A pastime that involved placing one hand, palm outwards, on the top of your head and the other hand held in place between your teeth by the skin between the thumb and forefinger. In this pose you would run around the yard making a loud squeaking sound. When you approached a victim you would take the hand out of the mouth and hit the victim in the testicles then quickly replace the hand and run off squeaking. The victim had then been 'Yampy-Batted'. The only way to become a Yampy was to draw a bat - not unlike the one on Batman's bat-signal - on your arm with a pen. Anyone not so marked was a potential victim.

Another defence, assuming that you are allowed to defend yourself without being swarmed by Yampy Bats, would be to hit the hand on the head, causing them to bite through the skin between thumb and forefinger. This evolutionary flaw probably explains the lack of Yampy Bats in adult life.

Used to express disbelief. Also;
Yeah, and my dad drives a tank
Yeah, and my brother can dance on clouds
Yeah, and I can walk through parsley.
Yeah, and I've never eaten a Kit Kat.

The last one turned out to be a bastard ruse from a kid with a rubbish packed lunch who wanted to eat some of my Kit Kat.

And if you want to open yourself up to a torrent of mum-related abuse...

Yeah, and my mum's a virgin

An amusing sticker I found on the back of a pupil, authored and stuck there by Damon Lumley (15) who is still rightfully proud of his creation. I felt this was particularly noteworthy due to it's rejoiceful nature set against the subtlety and moderation of the latter part.

I once stuck a 'Rape Me' sign to a classmate's back, which had the entire technical drawing class in hysteric in about three seconds.

I'm certain that we all enjoyed the sign on many levels, not least of which the logical paradox of a request for non-consensual sex.

However, the teacher just rolled his eyes, and muttered something about "primary school humour".

Like under 10s are tuned into the nuances of rape jokes, sir. Like that's the case. Sir.

Whistful Carribean folk song that we were forced to sing in tuesday morning singing group. Such was the gusto which myself and my friend Philip sang (in thick and poor quality Jamaican accents)that we were asked to come up onto the stage to demonstrate our vocal talents to the rest of the class. While our enthusiasm had got us picked out for special praise, our inclusion of "Oooohkeeey mon!" between each verse only led to the head's office by a "deeply disappointed" music teacher.

Pupils from a nice school were banned from socialising with us when we performed this version of that song on the watersports trip:

Yellow turd, way down in the lavatory.
Yello turd, you sit there and smile at me.
You're so short and fat
You look like a rounders bat
I know why you float
You've got a furry coat
You're much uglier than me.

An insult levelled by Alan Blackburn based on his premature puberty, which afforded him thick, lustrous pubic hair and a constant jet of white wee (as opposed to yellow cum) gushing from his cock.

I posted this a few days ago and while you may have flowered-up my language - nice use of the word "lustrous" - you did lose the bit about how the once virile king of the locker-room is now a sad fat loser whose sex life consists of whacking off on left-handed websites? Could you put that back in?

(My pleasure, Uncle Monty. Sleep well. - Log)

Such an unexpected couplet, that you can shout them out in class - with the teacher present - in a distorted fashion so that it's not quite identifiable enough to punish.

A trip to Yemen requires the following:

1. A coat to cover the traveller’s head, so that he can’t see. You must then hit his head a lot, generally a constant, reasonably gentle slapping.

2. During the slapping the travel guide informs the voyager that he is "going to Yemen", where he must "demand the release of Muhammad Akbar". Meanwhile, keep saying the wise words "Yemeny Yemeny Yemeny".

3. Two assistants hold the coat in place while the tourist is carried around, upside down and spinning in all axes.

4. He should be left in a new and interesting place to pull the coat from his face. Wherever you left him, for the purposes of this exercise, is “Yemen”.

Not that cruel, not painful, just baffling.

In geography lessons, any mention of the country of Yemen MUST be said loudly as "Yeah Mon!" in the style of Porkpie from Desmonds. Similarly, Oman must be said in the tones of a tired hippy. Deviations will not be tolerated.

Translates to "your mother is a paramilitary terrorist and your father claims income support" This is an "all in one" insult. You have insulted both the parents, their financial income and class level, the fact that their father wasn't "hard enough" to be in the "RA" and that their mother is a terrorist. Both Catholics and Protestants could therefore use it. If only everything was so even-handed.

An instance of desk-writing, which evolved into a strange kind of soap-opera. One morning, we found written on one of our desks, "Yesterday my girlfriend sucked my cock" in big black letters with a ring round it. The next day, a smaller ring had attached itself to the first, containing the words, "Today I took her from behind." The next day: "I took her from the front." Each day new messages were added, until the entire desk was covered. Some gems I have remembered included, "I like shaved pussies," the contradictory "actually I like hairy pussies best," and the informative "There are several meanings for the word 'pussy.'"

A similarly ringed biro message on the wall in 3rd year history read 'I love Sweaty Piss Flaps'. Well, don't we all?

A playground dialect employed to signify that you mean the opposite of what you’re actually saying. The technique is achieved by pulling your lower lip back over your bottom teeth, and making a whooshing sound as if you’re describing how something has flown across a room (such as a paper aeroplane or frail child). You have to pronounce each letter ‘s’, and the end of each word where possible, using this method. Sounds complex but it’s easily done.

Let us illustrate this with an example.

Kid A: Look at the state of David Barnes’ [bag / coat / shoes / pretty much anything you care to mention]. What a fucking gyppo.
Kid B: Yeah I know. He’schh not a shcruffy cunt at allschh.
Kid A: He doeschhn’t schhtink of schhit muchschh.
Kid B: And hiscch houseschh is dead cleanschh.

Using Yish, Kids A & B have successfully pointed out that David Barnes is in fact a dirty, smelly, scruffy tramp from whom, by inadvertently smelling his breath, you would certainly catch Aids. Yish can also be used safe in the knowledge that if you are overheard by a teacher when ‘praising’ something in this way, the teacher is unlikely to be bothered to find out if you are being sincere or not.

Warning: Yish is not effective as a comeback if you are accused of being gay. It is no use simply saying ‘yeschh I’m really gayschh’, because that just means you really ARE gay, and therefore deserving of a kicking and having everybody find out that you’ve bummed your dad. No reason, it just DOES.

... and we hate you,

Mum.

My sisters and I wrote this in my brother's school diary after tippexing out the real message our poor mother had written.

A fire had been started in the library during afternoon break. Mr Welch, deputy head, wasn't happy with this and called an immediate assembly in order to capture the culprit. A full half hour of shouting abuse followed from the funny little Mr Welch who got progressively more and more angry and red in the face. We just sat there in silence until Neil asked Chris the time. Mr Welch heard this break of silence, stared at Neil and tried to shout "YOU BOY!" while pointing at him. Unfortunately his anger took control of his legs and propelled him forward, off the stage, and into a group of frightened first years at the front of the hall. For the next year, the whole school proceeded to fall off various things, shouting "YOU BOY!" Indeed, the process was revived when I met up with old school friends at college 5 or 6 years later.