7 things etched on your brain if you went to school in Lancashire in the late 80s

Head bags: as used by Andre Agassi, and you. For some reason.

They were the best of times, they were the worst of times - but if you were there, here are seven things you’ll still remember.

1. Nobody played tennis, but everybody had a Head bag

Quite how an obscure company that made bags for ski equipment and tennis players became the must-have brand around schoolyards is lost in the annals of history, but the fact was that anyone who was anyone had a Head bag. If it was anything like ours its every surface will have been defaced with biro within days, much to your parents outrage.

2. Drain covers were for playing marbles on

Now, were not saying that todays kids lack imagination. But back in our day we had to make own entertainment, and the drains in the playground made perfect arenas for gladiatorial combat as cat’s eye and milky fought it out for schoolyard supremacy.

We somehow doubt this still goes on today what with health and safety ruling the roost. Its political correctness gone mad!

3. You had to wear your tie back-to-front

Because kids in he ‘80s were ‘rebellious’ we wore our ties how we wanted, which was for some strange reason with the wide part of your tie tucked into your shirt, leaving the thin part on show. To this day I still have no idea why this was the fashion.

4. Your school trip was not exotic

School trips to Florida, China and other wonderful places are the norm these days, but in the ‘80s most trips where to the countryside, while it was raining, and you needed a cagoule.

5. Everyone went mad for yo-yos, twice

Coca-Cola branded yo-yos, at that. The second time, they came with a professional variant. Nobody really knew the difference, but everybody said they could see they were better.

6. The secret recipe for a winning conker

If your conker went straight off the tree and onto the string, you were going to get annihilated. Everyone had a foolproof way to cheat at conkers, whether it was soaking them in vinegar, putting them in the microwave for ten minutes or leaving a box of them on a sunny windowsill to dry out for an entire year. As a result conkers was a brilliant, unpredictable sport that made the Russian athletics team look like paragons of virtue.

7. Your school desk had an inkwell, and a lid

Nobody used quills to write and you couldn’t fit your bag, or books for that matter beneath the lid of your wooden school desk. This did however make a great shield when your were having a paper fight.