First published in Great Britain 2013 by Jelly Pie an imprint of Egmont UK Ltd The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN
Text and illustration copyright © Jim Smith 2013 The moral rights of the author-illustrator have been asserted.
ISBN 978 1 4052 6033 6
eISBN 978 1 7803 1381 8
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
barryloser.com www.egmont.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the CPI Group
49955/1
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E G M O N T L U C K Y C O I N
Our story began over a century ago, when seventeen-year-old Egmont Harald Petersen found a coin in the street.
He was on his way to buy a flyswatter, a small hand-operated printing machine that he then set up in his tiny apartment.
The coin brought him such good luck that today Egmont has offices in over 30 countries around the world. And that lucky coin is still kept at the company’s head offices in Denmark.
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.
