Upon making a mistake it is customary to acknowledge this to your friends by wrapping your upper lip round your top teeth, pressing your index finger on said lip and saying 'Sheudy Meu'.

Shinny the shoe was probably a nice kid but was never going to fit in because he had a briefcase, and even more unforgivably, shiny shoes. Word quickly spread that it was good luck to touch Shinny's briefcase and his shoes at the same time - but you must never speak to him during the act, as this would immediately undo the good fortune.

Shinny led a distraught and solitary life, and the nickname accompanied him into his early career. I like to think his personal accessory choices may have helped him along a bit in the real world of work, as some kind of compensation.

An offshoot of graffiti art, thought to originate in schools around Leicester. Often using twigs or lollipop sticks, urban artists would find fresh dog shit and thrust the sticks into the poo. What remained was both a work of art, and an Excalibur-style weapon, for a brave child to withdraw and wave around threateningly. Such a brave child had to be very careful of the "double dipper"

I saw a pleasant version of shit sticks at a bus stop in Burnage. A shit had either been lain, or moved, onto the bus stop seat, and a half-smoked cigarette had been stubbed slightly off-centre. Having a hangover, I burst out laughing the second I saw the 'piece'. No-one else at the bus stop seemed to get it, though.

The first incidence of shit writing in my experience was someone writing shit, in shit, on the toilet wall.

"What's that?" someone could ask.
"Shit," their friend might have replied.
"I can read, thanks, I meant what is... oh."

A week later the words "GUNS 'N' ROSES" appeared on the same wall. Not spelled out in Guns and Roses, though. Still shit.

Some come here to sit and think, but I come here to shit and stink.

John Betjeman, 1947 - Lavaratory wall at St Thomas of Canterbury Middle School.

'I come here to rub my balls/And read the writing on the walls'

Philip Larkin, Finchley Catholic High, 1962

Here I sit broken hearted
Spent a penny and only farted

Pam Ayres - Stanford-in-the-Vale Grammar School, 1960

We've been sent LITERALLY er...four pieces of celebrity shit writing. So watch out kids, here they come!

Here I sit smart and artful,
paid fuck all and dropped a cartful.

Robert Burns, the mens lavvy, Barnton Bar & Bistro, Stirling.

They fuck you up, sex pests at school.
They may mean to, and they do.
They split your arse without KY,
And give you shitty cock to chew.

Phillip Larkin again, undisclosed locale.

Here I sit in stinky vapour
Cause someone stole the toilet paper
Should I stay, should I linger
I will be forced to use my finger

Joe Strummer, spotted Helena College, 2005

And finally...

I come here to done a piss,
I dunno what they do in India probably sqot on the floor or sumfink.

Wicked.

Jade Goody, Bermondsey Special School, 2004

A game loosely based on "Street Hawk", TV's motorbike Knight Rider. The rules; after school, Steve Wild's little brother would ride around the playground on his BMX as close to 200mph as he could get, while we threw rocks at his wheels.

It ended, as all good things must, when Steve launched a set of those elasticated hooks used for securing luggage to roof racks into the front wheel at close range. His brother flew headlong onto the playground. I'm not sure how badly he was hurt because I did the honorable thing and legged it.

My friend Tina's boyfriend was in a band who were called 'Shy-Talk'. Very 80's. The venue of their first gig rang him up to ask the name of the band for the posters. They - of course - misheard, and Cheltenham was awash with 'Shite Hawk' posters. Bonus.

The computer room had monitors and BBC B's all the way round the outside. If you got in quickly enough after break it was your job to switch all the monitors on to save time.

However, if you were second in, it became your role to go round all the monitors and 'wipe' the static off - storing it up for discharge into the neck of the biggest girly mong you could find.

Turn a normal cookery lesson into shoe cookery by putting a rival chef's shoe into a pre-heated oven.

For dessert, pour ribena in the CO2 extinguisher's horn and spray it all over the ceiling.

An amiable enough game where you stand right in front of your opponent and take it in turns to see who can spit closest to the other person's shoes without actually hitting. If you did hit the shoe or trouser, they are allowed to spit on you anywhere. It's only polite, really.

It all began when someone tried to kick a football and their shoe came off. From there, it was natural progression to see who could flick their shoe the furthest, and then why not start a fight with shoes?

It all ended when a shoe went through a window and the culprit was immediately identified as the kid with only one shoe on.

The unexpectedly inventive nickname for polyester wadding which was one of the two major materials we used for making everything in first year Textiles. The other was paper.

First invented by Darren Kitching it caught on quickly to the point where everyone was chanting it constantly during Textiles. Unfortunately for me, the teacher had outlawed the practise while I was in the toilet and so finding the class strangely quiet on my return I started the cry once more. This got me 2000 lines that were to read "Polyester Wadding is not a popular music group".

A little excessive, I feel.

The windows in some of our classrooms would often steam up with condensation during lessons.

We discovered that if you had greasy skin (as many teenagers do), you could rub your fingers on your face, transferring some 'facial grease' onto them and then write 'invisible' words on the glass when dry, e.g "Bill Marlow is a Cunt".

When the windows next steamed up (which could be during another class) the invisible words would miraculously 'appear'. Often the blame would be directed at innocent pupils and once a whole class got detention for not revealing who had done it; they really didn't know! IT WAS ME! HA!

A game designed to achieve maximum interactivity with a Japanese girl who possessed a limited command of the English: her name, the word "yes", and "shut up".

You begin by asking her name, when she replies, you say "No, it's not". When she counters with "Yes", reply simply with "No". Continue back and forth until she gets fed up and tells you to "shut up".

For some reason, this provided hours of amusement for much of the school.

A summer game. When the grass has grown, choose an area of ground for your Sidney Home. Gather some friends (or people who like spitting), and get them to hack up a load of greenies onto the plot. Cover this with ripped up grass, and repeat. Once you are happy with your home, and have enough friends to feel safe, throw someone weak onto the Sidney Home. Usually Patrick Sears.

A sidney home with more than five floors.