David Lucas was our Patrick. Fat chinky-eyed cunt with fish lips and oversized tongue. He left at the end of the second year, and as I thought that this would be the last time I saw him, I punched him really fucking hard in the gut.

As it turns out, I actually did see him again, a few years back when he came into the Recruitment Agency I was working in. I got him a job making Pork Pies for minimum wage, the cunt.

How could one person manage to be so feeble, yet so resilient? Patrick Seers is a paradox. The school's most prominent geek, he was the person that the regular geeks used as a cushion to reduce their own noise on the bully radar.

It was as heartbreaking as it was unstoppable. Patrick Seers. Bullied 8 hours a day, five days a week, for 5 years. Patrick Seers. Even the usual sympathetic types kind of gave in after two minutes of civil conversation, coming away with the sense that he did, somehow, deserve it. He played the euphonium.

He has also survived to become someone that exists, seems successful, and has - from limited Facebook snooping - developed a good circle of friends.

Just goes to show. It really does get better. And not just for the gay ones. For Patrick Seers.

Forgetting your kit would result in PE in your pants. If many forgot, then the hall would resemble a Blue Peter Romanian orphanage crossed with one of Jonathan King's less extreme fantasies.

This is a post-shower game invented by me and my brother. Straight after our shower, we would do a 'peacock parade' to our parents (and sometimes other adult guests) who were sitting in the living room next door. The 'peacock' effect comes from taking your towel and sticking one corner firmly between your bum cheeks and squeezing tight. Then you walk around on your tippie-toes with your head held proudly back. After a couple of laps, you go back in your room and everyone is going 'ooh isn't that funny'.
Occasionally however, in an effort to avoid the towel slipping out (from the friction of the carpet), which it sometimes did, I would stick the towel up my bum a bit too far, so that the corner went a bit brown. Then my brother would go and tell Mum and it would ruin the whole game.

It was a common belief that Julian Dancey's father had spawned his entire brood of 6 children purely for his own sexual gratification. He drowned them in a bath when they reached 14 and started struggling.
Julian Dancey left the school in the third year (aged 13) and was never heard of again. The local paper later reported that his father was being charged with indecent behaviour towards a child...IN A BATH! Its scary how perceptive we were at that age.

The result of having your school tie pulled sharply down, forcing the knot into a tight "peanut" that would be very difficult to undo.

Added to the rather strange fad of picking the yellow thread from the stripes of our own ties, a "peanut" attempt could also result in the tie being ripped in two along the weakened strands which were formerly held together by the stripes.

A game for peanut allergy sufferers. The boy with the allergy puts his mouth at the end of the table. Other boys try to flick peanuts into his mouth. He is allowed to use a Coke bottle as a goalkeeper.

Strange hand wrestle which would continue until a player threw in the "hand" towel by shouting "peanuts". Novice players could be caught out by asking them mid-game "What's the name of this game?".

A remarkable stupid game of wrist strength, the combatants would interlace their fingers with each othe and try to push the opponents wrist back.
Finally one would succumb to the pain and shout 'Peanuts!', which meant they lost.
To my knowldge nobody ever broke their wrist, but it was a genuine danger amongst some of the harder or stupider memners of school who simply would not give in.

The pulling of a tie so that the knot is so small that it can only be undone with microscopic needles. A defence is to tie a two pence coin into the knot - although you may be called a jew or a gyppo if it is discovered that you keep two pees in secret hiding places.

I went into the bathroom, my brother had pebble-dashed the toilet and failed to flush. This was unacceptable so I shouted to him "Matt, do you know where the flush is for the toilet becuase I can't find it".

I thought it was funny, and it does have poo in it so maybe you will too.

Teacher: Mr. Lambert, Technology teacher, always looking down my shirt making comments like " save thoes for later"*winks*, and saying"youve got it all babe" after me telling him i didnt have all my project done..Then he got a stiffy when we were talking about something, and it was right infront of me sitting down. He had cameras set up in the classroom too. And he even asked me to babysit his children for him. But I did get an A+ in that class

Pedro was our bouncing bean, which was a large yellow plastic bean with a metal ball bearing to make it move in strange directions and a smiling face painted on it. My cousins (Clair & Mark), whom I went to school with, and I had a running competition to hid said bean in each other’s food. Finding this bean meant it was your responsibility to transplant it into someone else’s food before the end of the meal.

I always found that baked potatoes were the best for concealment, an incision on the underside allowed you to insert the bean without producing any visible trace of tampering. The real issue was generating a diversion allowing you sufficient time to carry out the procedure.

This was a secret society which the tough kids wanted the nerdy kids to join. Upon application for membership, a temporary member's card would be issued in the form of the tough kid writing "I AM A PEN15" on a prominent part of the nerdy kid's anatomy (hand, forehead etc).

Hilarity ensued all the way to the toilets... Nobody fell for this twice.

A simple trick, and something of a once only event, the Pen Fifteen Club was used on every new kid at my school. Ask them if they want to join your club. Tell the new kid that all the cool kids are in the club. They will always want to join. At which time you take the industrial size permanent black marker and ask the victim to hold out their right hand. Then, very slowly, deliberately and neatly, write a huge PEN15. Because you did it on their right hand, the teacher will always see the PEN15. And the victim will not squeal.

Person 1: Have you been on Pen Island.com
Person 2: Nah, is it good?
Person 1: Yeh go on it tonight.
Person 2: OK

The joke: www.penisland.com
The funny think: The website is actually about pens.

Stab selected victim with a fountain pen loaded with permanent black ink. Fuck the "pencil tattoos", this one actually does work. Heehee.

Remember those long fabric style pencil cases with their contents pictured on the outside of the case? The classic pencil case adopted by almost all new starters and keen students? I was fated to sit next to the school geek during chemistry and one day he arrived proudly sporting one of these abhorrent things. He fastidiously laid out his belongings on the 'bench' as he did every lesson, putting the pencil case in pride of place by the sink and gas taps. Whilst he sat in rapt attention, I took it upon my self to deftly unzip the case and gently turn on the 'precison' chemistry taps and slowly fill up the case with water. There came a point when I really thought I should stop. That came about half way through, by which time the pencil case had taken on near enough a half pint of water. But determination and the sheer groundbreaking nature of my work meant I must carry on. Finally I zipped up the case, stepped back and watched the faint undulations of the now bloated water sack on the desk. Sensing the impending punchline I got up from the desk and walked across to 'borrow a rubber' well out of the impact zone. The geek, like like the hapless lamb to the slaughter, unzipped his H20 infused pencil case and sat amazed as it abruptly pissed out its contents like a fucked up oil rig, all over his work, the desk and most importantly the crotch area of his trousers. I stood back whilst mayhem ensued and the classroom erupted. I knew my work there was done.

"Mawer, there's an erect penis on my desk, would you please remove it" said Mrs Grey (nee Finnigan), the prim, prick-teasing little English Teacher.
It was only a poorly crafted pencil drawing and I didn't even do it. Bitch made me wash it off. She did have nice tits though.

The ill-informed theory that if you asked someone for their pencil-sharpener, you were really asking for their fanny. Naturally, this meant that requests for pencils were pleas for willies. And rubbers? I should say that's fairly obvious, bub...

If a boy asks to borrow your pencil sharpener, on no account give it to him, it means you want to have sex with him.
Conversely, never borrow a pencil off a boy, as this also means you want to have sex with him. A rubber is alright, as long as it is scented. But scented rubbers are gay, so it's not alright, because that means you want to have sex with him.

Urban Myth. Young man, overcome with stress, puts a pencil up either nostril during an exam and brings his head down on the desk. The pencils go into his brain, killing him instantly.

The rumour that everyone in the room gets compensated for their mental trauma by getting a free A* means that most people have the vague, unspoken idea that witnessing a suicide would be fucking brilliant.

Warning! pencil scars on your face can happen to your face!

I was in fact stabbed in the face with a monstrously sharp pencil in my face. Six weeks later I had to have many small fragments of graphite removed from my face because they already beginning to make a dark blotch on my face. I carry the scars to prove that pencil tatoos can happen!

A more controlled version of "pencil fencing" (qv). At primary school, someone said that if you poked your skin with a sharp pencil, a bit of the lead (ie. graphite) would be left behind under your skin, which (as far as we knew) was a real tattoo. We all tried it, but, speaking personally, any marks that were made just washed off. Easily.

In the second year of my primary school, we were all given standard edition chunky pencils, which came in red, yellow, green or blue.

Although the teacher thought she was assigning pencils at random, little did she know that she was actually defining our social status for the rest of the term.

Red, red, wet the bed
Blue, blue, smells of poo
Green, green, parasheen (a totally made up word which sounded like it should mean something cool)
Yellow was casually skirted around cos no-one could think of anything that rhymed with it.

The special 'parasheen' status was a blessing, but the glory could be short lived. An owner of a green pencil could be given a red or blue pencil in the next school term, bringing them back down to earth to join the common folk.

Those on the bottom of the social pile were known to try and colour their pencils in with felt tips, but this only resulted in green palms and being called David Bellamy.