On the Buses: How Terranova47 Got To School

Hello Woodsy

For infant school it was a Hornsey Council owned Bedford OB bus painted gray.

From age 8 Junior school was by a London Transport Trolley bus.

From age 12, Secondary Modern was by the same Trolleybus route only three times the distance.

In 1962 Trolleybuses ended and were replaced by Routemasters.

There were no instances of being locked in a box? London buses didn't have them.

For London Transport from 1959 we had bus passes so only had to pay the fare first day of term.

My daughter growing up in NYC attended her three schools by the Number 6 route subway.

Regards,

Terranova47

USA

How Did You Get To High School?

My secondary school, a catholic high, was a good way away from home so it required a decent stroll and a bus journey.

The walk was OK but ever day it became tedious. My mates made it doable.

The bus journey, specially the return, wasn't great.

A double decker of teenage dark energy!

I got stuffed inside a box seat at the back once and missed my stop by loads! 

Sounds funny now but it wasn't at the time!

Thank God those bus journeys are over!

How did you get to school readers? 

SLANG FROM LANCASHIRE IN THE NINETEEN SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES

Here are a few slang words and activities I've dragged up from the chlorinated deep end of my Youth in the Sixties and Seventies. You'll know many more and have your own from your country. These are all from growing up in Lancashire, England. There are some that are too unsavoury to print but these are what's left!

Loo, Khazi, Bog, Throne room - toilet

Privvy - outside loo

Rag - newspaper

Cow Bite - a firm grip on the inner thigh, the then hard squeezing was agony! My brothers' favourite.

Snake Bite - two hands gripping the forearm and a counter twist created excruciating pain! The other older Brother's favourite!

Rib Drill - whilst being pinned down on your back, a single knuckle would be drilled into the middle of the breastbone. A killer! Both older brothers' specialty. 

Hickey, Love Bite - extreme mouth suction on one side of the neck creating nasty-looking bruised circles. A token of love that was everywhere in my school! Yuk!

Greeny, Grolly - a large blob of  verdant phlegm plastered on the ground

Bogey - nostril waste - as in Pickit, Lickit, Rollit, Flickit!

Crusty - hardened nostril waste

AA, Business, Biz, Numbers, Kack, Sh*t, Sh*te, - a poo, poo

Meat and Two Veg, Short and Curlies, Goolies, Gonads - the male testicles, to be protected at all costs during a skirmish with bad 'uns!

Shreddies, Underkecks, Grundies, Y-Fronts - underpants, usually white.

Skidmark - an unsavoury streak in the middle of your usually white shreddies

Tidemark - an unsavoury line on the neck denoting a lack of washing either above or below it.

Kick the Can - a game in which cans or footballs where kicked and collected whilst everyone else ran off never to be seen again.

Right on - righteous, as in Right On Man! That's groovy!

far Out - astonishing, as in That Tank Top is far out Mate!

Mate, Flower , Darlin, Love, Chuck - terms of introduction and endearment [ In Yorkshire: Cocker]

Pencil pusher - office worker

Lazy B*stard - a fellow prone to slacking

Idle Swine - a Lazy B*stard

Tosspot, W*nker, A*sehole, A*separt, Tw*t, See You Next Tuesday - a bad 'un or very nasty person

Cretin, Idiot, R*tard, Spaz, Sh*t for Brains, Twerp, Berk, numpty, Dope - all suggesting a lack of grey matter

Docile, Dopey - not one for fast movements.

Scalliwag - skeleton

Twit - a scatterbrained fellow

Talent, Crackling - the opposite sex, usually at the school disco.

Honey, Honey Pie, Sugar Pie, Tata Pie, Kidney Bean - what my older Sisters called me

Squirt, Little Squirt, Worm, Annoying Little Turd, Sp*nkbubble - what my older Brothers called me

Wiz, Waz, Pee, P*ss, Slash - to urinate, usually at the back of an old building in the Seventies

Spuggy, Bubbly, Chuddy - chewing gum, Anglo Bubbly being the go-to chew for kids my age

Clobber - clothes

Kecks - trousers

Herbert - an annoying person, as in He's a right Herbert

Belm, Thomas - a lie

Prannock, Pillock - a very annoying person

Bovver, Aggro - hostile goings-on

Cake Hole, Mush, Gob - the mouth

Soft, Mighty - a good thing

Split, Skidaddle - as in, to leave the school disco quickly because you've danced with someone else's bird!

Kaboodle, Tackle - stuff

Fettle - to sort something out

Second Shelf - hidden away, as in Up my A*se, Second Shelf

Pushiron - bicycle

Pad, Joint - a place, as in You're Wrecking the Joint.

Fleapit - old cinema

Flicks - cinema of any sort

Flick - a film

Wrinklies, Giffers, Oldies, Geriatrics - old folks, like me now!

TV, telly, box, Tellybox - the television

Wireless - the radio

Nosh, Scran, Tuck, 'Owt Yummy - food of any kind, preferably steak pudding and chips.

Dosh, Spondoolis - cash for things like Led Zep's latest LP

Schrapnel - small change for things like vending machines and bus fare's up town

Dweeb, Dork, Nerd, Geek - all words that came much much later from American TV.

Poser - someone showing off, usually with some very nice 'clobber' and a decent hairstyle

Bird - girlfriend

Get Stuffed, Get Lost, Get Stretched - as in No Way, You're kidding!

Pitch n Toss - chucking coins or cards against a wall to see who could get closest to it

Garden Hopping - sneaking through neighbours' gardens at night

Skool, Skoo - yep, school. the best days of your life and all that.

Deck - record player

Tunes, Sounds - music

Sound - good, as in He's Sound as a Pound that Jimmy Page.

Chavvers - young lad

Kushti - as in its all good

Toerag - a rotten person

Tw*t him - as in give him a good whalloping

A Good Hiding, A good Pasting - being beaten up, being tw*tted.

Clip round the Ear - a swift smack on the lughole usually by Mum or Dad, but basically anyone in the Seventies, as all adults seemed to smack us poor kids!

Lughole - ear

The Strap - corporal punishment in School consisting of a length of rubber brought down fast on the open palm .... at least it wasn't the cane or birch at our school, maybe because it was Catholic!

Redneck - catholic

Proddydog - protestant

Gaffer - boss

Elbow Grease, Hard Graft - all forms of toil and irksome work

Kip - sleep

Forty Winks - a short nap ....

Good idea, I shall have forty winks myself right now!

Which of these and other words do you recall readers?

Did You Rush Home from School?

 My Grandson Junior told me today that he can't wait to get home from school to carry on sorting through his Pokémon cards. 

I remember that feeling so well, rushing home after school to do my own stuff and projects. The joy of youth.

Did you wait all day at School readers to get home and do your own thing? WhAt did you do? 

SKOOL'S OUT!

 

Yay! Its a snow day and Skool's out!

Here's Alice capturing the joy back in the Seventies. I had this LP, shaped like a desk and its stablemate, Billion Dollar Babies. Did you?

What's the weather like in your part of the globe?

WERE THE BEST DAYS OF YOUR LIFE AT SCHOOL?

I'm interested, were your school days the so-called best days of your life?

I personally think the old adage is misconceived. What it really means is that your childhood days were the best days of your life. Schools were just part of it and may not be the best bit at all!

What do you think readers?

YOU GOTTA REACH DOWN TO LIFT THE CROWD UP!

After the glory of our childhood toys came the fizz and gleam of modern music. It did for me and I guess for many as the crazes of infancy gave way to the crazes of youth.

My first musical craze was the pop music around me when I was a listening kid in the late Sixties/ early Seventies : Slade, T. Rex, Suzie Quattro, Donny Osmond, the Partridge Family, the Sweet, Leo Sayer and so on. 

All this good stuff eventually coalesced around David Bowie for me and I bought all of his albums including his early stuff on Images, did a turn as his Ziggy Stardust at the High School talent show and bought some of his fabulous singles. I saw Bowie live at Preston Guild Hall in the early Seventies and thought I'd died and gone to Heaven.

During this period I was also obsessed with Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album and my sister introduced me to Lou Reed's magnificent Transformer, which excitingly had links to Bowie too.

As my hair grew longer in the mid-Seventies my tastes got heavier and Bowie and Lou gave way to hard rock and prog. Bouncing on my bedroom turntable now were LP's borrowed from my two Brothers' stereogram; Cream, Black Sabbath's Masters of Reality, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and the Bumpers/ Fill Your Head with Rock/Nice enough to Eat compilations. My Sister introduced me to the Yes Album and Wishbone Ash's eponymous first LP and Pilgrimage. Some bands she listened to sadly passed me by; James Gang, Caravan, Family, Three Dog Night and maybe Quintessence.

All of this good stuff for me eventually coalesced around Led Zeppelin, Rush, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Free, Jethro Tull, Uriah Heap and the heaviest of them all, Budgie, whom I saw live at Lancaster Uni around 1977.

Behind all the noise were some troubadours, especially Joni Mitchell and emphatically Neil Young. Again I have my sister Rene to thank for introducing me to his After the Goldrush and also to Van Morrison's phenomenal Astral Weeks and Veedon Fleece. Rene also played me Talking Heads.

In 1979/80 I co-formed two rock bands with my friend George [ and occasionally Keiron]. First it was a Blackpool prom busking duo called Alien Cage and then with two more friends, Boyley and Raff, a four-piece called Sirius, which gigged in a Preston pub called the Unicorn. Sadly we disbanded when my fellow band members went to Uni. I was 2 years older and without the band I left my home city too and lived on a bird reserve for a year. Turns out I'd left for good never going home again.

In the Eighties I was married with a young daughter. My old love of rock surfaced in a few bands I jammed with here and abroad and I always encouraged them to try classics like Free's Fire and Water and Tull's Locomotive Breath.

The Eighties' new wave and indie scenes largely passed me by. I wuz still a rocker really but friends did get me into the Smiths, Cocteau Twins and Teardrop Explodes among others. It was only much later that I came to appreciate indie, new wave and punk.

In 1990 a friend's 16 year old daughter came to live with us for a year to improve her English. She brought with her a bunch of cassettes, which she listened all the time to in her room. When she left, for some reason she left the cassettes behind.

13 years and a house move later in 2003, when I had my own man loft to fill with toys and listen to rock I rediscovered those cassettes, buried within the hundreds of tapes I had accumulated myself.

They were a revelation! I adored what was on them. Fresh, loud sounds which were clearly very rocky. Some of the tapes only had song names written on them, so I had no idea who was playing. Songs like Jeremy and Evenflow. Others had band names like Temple of the Dog and Mudhoney. I can still feel the excitement I felt when I first heard Temple of the Dog belt out 'You gotta reach down to lift the crowd up!'

I didn't know it at the time but I was listening to Grunge.

Grunge, like Punk, was a flash of lightning in a dull sky. Grunge's particular sky was Seattle in the late 80's/ early 90's. I was listening to mix tapes of LP's recorded from that time thirteen or fourteen years later! Grunge had already come and gone but I wasn't bothered. To me it as fresh as a daisy and despite being in my forties, once more I felt excited about music.

I listened to all the tapes incessantly and eventually worked out the bands: Soundgarden, Temple of the Dog, Mudhoney, Nirvana and the mighty Pearl Jam, whom I loved the most.

As it was now the age of the CD I bought the albums on the tapes, especially Pearl Jam. Eventually I packed up those old cassettes and returned them to that young student, now in her thirties!

Two decades later, now in my 60's, I'm still fascinated by Grunge. I'm not alone and last night there was a documentary on the telly to give us what we want, the story of it. 

Although disappointingly non-chronological  [I like origins and endings in order] it did remind me of the fuzz and wail of proper Seattle Grunge and the amazing local music scene it came from.

Green River, Malfunkshon, Mother Love Bone, Skin Yard, together with global superstars Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. They all knew each other and back in the late 80's/early 90's Seattle owned and loved them.

I wish I'd been there.

Have you had musical crazes readers?

You Offering me Out?

I heard a saying this week I've not heard for a long long time. 

To be offered out.

A schoolkid said it to another one.

"You offering me out?"

Basically it means "do you want a fight outside?"

It's an old saying. Schoolkids said it when I was young back in the stone age.Thank God no-one offered me out. I was never a scrapper. Not even with some Kung Fu under my belt. More of a philosopher!

Is it a saying you know?

MUM! I FEEL SICK! CAN I STAY OFF SCHOOL?

Well its Saturday morning here in the UK. I should be watching The Arabian Nights or Skippy [I wish] but instead I've been video calling my Grandkids. Little Miss Moonbase has terrible chicken pox, really quite big ones, all blistery and red. Ouchies she calls them!

My old workmate was telling me that she took her own kids to a chicken pox party! I'd never heard of one but my Missus had when I told her. Sometimes I think I just went to work and was oblivious to everything else when I was a young Dad except for what was going on in our home. 

I don't remember having the pox as a kid but I 'm sure I had 'cos I can recall copious amounts of Calamine lotion being blathered all over me. Pink and slimy and cold. And that was just me! ha ha.

In fact I think I had all the big childhood diseases - Chicken Pox, Measles and Mumps. I can also recall being jabbed and boosted for stuff. I still have the little depression on my upper arm like the Death Star dimple. That was the booster, a foretaste of what we all would have to deal with 55 years later with Corona!

There was also the little cube of sugar with some pink liquid on it - medicinal compound maybe - which we ate at school like a pony to protect us from Polio.

Beyond fresh milk and the nit nurse at school I can't remember any more childhood medicinal matters. My milk teeth will have fallen out at some point at home and gone to the Tooth Fairy with big pockets. We still have some of our daughter's teeth but she kept the money.

My Missus was a bronchial kid, snotting up masses of gunk. It was so bad she tells me that the family doctor advised they move from the city to the coast. They never did but eventually her nose dried up and she stopped being snotty.

Illness and childhood seem to be bound together, as long as there's not too much. Illness that is. Being poorly did have its upside though. Staying off school and presents, toys and comics!

My best sick bed present has to have been an Ideal Zeroid around 1970. I wuz 9. It was the gold one in a fish tank that doubled as a trailer. My Mum and Dad got it me in hospital when I had my nasty old appendix out. The kid next to me wasn't so lucky. His burst. I would have lent him my Zeroid but he was too ill. The kid on the other side called Vinny kept swiping my Vimto so no Zeroid for him!

Did you have any childhood diseases readers? Did you stay off school?

MONITORS AND PREFECTS

There used to be jobs at school when I was a kid. Secondary school I mean. the two I remember where Monitor and Prefect. Like Project SWORD ranks, they both had badges.

I think Monitors checked whether you had all the equipment you needed. Pen, pencil, ruler and so on. I'm not sure if they had spares - like an ice-cream vending person at the cinema? Maybe they monitored other stuff too.

Prefects were altogether more important than monitors. Fifth year Marshalls these Young Guns for hire patrolled the dark corridors of the institution searching out miscreants and forcibly pointing out the errors of their ways with a clip round the ear. A  bath full of scorpions was preferable to a corridor full of Prefects! At least that was my experience in a mid-70's Catholic High School in Preston. So much for saintliness!

Prefects also decided how much and what type of food we got. With one of this breed sat at every table like a dinnertime Sheriff they ladled out the meals and the puddings. If you said you hated swedes that's mostly what you got. I learnt not to say I hated skin on my custard. I learnt to keep stumm pretty quick!

I was never a Monitor nor a Prefect. I just watched them.

Were you one readers? Were you something else at school?

DID SCHOOL MAKE YOU HAPPY?

Our school days are meant to be the happiest times of our lives. 

But I'm not so sure. They were and still are simply public institutions where kids have to go, sit still, be quiet and learn by rote. 

I often think the adage that school is the happiest of times is really about childhood in general, those tender years up to age 18 when our life was spent in the warmth of the family nest, when summers were endless and toys, books, TV, music and our beautiful obsessions filled our carefree days. School was just happened to be a part of it.

Looking back I can find little evidence in my own memories that school made me happy. I have a feeling I was quite stressed with the whole thing, especially secondary school.  I enjoyed meeting girls and dating them but I feel that was more to do with age rather than school.

No, my own happiness in childhood began when I got home from school and again I probably mean Secondary. I just can't recall enough about my Primary days to comment. My 'world' was at home and largely in my bedroom, where all my stuff was: toys and books and later on albums and posters and friends. I adored my childhood world of space and monsters and I think it made me the person I became rather than anything I did at school.

What do feel readers? Did you enjoy school? Were you happy there?

SKOOLZ OUT!

School's out for summer and my work is done for another year! Yay!

The strangest and most infectious year ever, I am glad to see the back of it and look forward to 6 weeks of the 3 R's: rest, rummaging and relaxation.

I can't wait to get stuck into some car boot sales and charity shops after weeks and weeks and have fun buying lots of vintage toys and tat.

Let the games begin!

Enjoy your summer or winter wherever you are in the world.

HOW WAS IT WHEN YOU LEFT HIGH SCHOOL?

Do you remember leaving high school for good when you were around 16 years old?I'm really struggling to recall what it was like.

I ask because I'm aware that all Year 11's in the UK secondary system will be leaving 'high' school in about 2 to 4 weeks. There are no GCSE exams this year due to Covid, just written assessments done in class, which will all be more or less finished with by now.

In my own educational setting the final year students are getting very, very excited and all the various rituals of leaving are the main topic of conversation: signing shirts, buying year books and hoodies and saying farewell to friends and staff.

Its a huge moment, which I wish I could recall much more clearly. My own Year 11 experience, age 16, known then as the 5th Year, was dominated by the death of my Mum so I'm not really representative of how you should have felt/feel anyway.

What were the farewell rituals when your high schooling ended? What were the rites of passage? Were their celebrations at home as well as school or was it a time to actually forget and move on from with little fuss or fervour readers?

MEMORABLE SCHOOL DAZE

Occasionally memorable things happened to me at school back in the Sixties and early Seventies.

An early memory is taking some toys into school after Christmas. I can see my Nomura mystery action tin army jeep zooming beneath the tables and chairs. What fun!

Another time I recall being in the Primary school Christmas nativity play. I was Joseph. The teacher had said not to wave at parents in the audience. I got on stage and promptly dropped my soft lamb to wave at my Mum and Dad! ha ha.

On another occasion I remember winning an Action Man truck in a tombola. It had green tarps draped over the back end. Quite a big thing. Not sure of its name now.

In the first year of Secondary school there was a talent show. I was a big Bowie fan at the time and just had to have a go at doing Ziggy Stardust on stage! I mimed playing the guitar but I think I sang the words. Ziggy played guitar!

The art department became an important place for me to hang out at lunch times later on. I made lino cuts of Kung Fu themes; Chinese letters and yin yang symbols for printing. I still have some somewhere. The art teacher, a brilliant painter, especially of seascapes - we had one in my Parents' front room - even painted a new sign for the Judo club I was a member of at the time.

I recall coming first in a Biology test one week. The class swat asked me how I'd done it. I dunno and I didn't do it again the next week to which swatty remarked 'You inconsistent worm!' Ha ha.

Lacking inspiration for an English essay I was inspired by the sleeve notes of Deep Purple's Machine Head I think. Ritchie Blackmore described throwing his guitar around with 'wild abandon'. Well that phrase went in my essay no messing and a few more after that!

Another time I had to do something very embarrassing. I had to explain to the Secondary Head why I'd had a month off school despite my Mum having already told school. The reason was hard to explain when you're only 14. I'd trapped my member in my trouser zip. And when I say trapped I mean really trapped. Only a doctor with an anesthetic could sort it, which is exactly what happened. Alas it was just the start to a long painful road to recovery and renewed membership of the human race!

I met a girl in the final year of school called Janet. Short with long black hair and utterly gorgeous, I was besotted. I went out with Janet for about two years, whilst I was at Sixth Form, but we weren't meant to be. I dumped her over the phone, which was cowardly I know. Despite all that I can still remember the thrill of being asked by her go-between mate Susan outside the English classroom if I would 'go out with Janet'. Ahhh, teenagers in love! The last time I saw her was 45 years ago!

One thing I recall about a teacher was the hoo-ha that erupted when he was discovered kissing and cuddling a sixteen year old girl in the chemical store of the science classroom. All hell broke loose and I think he may have left after that. It was the Seventies though. It would be much more shocking now.

Obviously there were bad times at school too and some really bad times, but I don't dwell on those anymore and have focused on the good stuff here.

What memorable events do you recall at school or college readers?

'ORRIBLE ORIGAMI: PAPER, BOGEYS AND SHEER BOREDOM

It always amazes me what kids get up to with a piece of paper. Powered by boredom its almost alchemy what adroit creations rise from the sheet.

When I was a kid we used to create opening and shutting paper thingies. These had different stuff written on the insides of what were a bit like petals. Stuff like You Stink or Go Out with Me or Nice Legs! It was a bit like a folded bird's beak that your fingers opened and closed. If it had a name I can't recall it.

Another thing we did was to tear a piece out of an A4 sheet and create a ragged hole. That became a hole in the back of someone's trousers, which you drew. You then drew a dog with a similar piece in its mouth. To complete the picture you then formed a crease in your index finger and held this crease behind the hole. It looked remarkably like a bare butt!

A similar effect was achieved using a five or ten pound note, when they weren't plastic. A couple of folds were made in the Queen's neck and voila! The royal bottom!

Obviously paper planes were essential origami and they still are. I often find a foolcsap jet whizzing past my face!

A new fad, at least to me, is kids making bang flaps out of paper. Various folds are made to create a sort of 2-ply triangle. When forcibly flicked forward it creates a loud bang and is really quite annoying if you're an adult. Kids love it!

Last but not least there are paper boats. I imagine readers will be masters of the maritime fold.

Did you do anything else with paper?

HOLD OUT YOUR HAND BOY!

It always amazes me what we had to put up with at school in the Sixties and the early Seventies. 

It was a goddamn battlefield and I'm not talking about the kids. I mean the teachers. They were weaponised. 

Weaponised teachers on a mission to beat the hell out of us kids!

I'm talking about corporal punishment. The legal injury of young bodies in school!

It may seem like a quaint blip in education's history but it was no laughing matter at the time. Allowing teachers to smack, hit, wallop and cane youngsters was a bad idea. Period.

Looking back the thought that on a day when you could be deliriously happy playing Joseph in the school play you could also get the strap several times on each hand executed by the deranged Head of Chemistry seems like some sort of sick joke to me now.

I was strapped. For dancing on a lab table. OK I shouldn't have been on the table before the teacher came in but to actually hit me with a rubber strap for it is ridiculous.

I also had a wooden board rubber thrown at me from the front of the classroom. Being a W I was sat the back. Now that took some umph to wang that rubber all the way to the back. It caught me on the shoulder in a cloud of white chalk-dust but could easily have knocked me out. All for not knowing where we where in David Copperfield! I ask you!

I once saw an art teacher stand on a chair to give him extra height when leaping off to whack some poor kid's hand with a stick. They might as well have given psychopaths baseball bats.

For a vivid glimpse of how it was just watch the old movie Kes, set not too far from where Moonbase is now. There's whacking aplenty in it.

Not all Secondary justice was heinous. For mimicking an English teacher's funny voice I was commanded to write out 100 vocabs - that's words and definitions from a dictionary. I remember Ziggurat was one, as in the Ziggurat of Ur.

Many teachers were fine too. Nice, helpful people who never hit anyone. 

I was never keen on school I don't think. Its blizzard of rules was stifling for me but somehow I managed to get through it in one piece and pick up some O levels, because I enjoyed English Lang and Lit, History and Geography, subjects with words at their heart and for me words and their meaning were everything.

In an arc of supreme irony fifty years later I work in education and despite the school rules being ever present no-one gets walloped by teachers anymore thank God.

Nostalgia can have its bruises. I don't expect everyone to agree.

RAIDING THE FRIDGE WHEN I GET HOME

I've been enjoying a milkshake and a crumpet after work this week. Nesquick chocolate and cold milk and butter and jam. Yummy!

I've always enjoyed a tasty snack after school and work and now I'm 60 I still do. It's something I've always done as soon as I get in. In fact I don't think I could do anything else until I've had my coming-home treat! Then the serious business of playing began in earnest!

Over the years these snacks have been included Reddy Brek, custards, reduced sugar jam on thick white poppy seed loaf and scotch eggs and salt.

My preference is something sweet though and the milkshake is the clincher.

Do you have a snack when you get in? Did you as a kid?

DID YOU GET MILK AT PRIMARY SCHOOL?

I remember getting milk at primary in the Sixties. It was a welcome mid-morning ritual and it came in a triangular pack. There must have been a straw too but I don't recall that. 

It must have been full-fat milk with all the cream mixed in, which I would struggle with now, as I'm very funny about anything floating in milk these days.

I imagine the mid-morning shot of milk was a Government-backed scheme to strengthen bones and teeth and create a nation of George Bests and Virginia Wades.

It didn't work on me as I was and remain the most unsporty person you are ever likely to know. My milky energy boost will have been absorbed into my pent-up angst at being segregated from the girls at playtime. I was quite the flirt even then, but alas, in our Victorian redbrick school reminiscent of a workhouse, the girls had there own playground with a posse of nuns between them and the boys' yard!

Still, I enjoyed the milk and wonder if it really did help our generation's bones and teeth?

What do you think?

BY GUM!

Today I got chewing gum stuck allover my trousers. On the bum to be exact. Its the bane of all classroom staff and a real pain when it happens as it doesn't come off easily.

Noticing the offending gobbet when I took my pants off at home to get into my jamas I tried a technique I'd heard about, shove those trousers into the freezer and ice that gum!

In they went and 12 hours later ... it didn't work!

How would you remove chewing gum from your trousers readers?

MISH AND HIS DINOSAURS

Hi Woodsy.

As you liked my school Space Project drawings, here, attached, are some from my later Dinosaur one. I was probably about 14 at the time.

I started off with felt pen illustrations, as before, but moved on to painted ones, using water based poster paints.

A couple of them, the Allosaurus and the Triceratops, were done using Aurora Prehistoric Scenes kits and box art as reference material.

Hope you like them and feel they're fit to show.

All the best,

Mish