Sweaty and Pals

By Mac Black

Anyone who likes Mac Black’s “Please call me Derek” (and the rest in the series covering his grown-up adventures) will enjoy introducing younger friends and family to his new series, “Sweaty and Pals”. Derek hated his nickname and now we find out how he came by it. Filled with stories about Derek’s exploits wi

• Language: English
• Publisher: U P Publications Ltd
• Release date: Jul 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781908135537

Mac Black

Mac Black has had fun performing daft roles in amateur theatre and has written and presented silly poetry - he enjoys writing quirky fiction in the hope of gaining wry smiles. Mac's Young Adult hero, Derek is never alone when it comes to looking for misfortune - there are always others in the stories to help him find it! Following the successful publication of his five-volume Derek series, wanting to enjoy Sweaty's exploits as a young man, Mac turned back thirty years to the eighties and started a series for younger readers, exploring Sweaty's childhood. Next Mac turned to a new children's hero - Tales of Maximillian the Mouse - quirky, smart and hand drawn by the author, Mac has enjoyed exploring the surreal world of young children. Now Mac returns to the world of adults, inspired by his sense of the ridiculous and his ability to develop a story from a simple concept to a complex adult fantasy novel ...where the main hero turns into Scuffo the cat!

Book preview

1Hi…

They called me SWEATY! Yes, Sweaty! Would you want a name like that?

You would? …You can have mine then!

Of course, it is not my proper name, it’s a nickname I used to be called – still am sometimes – and I’ve always hated it.

Be honest, wouldn’t you? Sweaty …yugh!

King Pong, Stinkyfeet, or Fartipants would have been worse I suppose, so I’ve had to get used to it.

Anyway, you will have heard of me – I am now a famous reporter at the Newingsworth Weekly Gazette. My proper name is Derek, and it is not like me to boast, but…

Sorry…? What was that you said? You’ve never heard of the Newingsworth Weekly…

Really? Have you not read my…?

…You are kidding me!

I am Derek Toozlethwaite – surely you have heard of me?

You haven’t? Oh!

That means you haven’t ever visited Slatterfoot, Newingsworth and surrounding districts… Hmm…

How disappointing. Ah well, we’ll get back to ‘names’ then…

If you have never hated yours, as I did, then think yourself lucky. I begged people not to call me Sweaty but – would you believe – it just made them more determined to persist, because they knew it annoyed me! Sad, isn’t it?

What! You don’t think so? Are you heartless?

When I was little, only one person in the whole wide-world called me by my proper name, and that person was my Gran, Granny Smith.

To her I was Derek. To everybody else, even my schoolteachers I was Sweaty! You must agree – that was sad.

However, life when I was a boy was not all bad. We had a gang. It was a great gang, six of us, all boys and nicknames were essential. Sometimes, theirs were changed – but not mine!

Many other things have changed though, since our day...

We didn’t have iPads, or Smartphones, or fancy slim televisions like yours.

We couldn’t carry telephones about in our pocket. My grandad’s was big, black and heavy with a long, curly cord and, anyway, it was attached to the wall.

We had no computer games either.

We made up our own games and played them outside, then went home to watch programmes on a big box-telly.

You won’t have heard of them, but we could watch the Mister Men, or Play School, or Sesame Street, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or... Oh, there were loads of great telly programmes on every week, but my real favourite was Thomas the Tank.

I loved that engine – until I saw Sammy!

One Monday morning, there he was, sitting in

the middle of the toyshop window – Super Sammy, a little red and green shunting engine. I had to have him! But, when I asked Gran…

Oh dear me, no. Little boys who don’t behave and eat their breakfast properly can’t expect their grans to buy them toys.

I tried Grandad when he came home from work that evening, and nearly had him agreeing to buy it, when Gran chipped in with, Derek, you have to show that you can behave first. I think Grandad was on my side, but he shrugged his shoulders and said, S-s-s-s-sorry, Sweaty…

So, I behaved. I ate my porridge every morning, on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday – and on Friday, guess what Grandad brought home with him! Super Sammy! Yahoo!

I didn’t have to behave after that…

Oh well, back to my nickname – Sweaty… Curly was to blame! Definitely! One of his problems was not being able to speak properly, so it could be difficult understanding him.

Derek, he said to me one day, thith ith not right. You thould have a nickname. All the otherth have. Everybody callth me Curly and I think it ith a thooper name. Tho, I’m going to think of a thooper one for you…

So, he thought, and thought, and thought a bit more – and out came a super one. "I’ve got it! …You are Thwaity!" Well, that seemed perfect because my second name is Toozlethwaite.

Sorry, I know it is a big mouthful for a name, but at that moment I was happy and to me, as a nickname, Thwaity sounded good.

Lithen carefully pleath, Curly said to the gang. Thith will be Derek’th new name.

Unfortunately, when told, they didn’t hear Thwaity, they misunderstood and translated his lisp to Sweaty and decided it was great!

No, no, no, I tried telling them. That’s wrong! But it stuck!

…Did I say I hated it?

Although it was annoying, Curly couldn’t help the way he spoke, so we are still pals. The gang split up a long while ago and I don’t see much of any of them nowadays. We all grew up and have gone our separate ways but, back then, we were in each other’s pockets, if you know what I mean.

So, who were they? I’d better tell you, because this book is all about them – the gang.

Let’s start with Curly. I have already said that he talked funny! He was the same age as me with a proper name of Graham Stockman – you can imagine him trying to say his own name!

His nickname had nothing to do with his real one but, if you’d met him, it wouldn’t be hard to see why. It was his hair – unmissable! It was curly – and ginger! Keeps it short nowadays, but back then it was really straggly. Straggly, curly, ginger hair. Gran liked it, said he was ‘a sight for sore eyes’, but I wasn’t so sure...

Then there was Jacko. That name started at home. His real one, James Osgood, was on the school register, but his dad was called James, so at home, to stop the mix-ups his mum started calling him Jack. Why didn’t they call him that from the start? We just went a bit further, and Jack Osgood became Jack-O. Anyway, to me he was always ‘Jacko the monkey’, never said it out loud though – he would have thumped me! You would have to agree though if you’d seen him climbing trees – and when he screwed up his face…

Wally – now I love saying his real name out loud. Walter Salter… Try it yourself. Walter Salter … Good isn’t it? Walter Salter!

I think his mum and dad were having a laugh when they called him that. Walter Salter… There I’ve said it again. His dad couldn’t hear too well so Wally had to talk loudly to him, and then when he spoke to us, Walter Salter – goodness, I’ve said it again – Wally couldn’t stop shouting. ‘Shoosh Wally…’ might have been a better nickname.

Poor old Walter… Salter…

Then there was Wee Stotty.

That was Alex – Alexander Stott. The Stotty part was fine, but calling him Wee was most untrue because Stotty was tall, the tallest in the gang. I was smallest, so I had to look upwards and, every time I spoke to him, I could see right up his nose. Oh, the things he used to keep up there… He was really tall. Of course, it might have been his diet, with his mum working in the chip shop. Guess what was regularly for tea?

Do chips make you tall?

Enough!

Finally, Thomas Watson, the only one who didn’t have continuous gang membership. His nickname was Tom-Tom, until he left the gang to join a Secret Society.

It hurt when he went, because his dad had the sweet-shop in the High Street!

Thank goodness it wasn’t forever. Thomas soon returned, and the free sweet supply began again.

Hooray! We gave him a new nickname when he came back – a name that was much more suited to him – but you’ll have to read on to learn what it was…

2 All About Me…

With such a lot to