Step 1: Take a biro, and remove the innards, leaving the plastic casing alone. Step 2: Nick an exercise book or two from the poorly-guarder stock cupboard. Step 3: Tear off small pieces, and soak in (your) mouth to form a ball. Step 4: Jam into the casing, and blow out of the narrow end at pretty high velocity. Step 5: Fire at will.

I misguidedly invented 'Blowgun RISK' for our physics lessons. Based loosly on the game of the same name. You got points for attacking other 'continents' succesfully, ie winning a 'blowgun battle'. Other continents were other tables, The group of hard lads was obviously North America, the group of physics boffins was obviously Australasia. I spent ages working out elaborate rules. Unfortunately when I excitedly annouced our new activity to the rest of the class you can guess the painful result.

Take the bit from the end of a shoelace. Fray out the lace, and push a pin through. You now have a small dart, which when launched through the trusty hollow biro will stick into someone's body (or, more amusingly, face) and hang there in a relatively painless way, giving them tetanus.

Holding a thermometer in a bunsen flame for long enough will eventually cause the mercury to expand, break the glass and spurt out of the end. With practice, this can be aimed.

We first got to write with pens in year five so the school provided us with crap pens we could pull apart easily. So we did. The boys on my table started to do this flicky thing with their refills where they'd put in in the other way round and then sort of flick the plastic bit of the pen so the refill would stop at the other end. I tried this, put the refill in the normal way and flicked it, and the reifll went flying across the classroom onto the next table. Good thing the headmaster's back was turned...

The height of blowgun sophistication was later invented by me, as a member of the spod gang. For this, one takes the end- the 'aglet'- of a shoelace and frays it to produce a feathery 'flight'. Then one inserts a pin through the plastic part of the aglet, coaxially with said aglet. This produces a dart that can be projected through a biro shaft to stick into most surfaces.

Having invented this, I was immune to its depredations. For all of three minutes. It was banned after one particularly dim pupil inhaled pin, aglet flight and all.

Bastards. Why has someone else always invented all of my great advances in mischievous science?

Rather than blowguns, a more preferred method in my school was to launch the bits of spit paper with rulers at the ceiling. When this got boring, we'd wait for Mrs Wilson to turn round and we'd launch our spitballs at the cupboard next to her. Stephen Boyes stopped this though when he used a whole toilet roll, chewing it for the best part of a half hour to maintain the moistness. Upon launching, it made such a thud on the cupboard that Mrs Wilson went nuts and screamed at us. Ste Boyes sat there terrified with a very recently snapped ruler trying to not look scared.

Cut the bit from the end of a shoelace. Fray out the lace, and push a pin through. You now have a small dart, which when launched through the trusty hollow biro will stick into someone's body (or, more amusingly, face) and hang there in a relatively painless way, giving them tetanus.

I remember taking it in turns to spit blobs of paper pulp into the ceiling above the R.E. teachers chair when his head was down in his book. You took the risk an overly dry one would detach and land on his head but at least you were living dangerously.

On two occasions, we covered the blackboard with so many spitwads that out French teacher refused to teach us. During that time, everyone's French improved exponentially.

Rob Price was, and still is, a brainy fucker. Even in a school especially for brainy fuckers. The usual gob soaked cardboard projectiles manually propelled via a biro tube were simply not enough for him! Taking the thin section from a telescopic car radio ariel he fashioned a super gun of a blowpipe! Marrying the tube to a bicycle tire pump and using plastacine bullets he almost took someone’s eye out in the school library from 20 yards!

The craze for blowpipes/pea shooters was swiftly quashed by the fascist school authorities soon after the victim returned from the local casualty department.

Spacemonkey

We used to have Blow gun fights pretty much every geography lesson. We'd form in to teams and depending on which side of the class room you were on, depicted your side. One day Jon was aiming at me (i'd been moved to the front of the class so the teacher could keep an eye on me) and took his shot, I wittingly deflected his shot on to the black board. Ha! I thought. And it stayed there until the teacher went to wipe the board with the duster, it stuck chalk dust to the moist trail left by the paper bullet. Leaving a nice chalk stroke across the board. Cue puzzeled look from teacher as she tries again to the same effect. Cue laughter from pupils. I needless to say got the blame. Thanks Jon, git.