Pictures by
Ellis Nadler
The
Killer Underpants
by
Michael Lawrence
The second Jiggy McCue
book
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The Iron, the Switch
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LUNCH
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Jiggy's mum buys him a hideous new pair of underpants from an odd-looking man at the market. But these aren't ordinary underpants. Far from it. They cling to him like a second skin and won't come off whatever he does. But even that is nothing compared to the Big Itch. When the Big Itch starts Jiggy has to scratch like a maniac in unmentionable places. And while he scratches he gets annoyed and tells people what to do. And they have to do it - whatever it is. Can't help themselves. Like Mr Rice during football practice...
Extract from
The Killer Underpants
Monday afternoons we have
Football with Rice. Chicken with Rice would have pleased me more, but nobody
asked me when they wrote the menu. Mr Rice is our sports teacher and he
wears this stupid red tracksuit all the time. I mean he even wears it in assembly,
which is pretty sad. Also, football is my most hated sport in the universe.
I could never understand what people see in it. Nor could Pete at first. We
started this anti-football club when we were about eight but only two people
joined - us - and after a while even Pete cancelled his membership and
started kicking a ball about.
The
girls are lucky. They don’t have Mr Rice for outdoor games, they have Miss
Weeks. This really irritates Angie. Not that she wants Rice, or wants to
play football or any of the other macho things. No, it’s the
discrimination that gets up her nose. ‘Miss,’ she said one day just
after Miss Weeks started, ‘why do we have to do netball and rounders and
stuff? Why can’t we play rugby and football or even boring old cricket?’
‘Because you’re a girl, Angela,’ Miss Weeks replied. ‘Don’t rub it
in!’ Angie snapped, and stomped off.
Another
thing Angie hates is having to put on this weeny little skirt that shows her
knickers. I don’t blame her, so would I. Miss Weeks wears the same outfit
when she takes the girls, weeny little skirt, bright green knickers. The
boys find this quite interesting. I mean how often do you get a chance to
see a teacher’s knickers? I’ll tell you. Every Monday afternoon at
Ranting Lane School.
Anyway,
there are the girls and Miss Weeks on that side of the field jumping in the
air and showing their green knickers, and here are the boys on this side of
the field kicking Mr Rice’s stupid balls, and suddenly old Rice-cake is
bellowing at me from across the field.
‘McCue!
In goal!’
Rice
always bellows. The only time his sentences don’t end in exclamation marks
is when he’s talking to Miss Weeks. Then you can hardly hear him with an
ear trumpet.
‘Goal?’
I yelled back. ‘Me? You have to be kidding, sir!’
He
put his head down and charged across the pitch fingering his whistle. The
man in red never goes anywhere without his whistle and is always blowing it
to make you jump. As he came at me I started wishing I had a personal hero
to hide behind. Mr Rice is about twice as tall as anyone else in the school,
with these shoulders like ox thighs and a jaw like a set square, and he
scowls a lot, and when he’s really annoyed his forehead bulges and veins
stand out in his neck. They were standing out now.
‘What
was that, lad?!’ he barked as he approached.
‘What
was what?’ I replied.
He
stood looking down at me. ‘What did you just say, boy?!’
I
stood looking up at him. ‘I said what was what, sir.’
‘I
mean before that!’
‘Dunno,
sir, can’t remember.’
‘I’ll
tell you what you said, sir! You said you have to be kidding, sir, that’s
what you said, sir! Now get in goal or you’ll see me after showers!
Ryan, make yourself useful somewhere else! Oi, you two! Hegarty! Sprinz!’
Hegarty
and Sprinz were mud-wrestling in a puddle. While Rice shot off to pull them
apart, Bryan Ryan sauntered out of the goal so I could saunter in. Ryan gave
me this superior amused look that said you’re gonna regret taking my job
McCue. Bry-Ry is only just getting the hang of joined-up thinking, so
football with Mr Rice is the highlight of his feeble-minded week. Kicking a
ball about is his favourite thing in life and right now he wanted to kick
one into the back of the net, and me with it.
As
this was football practice, not actual football, the idea was that we all
did a bit of everything so we could learn to be footie stars if we failed at
everything else. Now that I was in goal Mr Rice planned to make the most of
my terrific skill and interest. He told everyone to stand in a line facing
me. The first six all had a ball at their feet. Ryan was one of them. Mr
Rice blew his whistle and the first ball came towards me. I raised my arms
and jumped to the far right. The ball bounced in at knee height to the far
left.
‘Is
that the best you can do, boy?!’ Rice screamed.
‘Just
about,’ I said, wheezing a bit.
‘Well
try harder or you’ll be over there with the girls!’
‘I’ll
go now if you like, sir.’
‘Stay
where you are! And save goals!’
The
next ball came right at me. I ducked just in time. It sank into the net
behind me.
‘The
idea is to stop it, McCue, not get out of its way!’
‘Oh
really? Didn’t know that, sir.’
Another
ball came. This time, to show willing, I flicked a finger in its general
direction as it passed.
‘McCue,
you are useless!’
‘I’m
quite good at art!’ I yelled back.
‘Ryan!
Do your stuff!’
Ryan
grinned, flexed his elbows, spun round, and trotted so far up the pitch that
I began to think he was going to the pictures. But then, when he was down to
a dot on the horizon, he turned round, jogged on the spot for a minute
because he knows how impressed we all are by jogging on spots, and finally
set off at a run towards the ball. I was not terrifically excited about
this. In ten seconds that ball would be zooming at me with enough speed to
lay out an African elephant, and there was I with no choice but to stand
there with my hands on my waist waiting for it.
Ryan
was fifteen metres away and closing when I felt a ripple. I looked down. My
shorts, which I was wearing over my new pants, were on the move. I tried
dabbing at them. The ripple moved on. I followed it. Same result.
‘What
the hell are you doing now, McCue?!’ roared Mr Rice.
I
might have answered, but suddenly the ripple stopped and I had more
important things on my mind. It began with a little tickle somewhere too
private to mention and spread through my pants like chicken pox on ice
until, just as Ryan’s boot connected with the ball, I fell to the ground
scratching like a maniac.
‘McCue,
you twit!’ I heard as the ball slammed into the back of the net -
slammed so hard it bounced back and hit me between the shoulder blades. Any
other time I might have been a touch upset about this, but a football in the
back was nothing to the misery of the mighty Itch. I writhed in the mud,
stuck my legs in the air, then my back end, then jumped up to rub myself raw
against the goal post.
Mr
Rice jogged up. ‘What are you playing at, boy?! I know you have
trouble keeping still sometimes but this is ridiculous!’
I
threw myself across his enormous trainers. I wriggled between them. I got on
all fours to scratch against his leg like a dog against a lamppost. He
bawled something from on high, don’t ask me what, I wasn’t listening. I
replied with the first thing that came into my head, which I also didn’t
listen to. This was not the time for a heavy chat with a berk in red. But
then a funny thing happened. The moment I said whatever it was, my favourite
sporty type spun round and belted away across the field. I didn’t call him
back. I missed his leg, but at least I could get down to some serious
writhing and scratching without being shouted at.
After
a while the itching started to ease off and I was able to focus on bits of
the outside world. The bit that most appealed to me contained a long red
streak running round the field at breakneck speed. Mr Rice. And he wasn’t
only running. He would run for about five metres then jump in the air, run
five metres, jump in the air, run five metres, and so on. Somewhere in all
this his whistle must have got stuck in his mouth and started paying rent,
because every time he jumped it gave a little shriek. So what we had now was
run-jump-whistle, run-jump-whistle, run-jump-whistle, all round the field.
Everyone stopped what they were doing to watch, including Miss Weeks and the
girls. Some of the boys cheered him on. Crawlers.
Pete
joined me as my torment shuddered to an end.
‘What’s
old Rice Pudding up to?’
‘Must
have finally boiled over,’ I said, getting to my feet.
Mr Rice started to slow down. Now he was only
jumping every three metres and not quite as high. Even his whistle was a
whisper of its former self.
‘Jig,’
Pete said. ‘You were itching just now, weren’t you?’
‘Just
a bit,’ I said.
‘Did
you say anything to Rice?’
‘Might
have done, dunno, I was sort of distracted.’
‘You
can’t remember what?’
‘Does
it matter?’
‘It
might,’ he said. ‘Remember what happened when you told me to flush my
head down the toilet?’
‘Oh.
Yeah. See what you mean.’
‘So
try and remember what you said.’
I
didn’t have to try very hard. It came back like an HB pencil between the
eyes. I cleared my throat.
‘What?’
said Pete.
‘I
told him,’ I said, ‘to go take a running jump.’
IF YOU WANT TO SEE WHAT ELSE HAPPENS TO PEOPLE WHO GET ON THE WRONG SIDE OF
JIGGY'S UNDERPANTS GET A COPY OF THE BOOK FROM A BOOKSHOP OR LIBRARY.
I DON'T THINK YOU'LL BE DISAPPOINTED...
A bit of information. When I was ten or eleven one of my favourite authors was Anthony Buckeridge. He wrote hilarious school stories about a boy named Jennings and his friend Darbishire. I was such a fan of these books that I wrote Jennings plays and got my friends to act in them with me. Guess who played Jennings. Sadly, I eventually grew too old for Jennings stories, but I never lost my affection for them, so when I wrote The Killer Underpants I dedicated it to Anthony Buckeridge and sent him a copy. One evening a few weeks later the phone rang and the voice at the other end said: 'Hello, this is Anthony Buckeridge.' He'd phoned to thank me for the book and to say that he liked the sound of Jiggy McCue. Well, I hadn't expected that, and I wish I could tell you that I handled the conversation in an intelligent, articulate way, but it wouldn't be true. The moment I heard his name I started stammering and waffling and didn't stop until I put the phone down and collapsed into a chair wiping the perspiration from my dome. For a few minutes I'd been ten or eleven again, robbed of sensible speech when addressed by a hero.
