1. You learned what envy felt like when you walked to school in the rain while some lucky bleeder got on an orange bus

2. You knew summer was over when your mother said you're going to 'that shop just down from Allders in the arcade' to get kitted out in your new school uniform

3. And it was made from that potent mix of acrylic and nylon – which means you were perpetually amazed not more of your school friends went up in flames in double chemistry

4. Girls would try to flaunt the dress code with leg warmers and a Frankie Says T-shirt, while the boys wore badges featuring their favourite bands bought from Oriental Arts in Castle Arcade

5. Every lad's coat was a Snorkel Parka with a fur-lined hood which you thought looked the part when you strutted your stuff up Queen Street on the way to see Ghostbusters and ET at the ABC or Odeon

6. Wedge cuts, perms and highlights were the hairstyles worn in the school playground and a ton of hair lacquer was the sole cause for the hole in the Ozone layer

7. If you went to school in east Cardiff lunchtimes outside the gates were like the law of the jungle as Llanrumney High, St Iltyds and Rumney High pupils ran the gauntlet of gang warfare. And if it snowed, god help us all!

8. Monday mornings would be spent discussing the latest failures of Cardiff City Football Club as they bumped about the lower leagues - although you were probably more concerned about whether Super Ted as a shirt sponsor was a good or a bad thing

9. If you went home for lunch you would invariably stop off at the chippy for a Clarksie and chips, a go on the Spacies (Space Invaders) and a pitstop at home watching Rainbow and Hector's House, but NOT The Sullivans

10. Nobody bunked off school, the cool kids went on the mitch instead. You listening Leah from Educating Cardiff?

11. But you'd never do it for fear of being tracked down by the mythical 'boardy man', Cardiff's answer to the Child Catcher only with a clipboard

12. School buildings had to be divided into letters of the alphabet – A Block, B Block, C Block, D Block etc - so you could tell one Lego building from the next

13. You didn't know it then but you know it now that woodwork and metalwork were potential death traps and chemistry was an excuse to set your mate on fire with a Bunsen burner

14. The tuck shop was where you bought your treats – and Space Raiders, Oxo flavour crisps and Wham bars were your favourites. Although you bemoaned the fact they never sold Slush Puppies or Tip-Tops

15. Break times were spent swapping stickers in an attempt to complete your latest Panini football album or trying to decipher the impossible physics of a Rubik's cube

16. Teachers were garlanded with amusing nicknames like Tom The Bomb – after the teacher who allegedly set fire to the laboratory during one particularly explosive science lesson

17. You didn't need a school teacher to tell you that Margaret Thatcher was the enemy. That was your mam and dad's job

18. Break time listening on Sony Walkmans was The Jam and The Smiths for the boys, while the girls wrapped their ears around Duran Duran and A-ha

19. When you should have been reading your textbooks you were secretly reading Smash Hits, Just Seventeen, Shoot or Roy of the Rovers

20. Melyn, Gwyrdd, Coch and Glas were the houses you were divided into at school eisteddfodau, our version of the X Factor back in the day

21. But if you didn't sing the only thing you could look forward to was being relegated to the Whistling Choir. Yes, a choir made up of whistlers. You had to wear a mac to sit in the front row

22. A school trip was invariably a journey in a battered minibus to the Brecon Beacons or the outward bound centre in Porthcawl

23. Your school daps were either Gola or Adidas - and you carried them with your sports kit and school books in this

24. Sports masters were either sadistic former rugby players with moustaches who looked like Gerald Davies or those who rocked a tracksuit like a member of a breakdance crew

25. If you went to a Protestant school you played football and hated playing rugby

26. If you went to a Catholic school you played rugby and hated playing football. Keeping up?

27. School sports days were always a challenge, especially if you were trying to break sprint records held by Nigel Walker or Colin Jackson who went to your school

28. And however much you loved school you loved the sound of the bell at 3.30pm a lot more because it meant this

Educating Cardiff continues on Channel 4 on Tuesday at 9pm