ‘Don’t worry team,’ I mumbled. ‘Coach Barry’ll think of something.’

  ‘You’re not our coach anymore, Barry,’ said Stuart, but not in a mean way, just as if it was a fact.

  Sharonella rotated ninety degrees to the left then headed down her road, like a stray tray of pain au chocs. ‘No hard feelings, Bazzy,’ she said, not looking me in the eye.

  ‘Thanks a lot, Loser,’ said Darren, waddling up to his front door.

  ‘See you later Bunky and Nancy,’ said Gordon, as him and Stuart walked off towards their houses.

  Then it was just me, Bunky and Nancy.

  We got to the end of my road and I looked up at my best friends through the tears in my eyes.

  ‘Seriously, don’t worry about it, Barry,’ said Nancy. Probably because she didn’t have a Crying Freakoid in the first place.

  But Bunky didn’t look so relaxed.

  He started to walk off, then stopped, and for a millisecond I thought he might turn around.

  But he just kept on going.

  ‘Oo-ooh love!’ cooed my mum as I walked through the front door and traipsed into the living room, feeling like I was dying.

  ‘Oo-ooh,’ I sighed, slumping onto the sofa and opening the laptop, immedi-Smoogling Crying Freakoids, wondering if I should buy a brand new one and start all over again, the way you do with hamsters.

  Just then the front door opened. ‘Oo-ooh!’ called my dad.

  ‘Oo-ooh, Kenneth!’ cried my mum. ‘How was the course today - any better?’

  I rewound my brain to Monday, replaying their boring chat about him doing team-building exercises with the other losers from his work.

  ‘You know what?’ said my dad, collapsing onto the sofa. ‘It was actually pretty fun!’

  ‘Fun,’ I muttered to myself, trying to remember what the word even meant. ‘Ha, that’s all over for me now.’

  Only a couple of days before I’d had my whole life ahead of me - Barry Junior in my pocket and my best friend by my side . . .

  Now what did I have? I was a washed-up football coach with the blood of six Crying Freakoids on his hands.

  ‘Go on then Ken, tell us what you got up to!’ warbled my mum, coming into the front room carrying a tray of Feeko’s chocolate digestives, just like the other day.

  My dad stroked the bit of his chin where his beard’d be if he didn’t shave the next morning. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Everyone wrote down what they were good at on a giant pad.’

  My mum crunched on a biccy and I wondered if this was what being a grown-up was like - getting all excited listening to a boring old story about people scribbling on a piece of paper.

  ‘Then we took all the things we were good at and added them together,’ he carried on. ‘And we sort of created this super-human person who had all our skills in one body!’

  I pressed the mute button on the remote control, hoping maybe it’d shut my dad up. But it didn’t, so I un-muted the telly and turned the volume up to fifty.

  ‘It really taught me a lesson,’ shouted my dad over the TV.

  ‘What was that, love?’ asked my mum, reaching for another biscuit.

  My dad smiled like he was a presenter on a TV programme who was about to say the most important bit in the whole show.

  ‘The lesson it taught me,’ he said, ‘was that a group of people will always be stronger if they work together as a team!’

  ‘Fascinating stuff,’ said my mum, biscuit crumbs spraying out of her cake hole.

  ‘Oh yeah, REALLY interestikeels,’ I muttered. ‘NOT!’

  My dad leaned over and started to tickle me, but I didn’t laugh.

  ‘What’s wrong with my grumpy little Loser?’ he asked.

  ‘You don’t even wanna know,’ I said. Then I told them anyway.

  ‘Hmm,’ said my mum once I’d finished explaining, which was about half an hour later. ‘I think I might’ve had one of my brilliant and amazing ideas.’

  ‘You have those too?’ I asked, reaching for a Feeko’s chocolate digestive, but the plate was empty.

  Desmond crawled into my mum’s lap and scrunched his face up like a Crying Freakoid doing a poo.

  ‘Oui, oui, Barry!’ smiled my mum, and she handed Des to my dad. ‘Change this one’s nappy while I talk to my big boy, would you Ken?’

  ‘This’d better be good, Barold,’ said Gordon Smugly the next day. ‘The World Cup final’s on in an hour, you know.’

  It was Saturday morning and we were all standing outside the school gates.

  I’d been lying awake thinking about my mum’s idea all night and had only just phoned the Mogden Maniacs ten minutes earlier.

  ‘Thanks for coming at such short notice,’ I said. ‘I know I’m the last person you want to see, but we don’t have a lot of time.’

  Nancy whipped her measuring tape out and jotted down the length of a passing cat.

  ‘As you know, our dearly beloved Crying Freakoids were cruelly snatched from our bosoms yesterday break-time,’ I started.

  ‘Bosoms!’ sniggled Stuart.

  ‘Without us there to pat their little heads every time they start to blubber, our sweet babies won’t have long on this earth,’ I carried on.

  ‘Get to the point, Barry,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Now as I see it, we have two options - either we let Barry Junior and the rest of them die somewhere inside a smelly old drawer . . .’ I paused, letting them imagine what I’d just said.

  ‘Or we go get them.’

  Darren stretched his arms out and yawned. ‘Laying it on a bit thick ain’tcha, Loser?’ he said, and Shaz, who was still wearing her dressing gown and slippers, gave him a nudge.

  ‘Let’s give him a chance shall we, Daz?’ she said, and she turned to me, her eyes red from crying all night. ‘Bazzy baby, tell me you’ve got a plan.’

  I whipped a piece of paper out of my pocket and unfolded it.

  ‘What in the name of unkeelness is that?’ burped Darren.

  ‘It’s a piece of paper, Darren,’ I said, pulling a pen out from behind my ear.

  ‘Okay, but how’s that going to get me my Lil Gordy back?’ sneered Gordon.

  I dropped to my knees and flattened the paper out on the pavement. ‘Nancy, what do you reckon you’re best at out of everything in the whole wide world?’ I asked.

  ‘Huh?’ said Nancy, who’d kneeled down next to me and was measuring the piece of paper.

  ‘That’s it!’ I said, writing down her name and the words ‘Measuring stuff ’ after it. ‘Okay, Darren next - what’s your number one skill?’

  Stuart itched his nose. ‘No offence Barry, but what’s this all about?’

  ‘Just trust me for a minute, would you?’ I said, peering up at Dazza, who was cracking open a can of Fronkle.

  ‘Got it!’ I said, writing ‘Slurping F
ronkle’ next to his name on the piece of paper.

  Next I turned to Sharonella. ‘You’re easy too,’ I said, writing her name then the word ‘Nattering’ next to it.

  ‘Bunky, your turn,’ I said, peeking up at him. It was the first time I’d looked at him properly since we’d arrived, and I felt my cheeks go red like Desmond’s when he does his poos.

  ‘Keepy uppies, of keelse,’ said Bunky. ‘I’m the keelest at keepy uppies.’

  ‘Glad to see those boots of yours haven’t got any bigger,’ I said, and he sniggled, but only for a snigglisecond.

  ‘What about you, Smugly?’ I asked.

  ‘Most things,’ said Gordon. ‘But if I had to choose a number one thing it’d probably be . . .’ he scratched a spot on the end of his nose. ‘Looking after number one!’

  I wrote that down next to his name. ‘Yeah that makes sense,’ I said. ‘But it isn’t much use when you’re trying to build a team.’

  Stuart did a blow off. ‘When are you gonna learn, Barry?’ he sighed. ‘We don’t want to be in your team!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Stuey,’ I said. ‘This is something different. Now, what shall I write next to you?’

  Gordon put his hand on Stuart’s shoulder. ‘I can take care of this, Shmendrix,’ he said. ‘Stuart is good at whatever I tell him to be good at.’

  I looked at Stuart and he shrugged. ‘Come on Stuey,’ said Darren. ‘Don’t let Smugly boss you around like that!’