The range of cheap saturday market coats as worn by poor children. Inspired the song 'Nanny Annie Fishy Fanny Condom Fifty-Four'.

We were told a bizzare story from the Bible about Jesus arriving at a city and the children being so happy that the took off all their clothes and threw them at him (so maybe Michael Jackson's messianic posturing fits more snugly with his private life than you might think). People taking their clothes off is more than any group of six-year-olds should be expected to deal with, but Mrs Dodman chose to illustrate this dirty, dirty story with fuzzy-felt style figures with removeable clothes stuck up on a big notice board. Her sensitive treatment of an important moment in the life of our Lord was wrecked by a hall full of children laughing and pointing. The thing is, I can't remember any other Bible stories being dealt with in this way, so it must have been a one-off. Where do you get these things from? Is there an under the counter service at the SPCK bookshop?

Preston's uncle, a keen ichthologist, used to grab Preston, and pin him to the ground, screaming, "NAME 50 FISH! NAME 50 FISH!"
Presumably, Preston was not released until he had named 50 fish. Preston's story should be taken with a grain of salt, however, because he was in special education, and would not have been taught about naming fish.

At a time when 2unlimited shit classic "No Limits" was riding high in the charts, this became a brief insult for the bigger nosed members of the school. In particular, Nathan.
Nose Nose, Nose-Nose
Nose Nose, Nose-Nose
Nose Nose, Your Nose
KNOWS NO LIMITS
(suggested optional extra :
it knows no limits - it reaches the sky,
it flies round the room - and pokes out my eye - Log)

Not that we were racist, or anything, but we had the idea of the Nation of Domination, wherein black people would be put into tubes and forced to drown on their own excrement. Very slowly. We never told that to anyone, and no-one knew what the Nation of Domination was, except a select few. Then came the day that our black friend wanted to join.

If a music teacher is using the National Anthem to illustrate some point or another, it is your duty to the Queen to stand up every time it's played. It's doubly important to do this if the treasonous order is given not to.
If the national anthems of other countries are played, be a part of the global village by standing for those, too. If you are told not to stand to these, say "ar, sir, don't be racist".

Crap looking half red, half blue, credit card style bits of plastic that you received around the time of your sixteenth birthday.

At first these gained much kudos as a mark that you had reached maturity.

That was until 'Pikey Steve' got his, and it was decided that it had been sent by the government as a hint that at least SOMEONE in his family should go and get a fucking job.

My cousin played the innkeeper in his school nativity, and was disappointed to receive relatively few lines. So he improvised. On being asked whether there was any room at the inn, he declared it to be virtually empty, and went on to extol the virtues of his accommodation, including room tariffs.

In Autumn, the hedgerows are full of fat, red rosehips, which can be split open to reveal small, hairy seeds. These seeds can then be shoved down someone's shirt where they will itch like buggery, and cause bright scarlet rashes.
Precociously recounting this fact in a second-year biology class earned me the moniker "Nature Boy" from the indulgent teacher.
This was to be a short-lived glory however, as at the start of the every new school year, I'd be pinned to the ground and covered with rosehip seeds by a snarling mob chanting "NAY-CHUR BUH-MER" at me. When the rosehips ran out, they moved on to conkers.
Autumn is not my favourite season.

A group of about six girls, who claimed to be an "environmental" group and received permission to use the library for our "meetings". We even had a logo, which we drew on our official membership cards and notebooks (crafted from stapled foolscap). In actual fact the name of the club was simply a cover for its real purpose, which was to sit around and write secret-code gossipy messages about Andrea. The club lasted for a week, until the rest of the class found out about the Nature Girls and its crappy name and laughed it out of existence.

The swastika is a potent symbol, massive swastikas made up from chairs in the classroom more so. So we assembled one. It worked, but the culprits hadn't thought about quite how pissed off the Jews might be by this - certainly no-one had considered that they might complain to the head of year. The school, entirely understandably given that about 30% of its pupils were Jewish, took a deeply dim view of neo-Nazism, which taught us an important lesson. Extreme right-wing politics, fascism, and genocide are bad, okay kids?

A cruel show performed by girls, built on the relentless requests by boys for a flash of their knickers. The skirt would be lifted and folded in a carefully calculated fan-formation to the following song;
One, two, three, four,
come on boys and see some more!
Five, six, seven, eight,
Sorry boys you're just too late.
At this point the skirt would be released back to it's full length, just before any part of the knickers had been revealed, leaving the boys to punch their own palms in cartoonish frustration.

A universally popular game at my elementary school.

1. A girl shouts "neener-neener-neener" at a boy and then runs away.
2. The boy chases the girl until he catches up with her.
3. The girl beats the boy up.

If a boy does not give chase, that means he wants to cut straight to the beating. It is considered polite to oblige his unspoken wish.

Surprisingly, boys usually played this game enthusiastically and frequently. It lasted for the entire two years I attended the school, with no reaction but bemusement from the teachers at the sight of five-year-old boys happily being kicked repeatedly by girls until they fell over.

One so dull that their joining a group has a similar effect to a funny, popular person leaving. One such personality went on to become the Lib Dem candidate somewhere in West Lothian in the 1997 General Election.

It is traditional to stamp on a pair of new shoes on sight if they are worn by weaker children. In the case of Ian Lunn, the Headmaster was fair game too.

It was this sort of behaviour that saw Ian in lunchtime detention for three entire years.

It was common practice at my first secondary school for the upper 6th to ask first years "Hello, are you new?". You would invariably think they were extending the hand of friendship and answer "Yes." At this point the 6th former would say "Hello New" and he and all his friends would collapse with laughter. After a few times, when you had wised up you might try replying "No." This was met with the logically baffling "Hello No" and even more laughter, and probably a thump.

I must have attended the only nice person's school in the country. The worst bullying ever that I can remember was that there was a fat girl who didn't get much sun and was rather pale. She also had very pale hair. She was like a self-imposed albino. We used to call her 'Moomim' because she kind of looked like one of those cute hippo-like creatures on TV at the time.
Had she attended one of your schools, she'd have been called 'Albino Cunt Bitch', repeatedly abused to the verge of mass rape, then exposed to some kind of (dog) poo-related activity that you're all so fond of.
Readers! Have you had surgery that has replaced your real memories with birdsong and rainbows? If so, please use this entry to tell us your heartwarming tales of calling fat kids Mr Healthy Appetite, and calling the effeminate kid Captain Diversity. We'd love to hear how idyllic life was for you. - Log

Double French is never a highlight of the week, unless a member of the previous class has left a pair of highly skidmarked girl’s underpants on the floor.
The true culprit was never discovered but kids need a victim, and that victim was Sylvia. As punishment she was shut in a classroom as we banged on the windows singing “Nicholas” (knicker-less, geddit?) and threw our (clean) gym knickers at the window.

To develop an erection whilst bouncing on a trampoline. The poor bastard never lived it down.

Nick was a goofy, scruffy kid who transferred in to our school in the second year. He was forever kicking a tennis ball around the plaground, and his shoes were a regular casualty.
Eventually, his mom got fed up of buying him new ones and told him to glue the soles back together on the old ones and give them a good polish.
Polishing was easy; but no glue was to be had at Nick's place and, not being arsed to head up to the local shopping center, Nick found a nail and nailed his sole back on. The fact that it was a 1-inch nail - thoughtfully whacked right through the middle of the sole so he would only need one - didn't become an issue until the next morning, when he discovered that walking on it caused the nail to repeatedly pierce his foot. Quite deeply, too, much to our amusement.
It was still fairly amusing two weeks later when it went septic.

We had all been told that we had to be careful around Nigel. He wasn't allowed to eat chocolate, or drink delicious fizzy pops. Earwax was OK - he'd shovel that stuff straight in. He didn't eat bogeys, though - he stored those in his pencil case.

One morning our teacher walked in ashen faced and quietly explained that Nigel would not be coming to school any more. He had moved a long way away.

Our bewildered but trauma-free response clearly wasn't enough for her, as she let out the cry "Nigel is DEAD!".

Unable to process this early brush with mortality as a tragedy, we'd simply echo her heartfelt outburst in the playground, to punctuate a wide range of antics. In some cases, this would continue well into our twenties.

Nigel is still dead.

Nimin made his mark on the first day of school by throwing a stone at a seagull, breaking its wing and sending it spiralling to Earth. It's the kind of achievement you should save for the last day of the fifth year - young minds are not ready for the celebrity status gained from crippling a seagull.
Poor Nimin knew he could never surpass this feat, and fell in with a bad crowd. With his new friend, a boy who was left with metal / no teeth after a rugby accident, he soon resorted to snorting Coffee-Mate through biro casings.
People would walk past the table at which Nimin and his bond-villain friend would sit, snorting and regurgitating Coffee-Mate.
"Who's that?" one boy would ask.
"That's Nimin," another boy would reply. "And a boy with no / metal teeth."
"Nimin? The guy who crippled a Seagull?"
"That Nimin died long ago. Just keep walking."

A statistic which tore through the school at an alarming rate, representing the average volume of saliva present in the final dregs of a drink. It was the unusual precision of the number which led to its universal acceptance. A natural logical leap stipulated that any drink which was under half full was up to 97% owner spittle. Only the first sip was safe if you didn't want to French Kiss all the previous sippers.
If you wanted to upgrade the statistic yourself, you could do so by saying "they've just found out..." before giving your new figures.

An exciting name for something rather lame. Two 2p coins wrapped in rolls of paper caps and sellotape, which was thrown at any hard surface to cause a moderately loud bang. The use of these primitive pyrotechnics eventually led to the exciting games of "Spray the aerosol can at the flaming pile of lavatory paper" and in my case "Use the air bomb to explode giant size lemons in Fung Tang's back garden".

A playful, yet painful, pinch and twist motion on the nipple. aka tit-nip.