Lots of words written in my diary, but not a very great amount of actual stuff going on.  Suffice to say, we had tons of homework for Chemistry; there were seven of us on the back seat of the bus home (actually only designed for 5!); us lads played football when we got home from school and a mate was 'in the sh*t' because he was caught skiving off school the day previously.  I guess that he thought that if it's alright for them bl**dy teachers...

Oh thank you NUT.  We had a half day today due our English teacher being one of their members.  Accordingly, we came home at 12.45.  What did we do with our bonus time off?  Why, we went to play football!  Oh yes!  What else would a group of boys with the afternoon off school do eh?

Guess what?  Shock, horror, I hadn't managed to sell any of my bargain football programmes.  21 for a quid, sell them at 20p each.  Mmm.  Isn't it?  Well no actually.  It's not.  Doh!

And finally, I comment that I need 101 million quid.  Just because I lost a quid on some old football programmes?  No, I don't think so.  But just what it was that was upsetting me and making me write such statements, I have forgotten.

Reading today's entry back to myself, I get the distinct feeling that the pressure was definitely on, with regard to exams.  I report that Mr ****** our Physics teacher had returned to school after hurting his leg.  This was the only real news of the day.  General Studies was boring, and England could only manage to scrape a 2-1 victory against Israel.  As I noted, 'jammy - they were sh*t.'

Now I don't know about you, but looking back now, Bobby Robson was the best England manager that we have had in a long time.  In this year's World Cup, he would take England to the quarter finals - only beaten by Argentina the eventual winners, and in Italia 90 only West Germany, again the eventual winners would prevail against them, this time in the semi finals.  But on a cold night in February, he was sh*te!

Grief I was a strange creature.  I start today's entry with the classic, 'Man talk about boring...'  There are some disparaging remark about our Chemistry teacher - remember I really had an issue with her anyway, so what the heck.  Games was boring - 4 of us played footy.  Though, of course, we've managed with 3 before now, so at least 4 would have given equal sides.  Eng. was the only bright spot.  So I ask (myself) again, why oh why didn't I do it at 'A' Level?  Doh!  Thick get!

In the late afternoon, we did 'the run'.  Out of our back door, up the field to the railway bridge (disused), across that and then back down the farmer's lane to the main road then back up to home.  About a mile all told and great fun.  Eh? Great fun - mad b*st*rds!

Ace, Brill, Fab, Magic - I scored 34 (out of 36) for my essay on The Crucible.  Now, I really, really wish that I had kept copies of my marked English essays.  We weren't allowed to have them back from the examining board, and some of my essays, like this one, were really quite good - both in my opinion and that of the teacher.  We covered a number of classics, two I remember, were Great Expectations and Romeo and Juliet.  I've recently done an OU course where some of the leg work that I did all those years ago would have been useful.  There's also the element of reflection on what I thought of things and how I expressed them as a 16 year old.  Would I agree now with the opinions that I expressed then?

I also handed in my Odour of Chrysanthemums essay and noted that I should be getting on with my poetry one.  One of the poetry essays I wrote covered the UB40 song, One in Ten.  'I am a number ten, a number on a list.'  Must've been an attempt by someone at the examining board to make them appear hip and trendy... sorry, to bring the course material into the 20th century... no, no, sorry, to reflect that the body of work in English Lit should be open to the addition of new fresh material, whatever its genre or the date that it was written.  Sound convincing?

And finally... 'Day was as usually (sic) boring + cold.'

'Boring.  Cold.  Bl**dy wind is the worst. Collected £96 - spent all my money - got about 70p left.  Blasted school tomorrow.  Played footy in the garages.'

So, we can tell that:

a) the weather was still cold, today with added wind chill

b) I had a reasonable return on my paper bill collection round

c) I must've had quite a binge on sweets in the paper shop.  I did decide to stop doing this for a while, I earn the money and then give it straight back to the shop owner.  Bit stupid really...?

d) the half term was over, I probably didn't do as much as I wanted to in terms of catching up with course work etc, and the fact that school was back on the agenda meant that I probably had a few home truths to face.  Like OMG, I'm not gonna finish all this...

e) we used to play football on the large concrete area in the communal garages on the council estate where I grew up (author seeks kudos from growing up on council estate - shameless!)  We received a couple of poice 'raids' too - one of the neighbours of the garages had obviously rung them.  Sometimes, we felt that we had ample vindication for playing in the garages due to the length of the grass in the playing field.  However, this was February, so we had probably just decided on a change of scenery.

In what was a potentially decisive moment in the chase for the First Division Championship, Everton scored a 2-0 vistory over Liverpool at Anfield.  Again I went up to school to play football.  It was I report, 'a great laugh.'  I came home knackered.

In our latest money making plan, one of my mates had placed an order for some football programmes. My share was 21 programmes, for which I had paid a pound.  At the time, I believed that I had already sold 3 for 20p each.  Quite how it actually panned out, more of which later.  In unrelated news, I report my purchase of The Power of Love.  Now of course we all remember that there were 3 1980's songs with the same title, but the version that I bought was the one by Huey Lewis and The News.  It was the featured song in the film Back to The Future, rated by me as one of the best films EVER made.

It was boring this morning.  There was a heavy frost and again we played Risk.  Apparently I won most handsomly.  In the evening we had a family party, which I rated as 2 out of 5 - boring.  Wanker!

It snowed this morning.  It was a really cold winter, the likes of which we've not had in ages.  Now i don't know about global warming, you know whether or not there is anything in it or not.  However, I am guessing that something's amiss out there.  Anyway, it were right cold that winter of 1985 / 86.

In other news, I report that my poster of a scantily clad young lady fell off the wall at 3 o'clock.  Bl**dy blu-tak ain't always exactly what it's cracked up to be eh?  This poster once took the full bast of a spot that I had on the side of my nose.  She was on the wall next to (could have said adjacent) the desk in my bedroom where I did my home work / played on the C64.  Anyway, I was sat there, absent mindedly fiddling with this great big zit, when I must have got it just right and SPLAT!  There it was.  NOTHING is more satisfying than squeezing a good spot, I'm sure you'll agree.

I managed to do some of my homework - another English essay out of the way.  However there's no peace for the wicked, so I was straight onto another one!  BlackAdder II was on again, one word, 'brill.'

I took my self up to school to play football.  I probably went on my bike.  Remember it's a Peugeot with wheels like razor blades!  The school had extensive pitches all open to the general public.  So we took full advantage to use them whenever we could.  I go there by 11 o'clock.  Initially there were only the 4 of us.  By half twelve the number had swelled to thousands!  We therefore had a great game of twenty-a-side.  In a recurring theme, my side lost 9-8, although I did managed to bag 4 goals.  Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaappy Days!