Attack of the Woolly Jumper Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  By Mark Lowery

  Dedication

  Monday

  Morning

  After School

  Tuesday

  Morning

  Wednesday

  Morning

  After School

  Thursday

  Morning

  Friday

  The Royal Visit

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  BY MARK LOWERY

  The Roman Garstang Disasters

  The Jam Doughnut that Ruined My Life

  The Chicken Nugget Ambush

  Attack of the Woolly Jumper

  and

  Socks Are Not Enough

  Pants Are Everything

  To Mrs Lowery and the Bambini

  My name is Roman Garstang and I don’t like clothes.

  Now that’s not the same as saying, ‘I like no clothes.’ I’m not weird. I definitely don’t want to walk about in the nude, all pink and wobbly like a giant plucked chicken.

  I just mean I’m not bothered about which clothes I wear and I’ve never understood people who are; especially when most fashion trends seem to be completely crackers.

  Last month a pop star called Tara Krust went on stage wearing a dress made entirely out of slices of cheese. Yes, as in actual slices of actual cheese. I only know this because Rosie Taylor (AKA the Worst Person Who Ever Lived) brought a photo of her in to our class for show and tell, and made a speech about how ‘brave’ and ‘clever’ she was.

  Brave and clever?

  I don’t think so. Tara Krust isn’t exactly a hero or a genius, is she? She didn’t protect a cluster of babies from a man-eating hamster, or invent something amazing and important like a reusable jam doughnut.

  All she’d done was slap a few Dairylea slices onto herself like some kind of mad human cheeseburger. Personally I thought she looked like a total nutter. She only got away with it because she’s a famous singer. Imagine if I went around wearing a waistcoat made out of mashed potato, or a pair of satsuma trousers, or a bobble hat made from lasagne. I’d get taken away in an ambulance.

  It’s official: fashion is pointless and stupid, and I don’t get it.

  But then again, clothes can have important jobs.

  Firstly, they say a lot about you. For instance, Rosie Taylor sometimes wears a top with ‘This Jumper Cost More Than Your House’ printed on it in gold writing. Also a kid in my class called Kevin ‘the Grand Old Puke of York’ Harrison usually has a couple of dried-up sick stains on his togs if you look closely enough. And my sort-of best friend Darren Gamble (probably the naughtiest kid in Europe) likes T-shirts with the names of his favourite heavy metal bands on them. His current favourites are ‘The Erupting Nappies’, ‘Razor Blade Ruth and the Tortured Piglets’, and ‘Death By Toilet’.

  I’ll let you decide what these clothes say about each of them.

  Secondly, clothes can protect you. You can buy thick winter coats, bulletproof vests, anti-tortoise wellington boots, etc.

  Yes, clothes can save your life – but I’ve recently discovered that they can also destroy it. And I should know. Last week I was exposed to the nastiest, cruellest, most violent object known to man.

  A homemade woolly jumper.

  When you think about it, woolly jumpers are all about making simple things extremely complicated. You take a few straightforward strands of wool, then you tie them into thousands of knots until you’ve got an awful item of clothing.

  And that’s exactly what the jumper did to me. It took my simple and straightforward life (go to school – eat doughnuts – go home – eat more doughnuts – repeat) and tangled it up into a mess.

  OK, so I’ll admit that maybe things weren’t all that simple or straightforward before the jumper came along. A few weeks earlier, a single jam doughnut had made me shave a prize guinea pig and cover my girlfriend in wee, as well as causing a riot at an old people’s tea party.

  And then I’d been on a disastrous Year Six residential trip, where I was forced to eat nothing but disgusting chicken nuggets. Because of the nuggets:

  I doubled my number of friends. This should’ve been a good thing, but 50% of my friends are still Darren Gamble.

  I missed out on the zip wire because Kevin ‘Grand Old Puke of York’ Harrison threw up into my welly boot.

  I was attacked by a trillion chickens.

  Gamble made friends with a cow called Gusher and hid it in our tent.

  On live TV, the cow covered Rosie Taylor from head to toe in sloppy green poo. The video clip ‘Cow Toilet Girl’ went viral on the internet and had over eight million views in seventy-two hours. She’d been desperate to get her revenge on me ever since.

  However, ten days later, my school routine had returned to normal and jam doughnuts were back on the menu. I was thrilled. But it was then, when my guard was down, that the evil woolly jumper struck.

  When I Learned about Royal Badgers and

  Came Face to Face with Pure, Woolly Evil

  It was a strange morning.

  A couple of decent things had happened. Before school, Mum and Dad had been busy so I’d had to make my own packed lunch. I’d decided on a delicious, balanced meal: two jam doughnuts (one for each hand). And now, as we waited for our teacher Mrs McDonald to come in and take the register, I was sitting next to the good half of my friends (i.e. Vanya Goyal, the coolest girl in the whole class). These things should’ve made me happy.

  But I also had a few issues.

  Firstly, I was tired. This was because Grandma had suddenly come to stay the day before. Now I love my grandma. But when she comes to stay she brings … problems with her.

  I’d been kicked out of my bedroom and forced to sleep on a tiny inflatable mattress in the spare room. Unfortunately the mattress had a puncture so it went flat in no time. And, because it’s ancient, it absolutely stank of meaty old sweat. Plus Grandma likes the heating in the house turned up to the temperature of the sun. It was about as comfortable as lying on top of a piece of bacon inside a frying pan.

  As well as this, Grandma had brought me a present.

  I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but Grandma’s presents are always rubbish. And this one was spectacularly dreadful. In fact, it was the worst present ever. Even worse than when Gamble gave me that dead pigeon for my birthday. But, because Grandma’s a sweet old woman and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, I had to pretend I liked it. Later on, when she wasn’t looking, I’d hidden it away before it could do any damage.

  And what was this terrible gift?

  Yep, you guessed it – a woolly jumper.

  OK, it might not sound too bad, but you have no idea how dangerous this woolly jumper was. The problem was that neither did I, until it was far too late.

  Animals

  To kill time while the class waited for Mrs McDonald, the other half of my friends (Darren Gamble) was giving himself a tattoo on his forehead using a handwriting pen and the sharp point of a maths compass. Instead of stopping him, Miss Clegg, his one-to-one teaching assistant, was asleep with her head on the desk, snoring like a broken lawnmower.

  Miss Clegg is meant to stop Gamble from being naughty but she doesn’t try very hard at her job because she doesn’t like Gamble much. One time I heard her say that she wished she lived in the olden days so that, when Gamble was bad, she could ‘hit him with a stick or maybe chop off a few of his body parts’.

  I’m not sure whether or not she was joking.

  Everyone else in the class was chatting and laughing. Well, everyone apart from Rosie Taylor, that is. She was sitting alone on the table behind me. Whenever I turned my head, I coul
d see her glaring angrily at me, her eyes glowing like two radioactive tomatoes.

  She’s always hated me but, since the Cow Pat Incident, she’d been worse than ever. She blamed me for it. I think this was a bit unfair. I mean, I didn’t go to the toilet on her, did I?

  This didn’t seem to matter to Rosie, though. Ever since then, she’d spent all her free time trying to think of ways to get back at me. Last week she stuffed my PE trainers full of old tuna sandwiches and also spread a rumour that I have a ‘curly-wurly winkle like a pig’.

  I don’t by the way.

  Anyway, just as we were starting to hope that Mrs McDonald wasn’t going to turn up at all, she burst into the room and cried, ‘Stop what you’re doing! I have an exciting announcement to make!’

  Mrs McDonald was bright red and she looked ready to pop, just like a massive zit. Everyone immediately sat up straight. Even Miss Clegg woke up and wiped the drool off her chin.

  ‘What is it, miss?’ called out Gamble, who was bleeding slightly from the big letter D on his forehead. ‘Has the new class pet been delivered?’

  The excitement drained from Mrs McDonald’s face. ‘Class pet?’

  I didn’t like the sound of this. Gamble’s not exactly normal. He’s small and puny with a little shaved head like a grape, and you never know what he might do next. His favourite hobby is ‘headbutting stuff’ and he once had to go to hospital after sticking his tongue in a plug socket.

  ‘Thought I should order one, miss,’ said Gamble, ‘Cos your guinea pigs are a bit boring.’

  Mrs McDonald pursed her lips and laid a hand on the guinea pig cage. She loves her guinea pigs (Mrs Wiggles and her seven babies) and doesn’t like to hear a bad word against them.

  ‘ACCHHOOOO!’ sneezed Rosie, showering the back of my head with snot drops. ‘We are not having any more pets in this room. My therapist says I shouldn’t go near any disgusting creatures.’

  ‘Why are you looking at me?’ said Gamble, who had just picked his ear and was now sniffing his finger.

  ‘Can’t think,’ said Rosie flatly, before turning back to Mrs McDonald. ‘But ever since Roman ruined my life …’

  ‘How di—?’ I began.

  ‘ACHOO!’ she roared, then stood up and began slapping the table. ‘Because of the trauma of … what Roman made that cow do to me … I’ve become allergic to all furry creatures.’

  Mrs McDonald tried to speak but Rosie jabbed a finger towards the cage to cut her off. ‘So you’d better get rid of those disgusting rats today or I’ll sue the school.’

  ‘I’ve told you, Rosie,’ sighed Mrs McDonald, ‘as soon as I find a new babysitter for the piggy wiggies I’ll stop br—’

  Rosie interrupted her again. ‘And BTW – which FYI is short for by the way – if anyone else dares to bring any animals into this classroom, there’s a good chance I’ll sneeze myself to death. And, if I do, I promise my ghost will haunt you forever.’

  She plonked herself down in her chair and angrily folded her arms.

  Since the cow had given her a pat on the head, Rosie had sneezed and sniffed at the slightest mention of any animal. Personally I didn’t think there was anything wrong with her and she was just doing it for attention.

  Mrs McDonald took a deep breath. ‘Thank you, Rosie. Now, Darren, what was all this about a class pet?’

  Gamble bounced around excitedly in his chair. ‘Well, miss. Someone left the school credit card lying around in the office so I thought I’d buy something for the class. Amazing what you can get online.’

  ‘That sounds a bit … illegal,’ said Mrs McDonald. ‘What exactly did you order?’

  ‘A goat.’

  ‘Phew. I was worried it was something danger—’

  ‘Yeah, miss,’ grinned Gamble, ‘it came free as food for the tiger.’

  ‘Tiger?!’

  A few people let out a yelp. Gamble looked around him, his shiny little head twitching. ‘Every school needs a tiger, miss. I’m gonna call it Nigel. It can live under my desk. And when it’s eaten the goat we can just let it hunt on the field.’

  ‘Hunt what exactly?’ asked Mrs McDonald, her voice quivering.

  Gamble looked at her like she was thick. ‘People, of course. Don’t worry, miss. You’ll be alright. I’ll train him to leave you alone cos I love you, miss. And anyway, he’ll probably pick off all the weak kids first. Then he’ll move on to the fatties. And after that …’

  As he spoke, people began to panic. Kevin ‘Grand Old Puke of York’ Harrison clasped his hand over his mouth.

  ‘Don’t worry, everyone,’ yawned Miss Clegg, ‘the order didn’t go through. The bank rang the school to ask if they’d meant to spend twenty thousand pounds at maneatingbeasts dot com. They cancelled the payment.’

  Everyone sighed with relief.

  ‘Aw, what’s the point in being here at all?’’ screeched Gamble, before stomping across the classroom and crawling into the art cupboard under the sink.

  This kind of behaviour is normal for Gamble. You could say he has a bit of a temper. Once, we went on a school visit to an art gallery and he punched a hole in one of the paintings because ‘the man in it was giving me evils’.

  Royal Badgers

  ‘So what was the news, miss?’ asked Vanya. As well as being amazing at everything, she likes to ask questions.

  ‘Ah yes. Thank you, Vanya,’ said Mrs McDonald. ‘I haven’t been this excited since Mrs Wiggles got chosen to be in that advert.’

  You might have seen this advert when it was on TV last year. It starts with a man sitting on the loo (luckily you can only see his shoulder with the top of the toilet behind him). He reaches out with his hand, searching for the loo roll, but somehow accidentally picks up a fluffy white guinea pig (Mrs Wiggles). The camera points at Mrs Wiggles’ face for a moment (the guinea pig manages to look terrified, which is pretty impressive acting for a guinea pig). Then the man moves the guinea pig towards his … you know … wiping zone. The screen goes black just in time and the voiceover says: ‘Pupdrex toilet tissue – so soft you could mistake it for anything.’

  It’s horrible.

  ‘So …’ said Mrs McDonald, clapping her hands excitedly. ‘Before we watch a short film, who can tell me what they think about badgers?’

  ‘Urgh yuck. They’re gross,’ said Rosie. ‘I bet they eat their own poo or something. Bit like Roman …’

  A couple of people tittered.

  ‘Eh?’ I said.

  Rosie ignored me. ‘And, frankly, black, white and grey together? Boring. It’s like, why not accessorise? Try some gold shoes or a red headband or something.’

  Typical Rosie.

  Mrs McDonald swallowed. ‘Well, that’s not what I …’

  ‘Miss, I love ’em,’ said Gamble, climbing out of the cupboard and walking across a couple of tables before dropping down into his chair.

  ‘So nice to see a young animal lover, Darren,’ said Mrs McDonald. She has to ignore most of Gamble’s bad behaviour, otherwise she wouldn’t have time to do anything else.

  ‘They’re well cute, miss,’ he said.

  ‘Yes they a—’

  ‘And delicious.’

  There was a short pause. Mrs McDonald looked like she’d swallowed a coconut. ‘I’m sorry, Darren, I thought you just said … ahem … delicious.’

  Gamble grinned. ‘I did, miss. They taste a bit like ham. Mixed with car bumper. And a little sprinkle of road.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Dad ran one over the other week,’ explained Gamble. ‘We always eat dead stuff off the road, miss. One time we ate a hitchhiker.’

  ‘WHAT????’ screamed Mrs McDonald.

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me,’ grunted Miss Clegg, who seemed to be playing Candy Crush on her phone under the desk.

  Kevin ‘Grand Old Puke of York’ Harrison stood up, holding his belly. ‘Miss, I feel …’

  ‘Just go, Kevin,’ sighed Mrs McDonald, before turning back to Gamble. ‘You ate a hitchhiker? One of those people w
ho stands by the side of the road asking for a lift?’

  Gamble slapped his forehead, spreading out the ink and blood. ‘No. Not one of them. Silly me. It was a hedgehog. Same thing though, innit?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Best thing is, miss,’ Gamble went on excitedly, ‘if you cut a hedgehog up into little chunks it comes served on its own cocktail sticks.’

  Kevin Harrison charged out of the room.

  Rosie Taylor sneezed again, this time into my ear. ‘See – even thinking about animals makes me allergic.’

  I wiped it off with my sleeve. ‘Thanks for that.’

  Vanya tutted at her. ‘You could sneeze into your hand like a normal person, you know?’

  ‘Well, Vanya, I know that you like hanging around with crusty little bogies,’ said Rosie, glancing at me. ‘But I’m not getting mucus on my fingers, thank you. Hashtag – snot gonna happen.’

  ‘And what if Roman gets ill?’ said Vanya. She always sticks up for me, which is nice.

  Rosie held up her bright red fingernails. ‘These fake nails cost twenty-five quid. I really don’t think Roman’s life is worth that much, do you?’

  ‘Thanks again,’ I said.

  ‘Can we PLEASE get back to the badgers?’ howled Mrs McDonald. ‘I have an important announcement to make.’

  ‘Fine, jeez, chill out,’ tutted Rosie.

  Huffing out her cheeks, Mrs McDonald switched off the lights and we watched a film on the interactive whiteboard. It was all about a badger hospital. There was a badger with a broken leg, an old badger being fitted with false teeth, then a few badgers snuffling round a pen, nudging a football around with their noses. Everyone thought they were really cute – like flat, stumpy, black-and-white bears – and all the girls went awwwwwww when it showed a woman bottlefeeding milk to a fluffy little baby badger.

  Then the camera panned out to reveal that it wasn’t just any woman. It was a beautiful young woman with mega-fancy clothes on and perfect hair. Everyone gasped.

  Mrs McDonald pressed pause. ‘Does anyone know who this is?’