browsing the letter d

Directed Study is where you were put if you were a "classroom distraction". You got put in an isolated location for several days instead of being allowed to attend regular class. In my case, it was a janitorial closet/supply room just off the main hall. The powers that be seemed to think this was punishment. Since I hated nearly all my white trash classmates and was bored stupid with the narrow curriculum offered by the corn pone teachers, this gave me the opportunity to wrap up with the busy work fast so I could spend the rest of my time drawing. Now I am a professional artist in a big city and they're all still there inbreeding.
Thanks guys! I don't miss any of you.

Dirty, Fat, Sod. Applied to any overweight boys who had shown an interest in sex. Seriously, how dare they?

There's this girl that my friend used to go out with, from a different town of course, and on Christmas her dad disappeared. Oh no! Three days later there came a wierd smell - from the chimney. Scream! When the fire brigade broke open the chimney, to find out what could possibly be up there, lo and behold, there was her dad dressed as Father Christmas. Gaspers! You see, right, he'd tried to play a clever trick, but it had shockingly backfired as he had got stuck, because he never thought to inform his wife beforehand, or indeed shout when he became trapped.
This urban legend did the rounds every year, even after chimneys were virtually unheard of, until it became so crippled and tired that even the teller would dispense it with a weary offhand cynicism.
If you hear anyone telling it this year, kick out their sex.

Dance, Dance,
Wherever he may be.
For I am the lord of
My dad's settee,
And I'll lead you now,
Wherever you may be
And I'll lead you all
In my dad's settee.

This never really made much sense, but I never questioned it and sang along with everyone else in assembly. Jesus was in charge of a piece of furniture and he could dance on it or fly around on it as he saw fit. Because that's what Jesus does.

What you get after removing the limbs of a Daddy Long Legs. They still fly, you know.

As a child, this one-line song was performed every time I had finished a number two, prompting my father to come into the bathroom and wipe my arse. This is normal for small children, of course, but I got used to this luxury and opted-out of doing the deed myself probably for longer than I should have.
Eventually my patient father encouraged me to get on in life, fend for myself and embrace the defecation related hygiene that came with it. In time, I had almost forgotten about my brown jingle.
That was until I reached comprehensive. I'll never forget the mix of shame and fear I felt hearing my older brother and his gang of rough bully-boys yelling 'Da-dee I have Fi-niiiiiished' across a packed playground on my first day.

Named after a Mr Wakem, who was (in retrospect) clearly traumatised from his time in the Army - he would ask questions, and reward a wrong answer with the most vicious beating. this would be accompanied by cries of 'daddy whackers' from all the boys. Curiously, we all loved him and were very sad when he was taken away to a safer place.

Alan was "special" in the energetic, disruptive, pissing-the-teacher-off kind of way. Textbook ADD hyperactivity I suppose, but as he wasn’t a mong we would play with him quite happily at breaktimes. One breaktime we were talking about the new Dairylea advert and musing on what we would do for a Dairylea triangle.

Alan said "Well, I wouldn't do this", stuck out his bottom slightly and then proceeded to shit himself. We played less with Alan after this.

A method of protecting your favoured place in a canteen. A pritt-stick, lid off, was hurled to the ceiling directly above your chair. The threat of non-toxic adhesive looming ever above would deter any pretenders to your plastic throne.
Leaving you to sit under it, instead. A mixed blessing.

The lyrical mainstay of Paul Yates second (and sadly last) school assembly pop extravaganza.

To set the delicious scene; Paul was NOT your normal school league pop kid. He looked like H from Steps had been interrupted whilst morphing into a football. His fringe and forehead seemed thrust together as a result of seperate, geographically divorced planning committees. His shirt cuffs were always a good seven inches prouder then his jumper sleeves.

He was good at all subjects and correspondingly bad at all other aspects of life - including not being considered a bed wetting chess club stalwart.

He happily admitted doing an hour of voluntary "study" (not homework, study) each night at home, as if this deserved anything other than scowls and occasional violence. His sister showed solidarity with her brother's cause by sprouting a moustache at the age of 14.

Despite all this, Paul scored minor pop kudos for a keyboard backed lament about nuclear war one assembly day. We begrudgingly gave him credit for his efforts.

Flushed with success, a later assembly found him sitting behind a "drum kit" assembled from the kettle drum, a snare drum, and all the other crap the dumb kids got to vent on during group pieces. To our delight, he proceeded to thrash (alone, without any other accompaniment) arhythmically like a waterheaded Keith Moon, whilst trilling in an odd adolescent contralto;

Dance to the music,
rock rock rock.
Everybody is doing it,
rock rock rock.

Please note his failure to conjugate "everybody" and "is" into a less rockless "everybody's". Oh yes, he even incited group bachannalian abandon politely. Of course, we laughed. A sound which his brain appeared to translate into applause.

He never performed another self-penned opus, so this remains the highlight of my school life. Paul, if you're out there; home studios are very cheap now. Please, Paul. You owe it to rock.

A 'dangly-greenie' was some greened hock which could be spit out slowly and dangled from the mouth (generally over the face of your victim) which had enough flexibility to be sucked up and down at will. Competitions for the longest dangly-greenie were held regularly - if you could let it touch the ground and then suck it back up, you were a master-dangler.

A manoeuvre in the school photography darkroom, where a guy would attempt to get a girl to grope his exposed cock without her ever finding out who he was. Pioneered by Adam Hartley circa 1989, on Lisa Wade. Hartley had earlier in his career perfected the illicit 'classroom wank' in double Biology, and the art of 'farting very loudly in assembly and getting away with it', by simply erupting into laughter and taking the rest of the hall with him into fits of giggles, including the teachers. Genius.

Darren Carrington was fucking loopy, I swear. He used to insist on walking home with me and my mate, even though we both hated him, and would not speak to him all the way home. He would just walk along, listening silently to our conversation, and then leave us when our routes seperated. But this was only the start.
At the age of 14 or 15, he let it be known that he had joined the navy, and his given reason was that he wanted "to go and bomb pakies in Bosnia". Over the next few months we got running updates on his naval exploits - about how he had sworn aboard ship and been fined £10, how he had got angry and punched his captain in the eye, and as a result had had his hat taken away, and to top it all off, his commanding officer let him take HMS Belfast, one of the biggest ships in the fleet, into dock, but he had run it up on a sandbank, and would have to go back the next night to rescue it with a crane.
He would come into class with technical manuals for a Ford Capri, and a bag full of spanners. He laughed like gas coming out of a tap, a horrible whining groan of a laugh. He would say "I don't mind them niggers, but I just can't stand pakies." He was obsessed with Star Trek, but appeared to have never seen it.
He had 4 brothers - Wayne, Dan, Stu and Steve. Wayne was apparently "inside for welding a paki to a lamppost". When we asked him how he had defied the laws of physics by bonding skin and metal with a flame, he said that he hadn't actually bonded them, but had carried the poor fellow, still conscious, up the lamppost, tied a metal bar round him and welded that in place. Strangely enough, we still didn't believe him.

The one sentence that my brain saw fit to remember from years of German lessons. Translation - That is my tortoise.
See also Mein Hummer fonctionniert nicht.

Second-eldest son of a headmaster, inflicted upon Toll Bar School between 1985 and 1990. The originator of many anecdotes involving puddings, spunk and vodka. Here are some of his crimes;
Getting pissed on a fourth year trip to Stratford, knicking a traffic sign and singing 'On a Clear Day You Can See My Penis' outside the girls' dormitory at midnight.
SUSPENDED FOR TWO WEEKS
Bringing ice-cream to school for his packed lunch. Ice cream melted in his bag, ruined his books.
GOT BOLLOCKED
Bought a frozen dessert from Tates for his lunch, tried to defrost it by putting it under his armpit, ate it.
GOT STOMACH CRAMPS
Jacked off into a 35mm film canister as a love gift for Natasha Holmes. She ran off.
TREATED WITH WARY DISDAIN FOR SOME WEEKS
Got smashed on vodka in the 6th form, puked up neat vodka through his nose onto his pudding at lunchtime, continued eating it.
GOT THROWN OUT
LAST SEEN SELLING CUSTOMISED CLIPPER LIGHTERS AT CAR BOOT SALE

Wanted to become an embalmer and gave his mum a box of tissues for Christmas. And his Dad a can of peaches. Trousers were too short. Recently in the national press for having the world's largest collection of milk bottles, which he keeps in two specially made sheds. Didn't like girls - once we asked him out and he said 'unhand me, woman!'. Similar to Mark Gardner who also recently achieved national press coverage for keeping too many reptiles in his parents attic.

I forget her name, but she would have been quite attractive if
(a) She didn't bear a disturbing family resemblance to David.
(b) She didn't constantly stink of cat piss.

Did you swim with David Wilkie? No. Thought not. If you had swam with David Wilkie, you'd be wearing your badge.

I bet you don't even know what David Wilkie looks like. Well, he looks like the guy on my I Swam With David Wilkie badge.
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No, I haven't got Sports AIDS. Jesus, you're so jealous.

On our estate there was this gang of hard lads who were made up of kids from broken homes, and the like. The comically fuckwitted Davie Dunn was one of these lads. One day, they were all skiving school and watching Enter the Dragon, while Davie decided to play with cat in the next room. The day after, the cat had kittens. Turning a blind eye to the logic of a human/feline hybrid conceived and born in just 24 hours, Davie Dunn became notorious as the man who fathered a litter of kittens.

In days of old,
When men were bold,
And women weren't invented.
They drilled big holes in telegraph poles,
and walked away contented.
I think the implication is that they fucked the hole in the telegraph pole. Otherwise it's a pretty weird way to get your kicks, drilling holes in telegraph poles then walking off.
For those of you who didn't know that women were invented after telegraph poles, here is the first ever telegraph conversation.
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Matt Foster's beautiful response when asked by knock-kneed celtic cunt of a bus driver, 'Jock', if his Mum lets him put his feet up on the seat at home.

A game you play with a young sibling or friend. Say you have 4 people in a room, three of you pretend that the other person died. They will laugh but if you play long enough they start getting really upset. All you have to do is pretend like you are crying and miss him or her.

Hilarious parody of the song 'Live it up' by 80s nobodys Mental As Anything.
Sung to a recently bereaved child thus: "Hey there you with the Dead Mum, go back to my place and dig her up..."
It didn't really rhyme, but it usually caused the unfortunate child to cry and/or explode in violent rage at the injustice of the universe.

As large a group as possible would gather round deaf-child and speak animatedly in mime to each other. Frustration growing, he would tap people and ask them earnestly "What are you saying? What? What?", his voice growing weaker and more pathetic to everyone's great amusement. On really special days, when the gods were smiling, deaf-child would frenetically adjust his farcically over-sized ear piece, and with astute comic timing, everyone would begin shouting at the top of their voices, pretending not to notice his confused squirmings. This may seem cruel, but he was a pikey little bastard.

As a deaf child, I sadly have a good appreciation of deaf related bullying. I especially recommend you don't try the "sneaking up behind the deaf child, removing his hearing aid, and throwing it to other kids" game, as one day he might finally snap and break your fucking cheekbone in 6 places. Alright?

If you remove the ink tube in a Bic biro pen and blow through the bottom, it makes a very high pitched whistling noise.

If you do this whilst your deaf teacher's back is turned, she will think her hearing aid is broken and fiddle with the knobs on it.

What are they, volume or something? Fuck knows.

It doesn't really have a name as such but was more a bizarre phenomenon which occurred several summers at School. We had a large field with a small woods that we were allowed to play football and amuse ourselves with every break time. Now break could last for over two hours as we had a benign and much loved headmaster who would allow morning break to carry into lunch time (this was a payback from having to sit inside and sing along to his piano when it rained). Since we had so much free time imaginations were given full reign. Kids would start to collect acorns, twigs, stones and pretend to run shops and trade with each other. If this was not strange enough someone even created a primitive fruit machine out of a funnily shaped half of a tree trunk base. These shops became jealous of each other and would occasionally attempt raids for disputed pieces of woodland booty. My involvement was that as a boy we would often be asked if would guard against raiders, spy, or even carry out raids ourselves. The politics that became involved were scary considering we all between five and eleven. That, and none of the merchandise had any real value, or was even desirable.

The somewhat remarkable ditty, "Mr Fisher" was devised by an unknown pupil from S1 and went something like this:

Dear Mr Fisher,
I was feeling pretty canny,
I tried to fuck your daughter,
But I couldnt find her fanny!

When I found her fanny,
It was hairy as a sock.
Dear Mr Fisher,
I couldn't find my cock!

When I found my cock,
It was hairy, long, and thin,
Dear Mr Fisher,
I couldn't get it in!

When I got it in,
I wiggled it about,
Dear Mr Fisher,
I couldn't get it out!

The true conundrum lies with the subtext. Initially it seems that the author is boasting of his sexual adventures, but maintaining a respectful distance by addressing the recipient as "Mr Fisher". However, this rapidly declines into a litany of sexual dysfunction. Perhaps the author is requesting assistance or even the physical presence of Mr Fisher, to see what the actual problem is.
More importantly to the boys, this raised the hither unforseen concern that 'it' could get 'stuck' 'in there', and no amount of wriggling could get it out.

During a terrible spate of robberies plaguing the school, we were assembled by House Master Brian Shakeshaft for a briefing on the latest crime. We were told that the police had been informed and that the culprit would be found.
The crime? Stealing a plate of cupcakes and leaving nothing but some crumbs and a note reading 'Ha ha! I stole your cupcakes!'
Mr Shakeshaft's solution? Amateur sleuthing.
We were called individually to his study to write out a cleverly concocted phrase that would allow him to trace the perpetrator through his guilty handwriting.
The phrase chosen? 'Dear watertank has a life of about fifteen years.'
The whole episode was so mind-boggling that we hardly even believe ourselves when we recollect it. I can only conclude that the cupcakes were what tipped the scales after years of real brutality and substance abuse cases. Presumably police assistance was no longer required after Brian's detective work, as we heard no more on the matter.

The trick was for a nominated individual on the outside of the group to feign interest in some aspect of improving their game, and get Mr Dearling to give them a one-to-one coaching session with his back to the rest of us. This was the cue for the rest of us (frequently numbering in excess of 30) to do a runner. I was never there to see his face, but I imagine by about the third time it got rather tiresome for him to look round and find everybody had vanished.

Imagine, if you can, a PE teacher called Mr Dearling. This in itself is bad enough. Imagine further that Mr Dearling is very deaf in both ears. (You're getting it now, aren't you.) Thirdly, imagine that, due to his hearing aids, he can't hear anything said to him in a high register. Fourthly imagine how easy it is to scream without opening your mouth very wide. Finally, imagine a school gym containing fifty adolescent boys, running around in a big circle, screaming at the top of their lungs with Darling standing in the middle of it all completely oblivious. And, if you want to, you can imagine fifty boys all being put on detention when the headmaster bursts in.

We had a kid in our school whose older brother died of a heroin overdose. But he had to leave because of two songs; the re-worked intro to Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep ("Where's ya brother gone, where's ya brother gone…") and "Staying Alive" by the late, great Bee Gees.

Tut, the insensitivity of youth. Everyone knows that if someone’s brother dies of a heroin overdose (it was big in the Eighties) you must perform the entire rap from Grange Hill’s "Just Say No!", preferably at the memorial assembly, or, simply rework the lyrics from the Flash Gordon theme into a cautionary message. "Smack! Ahhhhhhhh!" –Susan.

A book held by Satan, containing a list of all the names of the hell-bound, and breifly held by my friend Richard Gray, in year 6.

Curiously enough, my name was the only one to appear in the book, before the Devil had got bored and filled the other pages with squiggles.

Overweight, possibly asthmatic boy runs wheezing across the playground with a look of terror in his eyes. Just before he can reach the relative safety of the canteen, the pack of ten or more lads descend upon him and take turns to fart without restraint on his face. Next time a kid from the year above asks him if he'd like some chocolate, he'll say "no thanks".

In one primary school assembly we were solemnly told that every nine seconds, someone, somewhere in the world, dies. The next week saw the playground filled with the eerie sound of small children chanting "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, somebody's died, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, somebody's died," usually whilst skipping.

I was at school in the days when pupils were allowed to do things in chemistry lessons that might kill them. Now, of course, fatalities are only accepted in PE lessons, or in the janitor's house.
On one occasion we were told to measure out a quantity of some very volatile and noxious substance. No-one told us how to do this, so I decided that a mouth pipette would be approproiate. For those mercifully unfamiliar with chemistry, here is a man using a mouth pipette. Note how unsuitable it is for sucking on noxious liquids.
[picture: mouthpipette.jpg]
I put the end of the pipette in my mouth, then woke up surrounded by flames, smashed glassware, and my jeering classmates. And not one teacher rushed to offer me an out-of-court settlement of sixes of millions.

Our computer science room was full of Commodore Pet computers. Well, I say full. It had three. But it wasn't a very bit room.
A playground urban legend amongst had it that there was a command you could type that was shrouded in mystery, and fashioned by the devil himself. When executed, this command would destroy the computer. This command was called the death poke.
This command was POKE 59458,62.
To make our crime untraceable, Pete wrote a small program that waited for someone to press a key before exploding. The rules of he-who-touched-it-last would then apply. Then, Pete asked Mr Samuals why his computer wasn't working.
Mr Samuals stared at it for a while, then tentatively tapped at the keyboard. And the dread poke was activated. We all stood well back - actually I think we leaned back - to avoid the shards of glass.
The display was reduced to a single line. A mild inconvenience, but no-one was picking sizzling electronics out of their face.
A quick double-flick of the on/off switch later, and the eerie reign of the death poke had ended.

to be laced, or planted. In context : "You'll get decked if you snitch - Holmesy may be a Trevor, but he's no scrap spastic."

A band name vetoed by virtue of a French teacher's miscarriage. Other names that were also rejected on the grounds of poor taste were Abortion Bucket and Minge Wipers From Mars.

Readers! Have you been in a band that's main purpose was to fanny about and shock people? If so, tell us your band name. We'd love to know... - Log

Steve was the best ice cream man ever. He was pale, but his ice lollies were cheap and tasty and he had the coolest afro that I've ever seen. Unfortunately, Steve let us down big style when he left for Australia and was replaced by a new ice-cream guy...Dino.
The guy was Italian and scary. The ice cream tasted weird and we told him Steve's was way better. He smiled and winked and told us that HIS ice cream was better because "It's full of the stuff that little girl's need and little boys know about" He laughed and handed over his "ice cream".
The guys loved him and used to rush out shouting "Deeeeeeno! Deeeeeeeno!" thinking that this guy was just the dogs bollocks...the girls used to avoid that side of the playground altogether and Dino eventually disappeared once a girl in Year 10 claimed that he tried to grab her. We never got a new ice cream man. Thank God.

A nasty mob would encircle the 'special' kid in our class, all mouthing silent words. Convinced that he had gone deaf, his agitation would increase rapidly. Five minutes was normally sufficient to produce one of the desired reactions - either he would burst into tears and attempt to escape the circle, or curl into a foetal ball whimpering softly.

At this point, we would all repeatedly scream "DEFFO!", which, rather than reassuring him that his hearing was fine, would instead induce a near cardiac arrest, and, on a good day, cause him to piss himself.

Primary: Sextus plays with his dog's bone.
Secondary: Anus means "grandmother".
Sixth form: Eheu (a ho) means Alas; Euge (pron. "you gay") means "Hooray!".
Postgraduate: Pedicabo ego et uos irrumabo means "I will sodomise you and ejaculate in your mouth".

One who is physically and/or mentally inept.
It took me years to make the connection between calling someone a Delve in a stupid voice whilst violently slapping the back of my hand/head and Swanwick Delves, a school for the mentally handicapped a few miles away. Div.

A traditional torture introduced by an occasional brutal Japanese exchange student. Literally translates as 'electric massage' and consists of flooring one's victim holding his ankles and pumping hard with your foot against his crotch, much like a "pro" wrestling move. We were in awe of this technique when it was first introduced and named it "the baby", due to its similarities with the pain endured during childbirth. If boys could have babies through their cocks, presumably.

Any child whose brain is full of der. 'Der' can cause you to do stupid things. The word der, and its variant der-brain (or bwain) was pronounced "duuuhhhhhhhh" in a mong voice at a length directly proportionate to the idiocy of the addressee. Usually used in response to someone acting like a div (q.v.), it was the voice of scorn descending on the unfortunate transgressor. More effective in choruses of 10 kids or more.

Grafitti on the back the back seat of the 423, 424, and 426 buses from Bradford to Wakefield. Penned by either an agrieved ex-con who couldn't afford a car or Derek, who was bragging.

Mr French was brought in to teach us when some other teacher decided to go and let off a baby, or something. Mr French was told that one of the class's recently deceased Nan was hidden in the store cupboard, and if he didn't believe us, then he should open the cupboard to see.
For about 40 minutes he refused to entertain the idea, until he finally decided to shut us all up, once and for all, by looking in the cupboard. An earlier raid of the drama rooms and a cleverly disguised 3rd year slumping to the floor ensured that Mr French screamed like a bitch.
You can't expect children to take you seriously after you've screamed like a bitch.

Clearly just Technical Drawing rebranded with a pretentious London-artwank-college name.

When placed at a new desk the first thing you'd do was check what the graffiti was on the desk. Our school was tolerant of graffitti as long as it didn't contain swear words. One day me and my gang of friends decided to write 'Fuck Me' on our desks. Unfortunately someone else was spotted writing 'Graham is a prick' or something on their desk at the time. The teacher came over and went berserk. He said he was then going to walk down each aisle to check if anyone else had swore on their desk. Quickly we decided to try and amend what we'd written. I came up with 'Fookey Meou', others came up with other stupid variations. Unfortunately one of us missed the point of the exercise entirely, and amended his to 'Fuck me mother'. Our enormous laughter at this foolishness brought the teacher over right away. We all got the ruler.

In the 80s people who couldn't afford Nike, Ellesse or Fila would always buy the next best thing and yet STILL think they were 'with it', the next best thing being Diadora (or Kappa). However, to those in the know, these people would be known as 'Diadora Scrubs' and may as well be wearing sandals made of poo.

A piece of graffiti which was scrawled on almost every wall, lampost, garage and fence between our school and Phil's front door. The perpetrator simply found the name Phil funny and its genius lay in the fact that it never specified what Phil would actually do if you dialed his number.
In spite of this ambiguity, it didn't stop Phil's parents sending him out into the dark and rainy night to scrub it all off.

Very old teachers - it was rumoured - wore adult diapers. To test this theory, hold your breath as the teacher walks past your seat; if you can hear crinkling, then they are wearing diapers.
If you can't hear crinkling, they must be wearing some new space-age diaper where they've fixed the crinkling issue.

http://www.lyons.mcmail.com/playgroundsongs/d.htm

An exhilarating game of chance that may have inspired the seminal novel 'The Diceman' by Luke Reinhart.

We had two big squishy rubber dice in the playground, and the game was played by assigning a particular dare to each number (for example running round the back of class 4, which wasn't allowed, or chucking a stone at a dinner lady.)

Alternate versions played included 12 people coming up with one BIG dare (like knocking on the headmaster's office window) and each taking a number in the lottery of doom. No-one ever refused to do something once the dice had decreed it.

I can't see how the relatively consequence-free 'knocking on the headmaster's window' is a bigger dare than chucking a stone at a dinner lady - unless Sam's headmaster was, like, a demon or something.

Draw a dick on a Rizla and stick it to your tongue. Suffused with saliva, the Rizla will go transparent, giving the highly realistic impression of having a dick tattooed on your tongue. This may be accompanied with gleeful shouts of "Dick on Tongue!".

Some unknown wag had carved the words 'The Dick Seat' onto the back of one of the chairs in our French classroom. As if controlled by some higher force, the location of the dick seat could never be reliably predicted from one lesson to the next. It was, of course, accepted without question by everyone that sitting in the dick seat would make you a dick. In some kind of ghastly parody of Musical Chairs, you therefore had to get into the lesson as early as possible to ensure that you secured a normal chair.
The seriousness with which this was treated was such that even the entrance of a teacher wasn't enough to put a stop to the titanic struggle between two boys having a tug-of-war over the last remaining safe seat at the start of a lesson.
I still check the back of every seat I sit in.

The act of rubbing your cheeks at someone, then gobbing in their face. For added authenticity, immediately fart on their leg then fall asleep. Tch! Men!

There was a boy at my school called Dickon Hares. I don't know what else to say about him, other than it really was his name, and it did sound exactly as you imagined it would when read out in the register.

The only insult you can say that automatically makes you more of one than the person you say it to.

Our fifth-year english class was in a Portable. Portables, for anyone lucky enough to not have them at their schools, are blocky, movable one-room buildings with office-style polystyrene-tiled celings.
The first time we were alone and unsupervised, I discovered that if you stood on your desk, you could reach the celing and push it up to reveal around a foot of empty space.
My eyes flicked from the foot of storage space, to the huge stacks of red dictionaries in the corner.
So, over the course of the year, the dictionaries slowly migrated from the pile to the rafters. Our teacher, sure of theft, started staging random bag checks, at which we huffed vaguely about human rights. And still the once-proud pile of red dictionaries dwindled.
She ordered another hundred dictionaries.
We put them in the rafters.
To celebrate the end of the year, we snuck out of the year-end assembly, climbed into the portable, stacked some desks and made a pyramid out of the 200 or so dictionaries. It was Itchycoo Park-level beautiful.

A question I was asked almost daily (with different films) by a kid in primary school.
"Did you see 'Indiana Jones' last night?"
"No? What channel was it on?"
"Oh, I watched it on video."
This wasn't at attempt to be funny, to his unadvanced mind - the same mind that had him violently playing the willy guitar to a small crowd of nonplussed friends - it was simply an attempt at conversation.

Bright sunlight. Teacher's eyes. Reflections from the watch glass. Interrogation simulation. Yum yum.

An obscure term for 'smelly cock', derived via the popular 'cheesy bellender'.

'Ding dong ding dong, your nose is that long.' Sung to the tune of Big Ben striking.
Weak insult, even by five year-old standards, but we laughed at the time.

A prat, wally, dingbat, prick or twat. A cunt. A short-lived insult that died out once we learned how to swear properly.

After successfully getting someone to turn around when you say "Look over there - it's Bobby Davro!" compound their shame by taunting them with the following rhyme:
Made you look,
Dirty duck,
You stuck your head in cow muck
You see? They stuck their head in cow muck. Because they turned around.
Also consider "Made you look, made you stare, made you lose your underwear."

During that nostalgic period of mid-secondary-school when primary school-level humour suddenly becomes acceptable again, it's not uncommon to remember the golden rule of primary school, which is that it's OK to get your uniforms dirty on Friday because they can be washed over the weekend. Cue twenty blazer-clad grammar school students doing what amounted, really, to not much more than rolling about in mud.

After an unsatisfying meal in the school canteen, we voiced our concerns by writing "FUCK YOU SLAGS" in tomato sauce on the trays before putting them on the conveyor belt to the kitchen.
Tomato sauce was subsequently removed from the dining hall. In my opinion still the most versatile table sauce.

Handfuls of soil and brown woodchips. Dirty rain was gathered from the shrubbery that bordered the playground before being distributed over a classmate's head with a jubilant cry of "Dirty rain!".

Then you got punched in the face.

Fraser Bairstow's arm ended just above his wrist. If you passed a piano, it was therefore an option to thump the keys with the back of your wrist, declaring that you are "Bairstow playing the piano".

A popular joke at our school went along the lines of:
Q: How did Mr Ashley win the disco competition?
A: He crossed the floor to get some crisps.
He also had polio and consequently two walking sticks. Hence the name.

Participants would go to bed as soon as they got home from school and get up as early as possible in order to watch as many Disney movies as possible before school. Claims of 5+ movies were common, and would have required getting up at around 1am. The perfect, sleepless score of 10 (Around 15 hours of pure Disneytainment) was never verified.
I mean, fucking Disney movies? Where's the kudos? WHERE?

I remember a rumour flying around the playground that there was an image of a topless woman in feature length rat tale 'The Rescuers'. Several of the more popular kids who could get away with blatantly lying to the masses claimed to have seen it. I personally cannot find it, does anyone out there know anything about this?
The rumours of nude flashframes also abounded in E.T., and the video for Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Relax. I think this is a common urban myth, and not serving as a cautionary tale (as most do, someone has sex then a lobster hatches in their anus), was probably put about by Disney themselves. Incidentally, I was told that Frankie's Relax was banned from radio play because just after he said "When you want to come...", he cheekily added, in a barely audible whisper, "let's have sex". Not understanding the concept of holding back from ejaculation - in fact, practising the exact opposite as often as possible - this seemed much more shocking to me. Frankie was, in fact, whispering an invitation for everyone to join him in a big sex; that's why it mustn't be played over the radio. I'm rambling. Log.

Similar to 'pissing up the wall' - contestants would start off their stream at the trough mouth and gradually keep shuffling backwards, trying to keep the piss going troughward. Great distances could be reached and the contestants would try to get back to the trough before running out of pressure. Clearly the floor was the first casualty in this sport.

Etymologically obscure. Div status is easily conferred by a stupid act, but does not attach to individuals, unless they act divvy really often. Even then, it isn't particularly harsh. Appropriate overlap with Co-Op Dividend Cards; especially because everyone who shops in Co-Op is divvy.

The children of divorced parents generally react well to the implication that they caused the divorce because they were an unwanted child, and that neither parent wanted custody.

In year 8 CDT we had to design, make and 'market' a product of our choice. My group came up with the DIY Surgery Series.
The DIY Vasectomy Kit consisted of a razor blade to perform the operation with, a sewing kit to patch yourself up with (different colour threads available for the man about town), a can of premium strength lager as your anaesthetic, and an instruction manual.
The artwork was fairly good considering none of us could draw anything but knobs, which we were banned from drawing despite our pleas that it was vital to the project.
The kit proved to be quite popular, although the teacher confiscated the can of Stella so that we "wouldn't get caught with it." We later went on to design more DIY surgery kits for our own amusement and I actually gave the DIY Vasectomy kit to a friend at Christmas once.

Classic Catch-22 for those who have got past their revulsion of the opposite sex. More vicious male asks male he wishes to kick the shit out of: "Do you fancy my bird?" Answer yes : "Well she's my fucking bird" - you get a pummeling. Answer no: "What, you think she's ugly?" - you get a pummeling. Answer well obviously yes, but she's your bird, and I respect that - "Are you being clever?" - you get a pummelling.

To perform this trick, go up to someone with your hand over your mouth while making the quotes sign with your other hand and ask someone (preferrably a teacher or dinner lady) "Do you like Sam Fox?". Utterly mystifying. What was going on? It was the bigger boys doing it but what the hell were they doing? (a.m.) Answers please, to the usual address.

A question asked to any youth naïvely unaware of the manifold ways in which sophisms could be employed in English to imply that he shags grannies.
A : "Do you like to shag old grannies?"
B : "No"
A : "Well, why do you do it then?"
The correct answer is "I don't shag old grannies". A useful exercise for Year 9 pupils.

Offer to read your victim's fortune. Children cannot resist this. Take their hand, palm upwards, and begin to run the palm with your own palm. Ask a series of questions, as though you are gathering the necessary information for your predictions.
The accepted sequence is
* Do you live in this town?
* Do you live in a house?
* Does it have a kitchen?
* Does it have some stairs?
* Does it have a bathroom?
* Does it have a toilet?
* Do you use toilet paper?
The victim will answer 'yes' to all these questions. Ask them slowly to create an involving and eerie atmosphere. After the last question, simply say "I don't, I use my hands." Another success!
Note: If you are tricked into the victim's role, and you are aware of the procedure, you may effect a daring reversal by answering the last question with "No, I use my hands." Blockered!

A woeful cliché posed by clueless teachers when they see you writing something unrelated to study, and probably childish. In this case, I had just written "tits bum fannies knobs" on my neighbour's exercise book.

My mate, already tolerating my childishness, fixed Miss with a look of limitless contempt, sighed, and said 'Not really, Miss.'

But Miss was made of sterner stuff. She picked up the book, and read the four words out with such undisguised relish - "tit... BUM... fannies... nooooooobs..." even contriving to give the word "knob" five syllables.

The class went wild for this reading, and my friend was given weeklong kudos. Which is a bit unfair, considering I wrote it.

Dobble is cum. The dobblemonger produces this cum. Dobble is not a symbol of fertility and one vital half of the miracle of life, it is a sign that you are some skanky dobbler who dobbles so much you've got dobble on your shoe.
"They dobbled in the darkages, they dobbleth now, they shall in the future dobble with metal gloves."

The arena was constructed of fifteen or so chairs in a circle. A luckless "volunteer" (or sometimes a stupid hard kid who wanted to demonstrate the full extent of their stupidness and hardness) would place himself in the playzone. Their task was to get out of the circle while everyone sitting in the chairs would try to prevent them from escaping by kicking them. An interesting variant involved the use of a long line of tables as the arena, with the chairs placed in normal working positions (but on both sides of course) and the volunteer crawling around underneath. This had the advantage that if a dinner miss came along everyone could pretend that they were just sitting down while they continued to boot the volunteer into oblivion. Dr Marten boots were particularly popular amongst senseless hard kids at the time, owing to their durability, weight and ability to withstand repeated impacts with no ill effects, hence the name "doccer kill". (cf sea of legs)

The school library has a window that faces the science department's prep room. One wintry day, the gaze of a fellow pupil studying in the library landed upon the lab technician. The lab technician who had assumed that he was utterly alone.

When he looked up and saw his audience, the shock in his eyes confirmed it all. Four reliable people saw it. This was the birth of Doctor Tug.

If the "pull my finger" jokes are wearing thin, simply fart into a half-full plastic milk carton, seal swiftly, then present to the nose of your victim, saying - "Does this milk smell off to you?"
This is a kind of snaf-tache lite, for people unwilling to put their fingers into their anus for a joke.

A strangely feeble catch 22 where the victim is asked "does your dad drive a vulva?" Whether you mishear "Volvo" for "vulva" or not, and whether or not your dad drives a Volvo, the idea of your father driving or not driving your mother's vulva will amuse only a few people. The rest will just laugh at you because it directs attention away from themselves. Image can be enhanced with the idea that whilst driving your mother's vulva, your father "parps" her breasts like a poop poop horn.

A trick requiring a friend and a younger pupil. Older Boy A would tell Younger Boy all about Older Boy B's fantastic piano playing grandfather. Younger Boy will listen because he is being spoken to by an Older Boy. Older Boy A will then suggest that Younger Boy approaches Older Boy B, as he is immensely proud of his grandfather, and will gladly tell you more. Younger Boy, to be fair, probably has no interest in Older Boy B's grandfather. However, he is being let into something new and intangible, and is probably thinking that having friends in the years above will make him immune to all forms of bullying. So he will approach Older Boy B, and timidly ask about his amazing grandfather pianist. Older Boy B has, of course, been fully briefed, and will throw an outrageous epi fit, screaming that his grandfather's hands were blown off in the war. Are you taking the piss? Are you fucking taking the piss out of my hero grandfather? Bingo - one tearful, terrified, confused and unhappy little boy. Result.

Apparently some lads in the year above would collect dogshit (or sometimes rabbit droppings), bake it with mint and try and pass it off as a block of cannabis, and thus sell it to gullable pezzas. Quite clearly a lie, due to the fact that dogshit smells no matter how much you try to mask it, and that only the dirtiest jip would consider picking the stuff up.

Originated from Nick Stephen's first LSD experience. Camping out in the woods, Nick is seized by the uncontrollable urge to become Muhatma Gandhi and relive his epic "salt march to the sea". We had learned about this the day previously in History class. Wearing nothing more than a towel, Nick disappears off. He returns some hours later to announce that he had taken control of a JCB, run over a workman's shed, crashed the vehicle into a ditch and caused thousands of pounds worth of damage to Cornwall's budding windfarm scheme. This display of thuggery was totally out of character with Nick's adopted persona, we argued. He didn't appear to care.

... when Harry's around,
or you might get a penis up your bum,
don't be silly, he hasn't got a willy,
you must have mistook it for his thumb!

As far as I'm aware, Harry had a fully functioning penis, but the very fact I find myself reflecting on a penis at this developed stage in my life identifies me as a bender, so I wouldn't trust my word as far as I could suck my own arse out.

The primary rule of the nuclear back-packs in Ghostbusters translates well into a toilet game where you both piss into the same bowl. If you do cross the streams, you must both squeal as you undergo an imaginary process of total particle reversal. This means getting a lot of piss on the walls, so it is best not to cross the streams.

Said by the wanker in the middle of a crowd of people waiting to get through a door. Can be followed by "I'll sign autographs later". If said by a popular kid, it was sickening and offensive. If an unpopular kid tried it, he was punched by the popular kid he copied it from.

An odd paradox; the more people singing this to a fellow pupil who is crying, the more they cry. Absolutely baffling.

A self-fulfilling prophecy, when repeated often enough. The victim will be so starved of human interaction that they will, eventually, become psycho.

Never point out a big human turd on the school playing field to the hardest kid in the class and say "Ahhh Dean, you could've waited!" (especially when the PE teacher has said "Go to the fields I'll be there in 5 mins.")
As Paul Talbot found out, Dean will sit you in it and you'll have shit smeared all over the arse of your red shorts.

The thing that you were touching that you couldn't afford was usually a dirty parka with matted fur that smelt of wrong milk that had been handed down from smelly, hard sibling to smelly hard sibling. You were usually touching it out of necessity rather than choice when caught up in the everyday chaos of trying to board the school bus.

"You may have heard," said Mr Delaney, "that some of the older pupils have a nickname for me. It's donkey, because of that song called 'Delaney's Donkey'. Have you heard it?"
No, we hadn't.
"It is rather funny, you know", he said, only twitching a little bit. "So, this is your one and only chance to call me donkey."

It absolutely, incontrovertibly wasn't.

when fully opened back upon itself, some classroom doors create a kind of tiny triangular cell, made from two corner walls and a door. An unpopular pupil may be safely contained in this cell. Then, every single school bag within reach may be hurled over the top, crushing the victim, and usually making him scream in a wild "drowning" panic.

A harsher version. If someone is caught passing wind, a yell of "doorknob" will allow everyone else in the room to have free hits on the offender until that person touches a doorknob. Immunity is granted if they can say the entire alphabet before someone catches on, and yells 'doorknob'.

When someone farts silent or loud, the giver must yell 'SAFETY' at the end of the exertion. But if anyone else calls out 'DOORKNOB' before the giver yells 'SAFETY'...then all hell is loose! Anyone and everyone is allowed to pummel the giver till he can reach a legit doorknob and make contact with it.
Also, if the giver belches or burps, the giver must yell 'SAFETY'! if anyone calls 'WINDOW' before the giver say 'SAFETY' then all hell is loose again. Same rules apply as with farting.

A despicable breed who share interests and sympathy with the geeks, but have somehow managed to end up with a popular set of friends. These double agents may even go to their geek friends' houses at the weekend to paint little lead goblins, but within school hours they are inexplicably distant, their one concession to the sham of a friendship being the fact that they only laugh half-heartedly at the routine deconstruction of the geek's psyche.

Reserved for those boys small and stupid enough to sit on the shoulders of people playing bulldog, hence double bulldog. Small stupid boys would land on their faces with a chin-full of gravel, known as a chinny bulldog.

During a youthful LSD session, we invented Douglas Bader Football, which - you guessed it - involved running around after a ball in a stiff-legged manner. The humour was lost on me until after I'd come down. At the time I was paranoid as fuck and wondered what everyone was going on about, and why I didn't understand, and whether anyone would notice. Me and a mate ended up playing Douglas Bader Football on a busy summer's day in the park recently, pissed, for old time's sake. A middle-aged woman overheard us and couldn't control herself laughing.

These were the children who had the terrible euphemism "special" inflicted upon them more than any other. Technically, they weren't missing anything - in fact, they had one more chromosome than everyone else. It's not fair. They get all the chromosomes and then they get to hog the drama workshops too. Jammy bastards.

Alex Pennington and Andy Cruse were sat next to each other on the bus on a French trip. Alex was ripping the piss out of Andy for being a virgin (cos yeah, HE'D done it loads). Andy, being something of a nutter, replied by plunging a penknife into Alex's thigh, puncturing an artery. An arc of blood shot out and was making a right mess of the upholstery so, calmly, Andy got up, walked to the front of the bus, tapped a dozing Mr Kavanagh on the shoulder and said the now legendary phrase: "Excuse me sir, but I appear to have stabbed Pennington."

A home computer of the Spectrum generation, but made in Wales. The company that made them went bust quickly. Result: no good games, and a social problem akin to . But at least the Dragon had a proper keyboard.

"With a partner, come up with a short scene of a bully and a victim before showing it to the class," said Mrs Young.
Following several rehearsals, Dave and I stood up to present our five-minute piece:
Me: Oi you, give me your lunch money.
At which point he punched me full in the face, thus ending the play.
Unbelievably, I then got a bollocking for 'provoking' Dave - Mrs Young clearly oblivious to the fact that a) it was a piece of theatre, and b) it was Dave who veered wildly and violently from the script.

Very short-lived craze of tickling the underside of your schoolmate's chins whilst exclaiming "dring! dring!"
Considering how gay this was, I'm amazed I didn't get rightfully beaten up.

Was the prospect of launching some thirsty Joey's dool into your mouth not enough to deter you from using the public drinking fountains, then the stubborn rumours that Paul Murray had shit in them the day before certainly would.
(Always the day before, too. Never "earlier today". This means that Paul Murray must have stayed behind after school to shit in the drinking fountain every single day.)

Unfortunate sounding contraction of Andrew Peacock. Also see his older brothers Chris and James. The last one never really worked.

A game where you have to hook a chair into the air, using only your foot and shin, then dive underneath it before it hits the ground.
Surprisingly hard. Surprisingly painful. Predictably popular.

In primary school, reasoning that drug dealing was the ultimate in cool, yet lacking the knowledge of what a drug dealer actually did, I decided to collect cigarette butts, peel away the paper, and store the filter tips in a certain drainpipe in the playground.

This became a surprisingly successful craze at my school, lasting for a good few weeks before a teacher was told about our glamourous and highly illegal exploits and broke up the cartel.

A boarding school poo and booze story. What more could one want?

Colin, the school loser, thought he'd celebrate a boarding school weekend by holding a party for himself in his study with a bottle of spirits. He partied hard that night, did Colin.

Harry found him. It was the horrendous niff in the toilet block that aroused our initial suspicions. Upon closer inspection, a flaccid, pale leg was seen poking out from the bottom of one of the cubicles.

The door was pushed open to find a half-naked unconscious Colin and an oozing mixture of piss, shit and vomit gradually fanning out across the floor. Well, there’s only one thing to do in such circumstances. We got a camera and took a whole roll of film.

Somehow, Colin got wind of the forthcoming poster production, and he tore Harry's dorm to pieces, destroying every roll of film he could find including the incriminating one. However, instead of hushing up the event, this act of desperation just added to the legend. Before long, everybody knew about it, and Colin’s status as school loser was set in imperishable crystal for future generations to admire.

Thing you were supposed to get when you had shamed yourself in some way. As in "Get your dubbins" or the sing-song version "get your dubbins, fresh from the Daily Ma-il!"
A West Country version of "gutted". West Country viewers, if you know what a dubbin is and why you get them from the Daily Mail, write in.

A fantastic game played at Ashfield High School in New South Wales (Australia).
Get everyone's pencil sharpeners, and remove the blades. You may need a screwdriver.
Then, turn the ceiling fans up to full, and when the time seems right, yell "duck or get stabbed", and throw the blades into the fan.
Children and teacher alike would then dive under their desks to avoid receiving a chaotic facial slash.
This being Australia, the teacher probably didn't cry and leave the teaching profession forever. She probably said "heh, nice one, blue" before hopping onto a jetski and doing a double-dunny in Gedunga Bay, or something like that.

A potentially brain damaging game played - in general - with the class Warhammer fan.

It involves shouting duck!, and then hitting the victim around the head with a hard object.
After some time, the subject may get wise to the game, and take steps to defend himself. At this point, simply shout duck! after hitting him with the hard object.

Exclamation of incredulity. "Tommy Cooper's dead!" - "FUCK a DUCK!" A bowdlerized version spawned the fairground "Hook A Duck" stalls, in which you win a goldfish with athlete's foot coming out of its arse.

A Nottingham extension. Also, if William Shatner's famous cop had come from Nottingham, he would have introduced himself by saying "I'm TJ Hooker, duck", which relates a little to the previous entry.

Constructed, like coats made from animal skins, by the zipping together of five or so duffel coats. Then, climb inside and giggle until bored. Ski coats, which had detachable arms (in case you became trapped under a tree whilst skiing, and needed to sacrifice a limb), could be made into a ski ensemble, by unzipping the arms, zipping the arms to each other and wearing them as trousers. Then you could walk around like the Lord of the Manor, even if you did walk like duck wearing a nappy full of shit.

The lowest level of the DoE award is notoriously hard to fail. But if the teacher running it drowns in front of his own children, you do kind of lose heart.

Due to my love of the cartoon of the same name, mu mum and dad got me a dungeons and dragons set for christmas one year.
On reading the instructions I quickly realised it was quite complex and not as light-hearted as the cartoon had appeared so I got an expert (my mate who's older brother was a d&d keener) to help me set it up.
Me and my other mate sat for what seemed an eternity but was probably just over an hour, rolling dices while the 'expert' wrote down the values next to our powers categories.
On rolling the final dice, the 'expert' looked at our 2 figures stood on the board, deftly flicked them over and announced 'you're dead, you're dead'.
No explanation. No Nothing. We packed the game away and went out to play footie.

Condom, Durex, Rubber Johnny. As 10 year olds we used sticks to hook used 'dunkies' out of streams and recycle them as biological weapons in playground fights.

The white ones with the green bits. A sure sign of poverty.

Strange, Weeble-shaped glasses used in school canteens that seemed to be made of solid diamond. Their real purpose was to prove who was bestest at the table. Every Duralex glass had a a two-digit numbers on the bottom - so whoever had the highest number on their glass was clearly the bestest.

Unacceptable behaviours included:
- Trying to convince anyone that low scores were best, like Top of the Pops, or Golf
- Turning your glass upside-down to make your number higher
- Declining to play

It's only now I realise they're name is aa bit like the famous brand of sponkies. Dunno how we missed that at the time.

Sung to the tune of the 'Country Life Butter' advert, it went something like this:
Oh, we are the lads from the durex club,
and you'll never get a better bit of rubber on your knob,
it sticks to your dick like evo-stick,
and you can't get it off in the morning...
Imagine my horror when I learned that leaving condom removal to the next day was generally considered to be socially unacceptable. Also,
I'm Popeye the sailor man,
I live in a caravan,
I go to my granny,
And tickle her fanny,
I'm Popeye the sailor man.
Being from Burnley, I can believe it of many of the people who sang it.

Patting a friend (or victim who desperately wants you to like him/her) on the back with a concealed board rubber. The resulting chalk stripe is nigh on irremovable. The dust cloud evokes memories of Saving Private Ryan.

The development of coloured chalks and all-over dusting never really caught on, for two reasons; coloured chalks were considered unnecessarily fancy, and it is much more difficult to incorporate the firm and friendly patting of a mate's arse into a nonchalant gesture. Advanced dusters were generally derided and beaten as hopeless queermos by their traditionalist brothers.

Stack the entire classes chairs around the captain of the dying spaceship, then kick them over so that the captain is lost in a tangle of awkward metal and plastic. Just like in a real dying spaceship scenario, the captain can be hurt very badly.