1. Your school building looked nothing like the big, fancy halls you see in films about British schools, it looked exactly like this…
Image: buzzsouthafrica.com
2. The quality of your school meals was dubious at best – remember the mash potato that was so solid it had to be scooped like ice cream?
Image: Instagram: @krishnalondon
Also the undefinable “curry”, square slices of pizza, sloppy bolognese and incredibly tasteless chips.
3. And who could forget the classic pudding, “cube of plain sponge with pale yellow custard”?
Image: Twitter: @Medic_Russell
Sometimes you’d get chocolate sponge though – what a treat!
4. Kids went through a phase of wetting toilet paper and getting it to stick to the toilet ceiling, so it looked like this…
Image: Twitter: @iamLaurieD / @hmumyles
5. If you had to wear ties, it was cool to try and make it as short as possible – to a ridiculous degree.
Image: Twitter: @emilyboubis
6. And you also had to wear your bag so low that it was basically on your bum.
Image: jiji.ng
(Your parents always nagged you about how bad it was for your back.)
7. Literally every school had this exact ceiling.
Image: Twitter: @Anamewithaguy
Kids always used to get in trouble for pushing up the panels.
8. And these exact chairs.
Image: postadsuk.com
9. The “playground” was just a rectangle of tarmac with some lines painted on it.
Image: stmworld.co.uk
It was really great at grazing your knees.
10. Remember the awful feeling when you realised the thing you were fiddling with under the desk was a piece of someone else’s five-year-old gum?
Image: Twitter: @CoryMoreland
So fucking gross.
11. You regularly had classes with more than 30 people in, which, looking back, makes you feel really fucking sorry for the poor teacher.
Image: Twitter: @teachermemoirs
One teenage kid is annoying enough, but 35 of them, all in the same room, all totally unwilling to do what you say and showing off in front of each other? That is actual hell.
12. And there were so many of you that there were never enough textbooks, so you’d always have to share one between two.
Image: Twitter: @AshleighTanya
Fuck this damn anthology.
13. At some point the teacher experimented with making you sit boy-girl-boy-girl to try and stop everyone from messing around so much.
Image: Twitter: @peachesanscream
14. A small section of the school grounds was reserved for the “wild area”, which soon became so wild that no one was allowed in it.
Image: Twitter: @EcoSchoolsLCC
It was a nice idea though, right?
15. There was that moment you realised you’d forgotten your PE kit, and had to clothe yourself with the ridiculous contents of the dreaded lost property bin…
Image: Twitter: @KesgraveHSPE
16. If you were lucky your school had a set of goalposts, but they looked like this…
Image: dailypost.co.uk
You were totally awestruck when you played away at another school and they had nets. NETS!
17. You weren’t even allowed to use the shitty goalposts during break though, so instead you just piled up your shoes and jumpers and used them as posts.
Image: Twitter: @HaveleySports
18. And there was always that one kid who repeatedly shanked the ball over the fence and out of the school grounds.
Image: Twitter: @CHFULHAM
You were banned from going to fetch it, but normally did anyway. If no one could get the ball back you’d resort to playing with a stone on the playground.
19. There was fuck all to do after school, which meant a lot of time was wasted just hanging around by the bus stop.
Photo: geograph.org
20. You went on at least one spectacularly crap school trip every year.
Image: Thinkstock
You heard stories about the posher local schools going on ski trips and visiting South America, meanwhile you were stuck on a day trip to the local pencil factory where you still had to wear your school uniform.
(Also, remember how the bus seats always looked exactly like this, and there was always a race to the back?)
21. But no matter how average your school was, there was one thing you knew – it was always better than your rivals.
Image: Twitter: @ILLEGALIZED
They’re all dickheads over there, I’m telling you.
