the nose drawer
My mum’s embarrassing enough just being my mum, but now she’s won this stupid Feeko’s Supermarkets competition it’s even worse.
Like the other day, when I was skateboarding home with my best friend Bunky and we went past a Feeko’s and there was a poster of my mum, winking and holding up a packet of sausages.
‘Coowee, Barry!’ said Bunky, holding a packet of invisible sausages and scrunching his face up, trying to do a wink.
I rolled my eyes and they landed on another poster of my mum, wiggling her bum in a pair of Feeko’s jeans.
‘Tshhhhhh!’ farted a bus as it drove past with a poster of my mum on the side. She was sticking her tongue out and putting a Feeko’s chocolate digestive on to it.
I didn’t used to mind her winking, or the way she dances, or how she sticks her tongue out when she’s eating, but now that she’s on posters everywhere it’s completely ruining my keelness.
I picked up a snail that was having a little drink of a puddle and went to throw it at the poster of my mum winking, then changed my mind because I’m not a snail murderer.
‘There you go, Snailypoos!’ I said, sticking him on to my mum’s bum and patting him on the shell so his whole head disappeared inside it.
‘See you tomozzoid,’ I said when we got to Bunky’s road.
I was just about to do my goodbye face that makes Bunky wee himself with laughter, when I spotted Nancy Verkenwerken standing outside Bunky’s house.
Nancy Verkenwerken is Bunky’s loserish new next-door neighbour.
She’s got glasses like Mrs Trumpet Face down my street, plus she collects stamps, which everyone knows is the unkeelest thing you can do apart from winking.
‘Get your OWN tomozzoid!’ shouted Bunky, and I snortled with laughter because ever since I borrowed his ruler in Maths and he said,‘Get your OWN ruler!’ we’ve been saying ‘Get your OWN . . .’ and then the thing we’re talking about after it.
I was still snortling as I rolled up to my front door and saw my mum through the kitchen window, holding a tin of chopped tomatoes like she was in one of her adverts.
‘Coowee, Barry!’ she mouthed, doing a wink, and I stopped laughing and wished I wasn’t the boy whose mum was The Voice of Feeko’s.
‘Do your helmet straps up!’ shouted my mum as I rolled off to meet Bunky at the top of my road.
This was the next morning by the way, not that you could tell, because I was wearing all the same clothes, including my trousers that haven’t been cleaned since my mum got her Feeko’s job and my dad took over the washing.
‘Do your OWN helmet straps up!’ I shouted, all excited because it was less than a week until the school trip to The Ski Dome, which is the keelest place in the whole wide world amen.
The Ski Dome has its own hotel and indoor ski slopes with real-life snow, which was why Bunky was cycling towards me in a pair of ski goggles.
Nancy Verkenwerken was walking next to him with her Mrs Trumpet Face glasses on and a massive red stamp album under her arm.
‘Ah, Mrs Trumpet Face, what do you have in your cupboard-eyes today?’ I said to Nancy, and Bunky did a snortle.
‘Cupboard-eyes’ is what me and Bunky have started calling Mrs Trumpet Face’s glasses, because the frames look like cupboard doors.
‘You, unfortunately,’ said Nancy, pointing her cupboard-eyes right at me so I could see my reflection.
Usually when I call Mrs Trumpet Face Cupboard-eyes she just stands there looking confused, so I didn’t know what to do this time. I stood there looking confused until I felt something on my knee.
‘OW!’ I said, even though it didn’t hurt. I looked down and saw a fly sitting on my trousers, eating a tomato ketchup stain. ‘Arrrgghh, a fly!’ I screamed, waggling my leg around like a sausage.
‘It’s more of a “sit” at the moment,’ said Nancy, wafting her stamp album at it, and the sit turned into a fly and flew off.
‘Thank,’ I said, because it was only worth one thank, but Nancy was too busy looking at the old falling-apart house at the end of my road to take any notice. I glanced up at its windows and imagined a ghost staring down at me.
‘Come on Bunky, let’s get the keelness out of here,’ I said, pretending I wasn’t scared, and we zoomed off, me with my helmet straps undone.
