Muckabout School Read online

  Copyright

  First Published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2005

  This electronic edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2015

  HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

  1 London Bridge Street,

  London SE1 9GF

  The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is:

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  Text copyright © Ian Whybrow 2005

  Illustrations by Steve May 2005

  Ian Whybrow and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

  Source ISBN: 9780007158768

  Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780007390625

  Version: 2015-07-23

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A New Boy at Muck About

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Much about Outing

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Other Books by Ian Whybrow

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Gary Goody walked through the empty corridors of Muckabout School to his new classroom. He entered and stopped in his tracks.

  “Oh no!” he thought. “I’m the first to arrive – again!”

  He was just about to go back out to the playground when he heard a snort from behind the teacher’s desk. It was Mr Dawdle just waking up from a nap. The lazy teacher straightened his sunglasses and stared straight at Gary.

  “Gary!” Mr Dawdle groaned. “You’re early again!”

  Mr Dawdle dragged himself out of his comfortable armchair and stumbled over to where Gary was. In any other school, Mr Dawdle would have been a disgrace. He was as tall and skinny as a beanpole, with greasy hair scragged into a ponytail. His jeans and T-shirt were filthy and full of holes and he peered at Gary through sunglasses that were smeared with what looked like tomato ketchup.

  “I’m sorry,” sighed Gary.

  “You should know the rules by now, yeah?” the teacher said, producing a biscuit from his pocket. He dusted the biscuit off and popped it into his mouth, chewing the biscuit as he yawned. “Well? What are they?” the teacher asked, spraying Gary with crumbs.

  “Run in the corridors,” Gary said.

  “Uh-huh,” said Mr Dawdle.

  “Don’t put up your hand. Be rude to teachers. Don’t mind your manners. Always eat in class.”

  “And…?”

  “…and never be on time,” Gary said, quietly.

  “Never be on time. Exactly, man. So what’s so difficult? I haven’t seen you run once, you’re polite to everyone, you always say sorry and thank you (and please, come to think of it). And I haven’t seen you eating anything in class all week.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Gary replied.

  “There you go again,” Mr Dawdle grumbled. “You’re just so… nice. You’ll give Muckabout School a good name if you’re not careful. It really isn’t bad enough you know. Not bad enough at all. So maybe you should stay in at playtime and write the school motto one hundred times! Know what I mean?”

  “Yes sir. Sorry sir.”

  “And cool it with the ‘sorry’ all the time, OK?”

  Gary was such a good, well-behaved child that his anxious parents thought there must be something wrong with him. That’s why they had sent him to Muckabout School. The “Muckabout Method” promised to make children happy and confident “through jollification and tomfoolery”. Of course, that was really a fancy way of saying that it encouraged children to be naughty, but it sounded to Gary’s mum and dad to be just the sort of thing Gary needed to make him a bit more normal.

  The trouble was, Gary didn’t really belong at Muckabout School. He just wasn’t very good at… mucking about.

  That’s why at playtime on this, his fifth day at his new school, poor Gary felt it was his duty to stay indoors and write “Muckabout for ever!” until his arm ached. He glanced out of the window at the other children in the playground. They were having a great time playing football.

  Franky Fearless, who kicked the ball again and again, might have scored if it wasn’t for the giant William Whale, who blocked the goalmouth. Tim Tattle, the class stirrer, was encouraging Ricky Rude to pelt everyone with smelly mud. Whilst the others were busy, Wanda Offalot was quietly slipping out of the school gates.

  Gary looked back at the lines he was writing.

  “At least I’m getting into Mr Dawdle’s good books,” he thought.

  It was ages before all the children came back into the classroom. They threw themselves on the floor in front of the telly. “Video, video, video, video!” they chanted.

  Mr Dawdle smiled and opened the cupboard. “Alright, listen up, guys! You can have The Revenge of Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings Meets the Incredible Hulk, or Rugrats Go Mad in Jurassic Park. Which do you fancy?”

  He let them all have a good scream and shout about it. Then he noticed Gary bent over his desk at the back of the class. He was still writing, slowly and painfully doing the ‘r’ at the end of his ninety-ninth Muckabout for ever.

  “Wait up a second, Gary!” called Mr Dawdle. “What’s that you’re doing?”

  Gary blushed. He rose to his feet and made his way to the teacher’s desk.

  Mr Dawdle took the carefully written lines and frowned.

  “Who told you to do this?” the teacher asked. “You did sir,” said Gary.

  “I did? Oh Gary,” Mr Dawdle sighed. “You didn’t actually follow my orders, did you?”

  “Yes sir,” Gary replied.

  “And this is your best writing, isn’t it?” asked Mr Dawdle. “Proper, joined-up writing, with all the ‘t’s crossed!”

  “Yes, sir, sorry, sir,” mumbled Gary.

  “Oooo!” chorused the class. “Did you hear that, Mr Dawdle? He said he was sorry!”

  “And he called you ‘sir’,” sneaked Tim Tattle.

  “Gar-ee!” everyone groaned.

  Try as he might, Gary just couldn’t do anything right. He said his two-times table perfectly. He was the only child in the class who knew that fish were not mammals. And when Mr Dawdle asked his trick question – “Who wants to do some extra Geography?” – Gary was the one who fell for it. He looked really keen and nodded like mad.

  “No, no, NO, Gary!” said Mr Dawdle. “NOBODY wants to do extra Geography!”

  And just when he thought things couldn’t get any worse, the chip fryer exploded.

  The fact that the chip fryer exploded didn’t bother Gary personally. He was much too good to eat anything as unhealthy
as chips. But normal Muckabouts had chips with everything.

  They had sausage and chips, fish and chips, burger and chips, chicken and chips, ice cream and chips, chocolate and chips, beans and chips, chips and chips… pretty much anything, so long as it was chips.

  It was Mr Jolly, the headmaster, who delivered the bad news. He stood at the front of the class in a T-shirt that read:

  LOVE FATTY FOOD HATE SPORT

  “Muckabouts,” Mr Jolly said in his most serious voice. “We are gathered here today to pay our respects to the school’s chip fryer. I am sure many of you will have fine memories of that chip fryer. I know I have.”

  He sniffed and wiped his eye.

  “But I am afraid that the poor thing exploded from over-use.”

  He lifted the hem of his T-shirt, exposing a hairy round tummy. He used the T-shirt to wipe his nose.

  “Still – no point going hungry,” Mr Jolly said, pulling his T-shirt back into place and patting his tummy. “It’s packed lunches all round!”

  The whole school cheered!

  Quick as a flash, Mr Jolly produced a plastic raincoat and put it on, doing the zip up tight.

  From all around the canteen there came the snap and hiss of violently shaken fizzy drink cans being opened. That was soon followed by the squeals and shrieks of dozens of young Muckabouts spraying one another with fountains of brightly coloured, sugary liquid.

  The headmaster was ready. He pulled the hood of the raincoat over his head to protect his neck from getting too sticky whenever they tried to squirt him. To stop any of the sprayers getting too close, he screamed his war cry and pelted them with bread rolls.

  Then, when the food fight was over, the children dug into their packed lunches. Table by table, the noise changed to something like a regiment marching through deep gravel as all the children crunched away at their family-sized packets of crisps. That noise gave way in its turn to a gentle slurping as everyone began sucking the jam out of their doughnuts.

  Everyone, that is, except… Gary Goody.

  Gary always had a packed lunch, but up until now he had managed to keep it a secret from everyone else. Now, as he prised the plastic lid off his lunchbox, it was finally revealed. He had a succulent red apple and neatly cut slices of carrot and celery. He had a luscious egg, mayonnaise and cress sandwich in seeded wholemeal bread. And to finish he had a low fat raspberry yoghurt.

  Gary might have got away with it if he hadn’t been sitting next to William Whale. William was such an enormous child that his bottom took up most of the bench on its own.

  “ERRRR!” said William, as Gary crunched a stick of celery.

  “I beg your pardon?” Gary asked.

  “You can’t eat that in here!” William wailed, rising to his feet. “That’s healthy that is!”

  At that, the whole table rose in protest. It wasn’t long before Mr Jolly came over to see what was going on.

  “Now what’s all this?” Mr Jolly panted. “Have I missed another food fight?”

  “Look what Gary’s eating!” snitched Tim Tattle.

  “Well I’m jiggered!” said Mr Jolly. “I’ve never seen anything like it! A lunchbox stuffed with food – and not a gram of extra sugar, salt, fat or preservative in sight! That is strictly against School Rules. Ha ha! You know what this means, sonny!”

  Giggling happily, the headmaster reached a hand towards his top pocket. Out flipped… a red card.

  “Off off off!” the Muckabouts chorused merrily, as they tossed Gary in a tablecloth and sprayed him with more fizzy drinks.

  The next morning, Gary stood outside the headmaster’s office. His palms were sweating and his stomach was flipping like a pancake. He had never been so scared.

  He knocked on the door, once, but there was no answer.

  “You’ll have to knock louder than that, dear,” said Mrs Grunge, the school secretary. She lay on a sofa watching television, taking her pick from a large tray of chocolates in her lap.

  Gary knocked again, louder this time.

  “Come in,” said a voice from inside.

  When Gary entered, Mr Jolly leapt up from his chair and bounded around his desk to greet him. As he walked, the headmaster hitched the waistband of his trousers round his great round tummy. Then he tugged down his T-shirt, which read:

  MCUKABOUT SKOOL

  “Good to see you, Gary,” the headmaster said, pointing to a chair for Gary to sit on whilst he leaned on his desk. “It seems like you’ve been having a bit of a tough time recently. You’ve not really got the hang of things around here, have you? Dashing into school early, minding your manners, eating healthily. I can see you’re the sort of boy who likes to do up their top button and tuck their shirt in, but it’s just not very… Muckabout. You must remember that at Muckabout School it’s bad to be good. That’s why your mum and dad were so keen for you to come here – to have some fun.”

  “I know,” said Gary. “But I am trying. And I’m going to change! Honest I am.”

  “Well done, Gary. That’s the spirit,” laughed Mr Jolly. “You’ll be a Muckabout before you know it.”

  “And I’m going to start right now,” Gary said. And with that, he turned and walked very quickly out of the headmaster’s office, past Mrs Grunge and all the way back to his own class.

  Mr Dawdle was asleep in his comfortable armchair whilst the rest of the class played a game of indoor Frisbee.

  Without pausing to say please or sir or thank you, Gary dashed to the white board and snatched up the red marker pen. In no time at all, he wrote the word BOTTOM in large, clear capitals.

  “There!” he cried. “What do you think of that?”

  One or two of the children started to clap, which woke Mr Dawdle.

  “Not bad,” the lazy teacher yawned. “Not bad at all. But did you deliberately spell that word correctly?”

  Quick as a flash, Gary grabbed the marker pen again and scribbled

  in nasty, spidery letters.

  “Well, it’s a start, I suppose,” Mr Dawdle said.

  The next week was an exciting one at Muckabout School. The workmen had come to build a new adventure playground next to the field and having the builders around was great fun. It meant that all the children would get a chance to show off and do even naughtier things than usual.

  They got in the way of the men with the drills. They stood far too close to the diggers. They climbed over the safety barriers. They tripped over electric cables. They fell down holes. When they bothered to go into the classrooms, they trod mud everywhere.

  Mr Jolly stood watching from his office window, laughing like mad. He was delighted with the children’s behaviour. In fact, he was so pleased with one of the boys – Franky Fearless – that he called a special assembly.

  Everybody bundled into the hall, pushing and shoving each other and making a tremendous noise. Mr Jolly smiled down from the edge of the stage. Today his T-shirt read:

  DON’T WORRY BE SILLY

  He let the children fight and insult each other for a good while. Then he let them scrape their feet. Then he took a large paper bag from his pocket and blew into it once, twice, three times. When it was full of air, he twisted the end and burst the bag against his other hand.

  All the children went “URGHHHH! HE GOT ME!”

  They threw themselves down and pretended to be dead.

  “Well done, Muckabouts!” yelled Mr Jolly. “That was superbly noisy and silly! But I expect you’re wondering why you have to come in here and listen to boring old me. The answer is this. I’ve called you away from your normal fooling around for two reasons. “First, I wish to award Franky Fearless his Prefect’s badge.”

  From the back of the hall came the rumble of small wheels on the wooden floor. Franky flashed down the central aisle of the hall on his skateboard, slapping people’s hands as he passed. The infants squealed with delight as the young daredevil skidded to a halt and flipped the skateboard into his hand.

  “I have watched a lot of mucking a
bout on the building site during this past week, but Franky Fearless has easily been the most impressive,” the headmaster continued. “Many of you thought of writing your names in the wet concrete, of course. Some of you left your footprints and handprints in it – but only Franky thought of throwing his whole body in and making a complete print of himself. So well done, Franky!”

  “If only,” thought Gary, who clapped as loudly as anyone. “If only I could think of something as clever as that.”

  There were loud and raucous cheers as Mr Jolly pinned a badge with the word PREEFEK on to Franky’s T-shirt. Franky raised his skateboard above his head, acknowledging the applause.

  “Second,” the headmaster continued. “We’ve had two weeks at school this term and that’s far too long. So we’ve all got to go away and have a week’s holiday.”

  The school went crazy!

  Everyone raced back to their classrooms to grab their bags.

  Mr Dawdle was in the middle of his second nap that day when his class burst in.

  “Just one thing before you go,” Mr Dawdle yawned. “A little homework assignment.”

  Everyone groaned.

  “Homework! No way!” screamed Ricky Rude. He let out a ripping burp, just to remind everyone that he was the most revolting child in the class.

  “Not proper homework, you doughnuts,” said Mr Dawdle. “Whilst you’re away, you’ve got to think of something really silly and mischievous to get up to when you come back. OK?”

  The class looked at each other excitedly.

  “And that means everyone,” Mr Dawdle said. The whole class looked at Gary Goody. “And Gary – are you chewing something whilst I’m talking to you?”

  “No, sir,” said Gary. “Not me, sir!”

  “Well why NOT?” asked Mr Dawdle.

  “Everybody else is!”

  “But I don’t have any gum, sir,” Gary muttered.

  “Just look under any table! There’s bound to be plenty stuck there! And stop calling me sir!”