Free The Bare Bum Gang and the Football Face-Off by Anthony McGowan

Chapter One
HOW IT STARTED
    It all started when Jennifer Eccles said she wanted to be in our gang. Until then we were just called
the Gang
.
    The people in the Gang were:
Ludo, that’s me;
Noah, my best friend, who we sometimes call Doc;
Jamie;
Phillip, usually known as The Moan, because he is always moaning, who has the bad luck to be Jennifer’s brother.

    As well as names, we all have jobs in the Gang. Of course I am the Gang Leader, which means they all have to do what I tell them, except quite often they don’t.
    Noah is the Gang Doctor, which is why we sometimes called him Doc. Gang Doctor is quite an important job. Noah has to carry dock leaves around with him for when someone gets stung by nettles. And if you get a grass cut, which is when you pull some grass and it cuts you, he has to wee on it. Weeing on it is all you can really do for a grass cut, which everyone knows is the worst thing that can happen to you.Noah’s mum is a nurse and she told him that wee hasn’t got any germs in it, and that it’s better for washing bad injuries than using water out of a puddle. But it’s quite hard for Doc, because he might not want to have a wee exactly when you get a grass cut, so you have to stand around for a bit while he makes himself, by thinking about waterfalls and running taps and babbling brooks.
    Jamie is our Gang General, which means he takes charge in Times of War. He got the job because he’s the best at throwing stones and fighting, even though he isn’t actually very good at throwing stones or fighting, just better than the rest of us.
    The Moan – I mean Phillip – is the Gang Admiral, which is a bit silly, as we don’t have any ships. We had a bit of an argument about it. The trouble was that we all had cool jobs except Phillip, who wasn’t anything when we started. So he said:
    â€˜I’m going to be the Admiral.’
    â€˜Don’t be stupid,’ I said. ‘We haven’t got a navy.’
    â€˜Well, that doesn’t matter,’ he replied sulkily. ‘We
might
get one. We could expand and take over someone else’s navy.’
    I didn’t know of any other gangs nearby who had a navy we could take over, but I didn’t say anything.
    â€˜He could be in charge when we play Bomb the Bismarck.’
    That was Noah speaking. He was always being nice and trying to stop arguments.
    Bomb the Bismarck, by the way, is when it rains and there’s a gigantic puddle and you put a big stick or a plank to float in the puddle and then you throw stones and bricks at it until it sinks or surrenders. It’s probably the best game you can play that involves a puddle, a plank and some stones.
    Well, that’s our gang, and we didn’t want Jennifer or any sister or any other type of girl to be in it. Everyone knows that girls are rubbish at being in gangs and get youto tidy up your gang den and try to make your action figures wear dresses. A girl in a gang is like a stone in your shoe, or a hair in your throat, or a bit of bird-poo in your ice cream.
    But she just wouldn’t take no for an answer. She used to follow us around and it really spoiled things, having her miserable face wherever you looked. So that’s when I said to her:
    â€˜Look, Jennifer, there’s a special test you have to pass to be in our gang.’
    I didn’t know what the test was going to be when I said that, but I knew I’d be able to think of something. I was good at thinking of things, which is why I was Gang Leader.
    â€˜What test?’
    Jennifer had her suspicious face on. It was like her normal miserable face but more suspicious looking. Her hair was sort of banana-coloured, and it was tied in a kind of knot-thing on top of her head, with more hair squirting out of the top of it, soit looked a bit like yellow lava exploding out of a volcano.
    â€˜Just a test. A
special
test.’
    â€˜I don’t believe you.’
    â€˜Well,