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Many of the things I remember were probably not unique to Firth Park but one thing that was, no school in Sheffield could have been further from where I lived. That meant a bus journey from Crosspool into town, a walk through the city centre and another bus journey to school. What were the council thinking? I think it was a kind of handicap. All that, while carrying a hundredweight of books. The same books had to be carried from lesson to lesson all day, with a bit of help from the wooden lockers and locking desks. I used a briefcase and now I have one arm longer than the other. Neither lockers nor desks were fully appreciated. We gave them a seriously hard time.

Another kid who had to travel from the same street I lived in was Michael Dordon (the grizzly gorgon). He was a friend of 'Spike' and once they gave me a lift in Spike's hired car (he did not buy cars). They mentioned a school ghost. I think Dick Mayhew once mentioned it as well.

Two experiences that could have happened anywhere were the level of violence and the ubiquitous obsession with football. Whether in play or deadly serious life was a permanent brawl. One time the desks were cleared aside in a large upstairs room so that the whole school could watch Ian 'Jonno' Johnson fight some lad from the year above. To say someone could have been killed is no exaggeration at all. Fortunately the prefects stopped the thing before it got started.

Though there were prefects they did not use their powers to crush the spirit out of everyone else. Such a thing would have been unthinkable.

Institutionalised bullying just did not happen. Very rare was the 'bait the weakling' kind of bullying where someone gets picked on, though there was victimisation of the technician by boys from years above me. I do not really know what that was about but it upset the teachers.

I remember the level of anarchy with fondness. Lessons were always close to being disrupted by wisecracks and bad behaviour. One kid (Twiggy) was a genuine psychopath. He eventually robbed a warehouse and ran off to Manchester. After that he was sent away to a special school.

I once saw a kid getting caned by Harry Lamb, the deputy head.

Terrifying. Whatever it did for them, one strong argument against corporal punishment is what it does to over sensitive kids who may be watching.

I have a couple of confessions to make. One of my English essays was plagiarised from Cannery Row, the bit where the boys are baiting the Chinaman and then they see China in his eyes. Surprisingly Miss Powell was not familiar with Steinbeck. Just as I left she was promising to put it in the school magazine. I hope she didn't. The other confession is that I initiated a piling up of desks in the corner of a classroom.

Other boys joined in. They owned up to it and I didn't. Because I was frightened of being caned by Harry Lamb.

One experience that was uniquely Firparnian has to be the lurid colour of the stains used by the ice cream van: vivid blues, greens, purples.

Never seen any others like that. Another fairly unique thing was the old pervert who hung around on the playing field saying 'like your feet'.

Before I left I developed a crush on another boy. His fault for looking like a girl. In those days the length of your hair was important. It spoke of your background and aspirations. That was just before the school went co-ed.

I remember that the first term of a new year started on 7th of September, about where we are now, and maybe that is what made me think of Firth Park. Actually I was trawling the 'Net for Boris Haywood's Russian book (it isn't available on Amazon). Remember, kakao emo bug?

And all that. At the time I'm sorry to say Russian was too difficult for almost all of us except for 'Niffer' Norris (so called because of his nose) and poor old Boris got the treatment we gave out when we were very bored. Remember how tall the building was? One day we were on the top floor and saw Boris in the quad and shouted a lot of things at him. Nothing really offensive, just Yoo Hoo, Boris and that sort of thing. So he ran all the way up stairs to lecture us. He was red as a beetroot and running in sweat.

Probably the best teacher at the time was 'Adolf' Smith. His lessons were witty and entertaining. Then he gave out a printed sheet for each lesson. So I memorised each one parrot fashion for the test he gave every week. When 'O' level time came I memorised all of them parrot fashion, lah-di-dah-di-da. The result was a grade 1 'O' level. This approach is not applicable, I have found, to getting a University degree and would probably not have worked at 'A' level.

Another teacher whose lessons I enjoyed was Mr. Booth. The Geography teacher. This was modern Geography: 'Facts within a framework of ideas'.

He dealt with Physical geography and local Geography, why a town is where it is and stuff like that. So he could not go wrong. Well not for me. He was our housemaster. After I did not attend speech day he made me write an essay for a punishment on 'objections to speech day'. It all started because the speaker one year was Eddie Griffiths, a rabid socialist and my dad, a Tory, walked out. So in the essay I gave them the kind of cleverness I put in e-mails now. No problem. After that Mr.Booth new I was a little prat. I knew I was a little prat. I just kept it hidden by being very quiet most of the time. As it turned out most of the teachers agreed with my dad.

If I had done 'A' levels there I would have done Physics with Chas Homes. Not that I liked him, or that he liked me, but by driving home definitions... 'an ampere is that current which.. ' and so on he gave me a basic grasp that has seen me through 'A' level physics, first year basic science and a postgraduate diploma in I.T.

One thing I simply could not do was 'Games'. I got a sort of inferiority complex after Bertie Blades called me a 'spastic' for the way I held a Javelin. Also I was not keen on the way a cold wet football could slap into your bare thighs on a freezing winter's day. So I used to sneak off home. 'Schultz' Webster made me write a letter of apology for that. He lived for sport and said I was an 'odd bod'. Oh yeah? Did you ever watch the episode of Dr. Who with Davros, creator of the Daleks? That was him!

He called everybody young so and so, whatever their name was. "Young Brown, don't walk about with your hand in your pockets"... that sort of thing.

Another strange kind of lesson was R.E. or religious education. I wanted to be a scientist, not a vicar. I asked Mrs Carr what the point in R.E. was. She said to go back and tell her when I was much older and I had found out. I never did. I would like to have asked for less Christianity and more of other creeds. She was a strange little woman from Wales and seemed somehow twisted. She once gave a sermon in assembly that went on for hours and was a gruesome tale about a man with an amputated arm. People were fainting and throwing up all over the hall.

I actually enjoyed art lessons as light relief. Mr Bee was a reasonable sort of chap. Well except when he came in and found one lad who had just been knocked to the floor. It was not his fault but Mr Bee gave him a good shouting at for rolling around on the floor: "This is an art room, for Art" and so on..

There were other lessons and teachers I hated but against all the odds as schools go Firth Park was probably one of the best. It was certainly an interesting experience.

Ian - 04.09.07