Let's be honest, nobody actually liked school when they were there... But when you look back now they were, in the words of Bryan Adams, the best days of your life. I remember some of the fashions were simply amazing. Not sure if this happened everywhere but in Peebles there was a craze of fluorescent Diadora clothing. You could get green, orange or yellow t-shirts which could be teamed up with matching shorts or the went-with-everything black shorts. My mum would never let me get them so at P.E. I was Little Jimmy Pastel-Colour while everyone else paraded around in their technicolour glory. Not only were they the coolest things around but they could be of use in two scenarios - for helping to lead people with sight problems and in emergencies where high-visibility clothing is not available. I kinda hope that one day they'll come back into fashion and maybe I can have some Diadora of my own.

I can't remember at what age fashion started to become important. I miss the days when I didn't mind wearing a cords/duffle coat combo and I never felt the need to 'do my hair'. Oddly, I have a vivid memory of being in the playground at primary school with me and my friend using water from a muddy puddle to spike our hair up. I remember when it suddenly became important to have a pair of big-name trainers. Again, I was somewhat behind with this craze and spent many years trying to use my black jeans to cover up my Hi-Tec trainers. I don't know why but I always seemed to get Hi-Tecs. I would have swapped all of my Hi-Tec trainers and my Eclipse top for a pair of Cica Lights. Word to the wise; don't try to play hide in the seek in the dark whilst wearing Cica Lights - yes, that actually happened. My first pair of 'big-names' was a pair of Nike running shoes. I was so unbelievably over the moon when my mum came home with them, I think I might have actually slept in them that night. Anyway the next day we had P.E. and so obviously I was dying to show off my new footwear. For some reason that now escapes me, I decided to take them to school in the box. All was going well until, in the changing rooms, someone pointed out that my shoes were in fact ladies' shoes and this fact was written on the side of the box in big writing. Obviously in my excitement I'd just cast the box aside and assumed that my mum would have bought me shoes for the right sex, and what an assumption that proved to be. My next pair of trainers were Reebox, mens ones this time (I made sure), and they came complete with glow-in-the-dark soles...no I don't know why either.

Another fashion that I missed out on was Adidas poppers. For those of you who lived in a cave, these were basically Adidas tracky bottoms, but with the added fun of poppers up the side underneath where the stripes are. They were quite literally 'all the rage' and I remember being at a school disco and being one of only 6 people not wearing Adidas poppers. And that included the teachers. Despite the fact that they came in a eye-scarring selection of colours sometimes I was glad to wear 'regular trousers'. You see the thing about these poppers was that they came in two varieties; what I will from now on call the half-pop and the full-pop. Half-pops only had poppers up to the knees but the full-pops had poppers all the way up...on both sides. This meant that, if done correctly, someone could remove your trouser in about 2 seconds flat; cue much school party dancefloor embarassment. Particularly when Mr. Jones the janitor forgot to wear any underwear.