Your back-to-school essentials, by a dodgy male PE teacher of the 80s

WITH a new term underway, your kids need to be fully supplied or get detention, explains leering 1980s PE teacher Tom Logan. Make sure they’ve got all these:

Fags

They’ve got to learn about life, and life is smoking. Why else would the staffroom be a wall of blue haze like the Battle of Waterloo after an intense exchange of cannon fire? Send them in with at least ten of either B&H, John Player Special or Rothmans, or with 20p to buy one individually from a newsagent while wearing school uniform.

Demeaning PE kit for girls

How can you do netball without tiny, tiny pants, ladies? Boys are in shorts, unless they’ve forgotten them and have to wear spares from the kit bin Riley pissed in. But girls? Tiny pints and polo shirts that tend toward the transparent and clingy. I insist.

NHS glasses

Back here in God’s decade we don’t have poofy anti-bullying policies. NHS glasses are a must because they make life simpler for everyone. Bullies know who to beat up, I know who to humiliate, and the nickname ‘Brains from Thunderbirds’ saves us having to think of a new one. The time saved can be used productively on games of low-quality football.

Period products

This is something I feel incredibly uncomfortable discussing so get them some pads with wings or a big sponge or whatever. That’s enough about this horrible subject. No you don’t get to go home.

Protractor set

In the high-tech world of the late 20th century, it’s vital children can draw circles with a pencil screwed to a bipod. Some parents are buying computers, but they’ll never be good for anything but Space Invaders. Drawing a circle? You’ll need that later.

Make-up

Make sure your daughter has plenty of make-up products for school and don’t worry if her early attempts at prettifying herself are inept. It’s better than looking at their spotty adolescent skin. Some girls will paint themselves entirely orange every day for years. Fine by me.

Short skirts

In my considered opinion short skirts are the most practical clothing for girls because they allow their legs to move freely, meaning they can get to lessons quicker and learn more. They also play a vital role in their personal development, boosting confidence and preventing them turning into lesbians in dungarees at Greenham Common. And without the skirts, watching school netball practice would be a chore.

'Spill the tea', and other internet phrases you sound a twat using in real life

THE gifts of the internet are many: email, wide access to troubling pornography and something to do on buses. But these phrases are not to be employed offline: 

‘Spill the tea’ 

Or ‘tell me the gossip’, IRL. Why are you speaking like a lobotomised Radio 1 DJ? What even is the tea? That your mate Lisa got sacked from the hairdressers for nicking six tubs of hair wax from the stockroom? Hardly Watergate, is it?

‘I have the receipts’ 

In this case Lisa’s message on a Facebook group offering tubs of hair wax for sale, but would ‘I’ve got screenshots’ not be more accurate and sound less portentous? You’re not a Kardashian, not even one of the lesser ones.

‘Chef’s kiss’ 

There are a million ways to express admiration: a compliment, a pat on the back, a haiku. Instead of any of those, you’ve chosen to mime kissing your thumb and index finger while saying ‘chef’s kiss’ out loud, to recreate an emoji. Anything you think is perfect is shit.

‘Clapped back’ 

Online nobody just replies. They’re all clapping back, which is as unremarkable there as stepsister porn and as unacceptable in normal situations. ‘Did you see how Lisa clapped back at her haters after being arrested for stealing hair wax?’ should not be uttered in a Costa Coffee. It will make everyone hate you.

‘No notes’ 

Again, used to describe something wonderful. But others have notes: they have added the notes ‘you’re not in the f**king Simpsons writers room’ and ‘shut up, dickhead’.

‘TL:DR’

‘Too long; didn’t read’ is a fine boast of ignorance online, but in real life? Telling someone you haven’t listened is rude. Also, saying initials was bollocks when it was OMG and LOL. Nothing’s changed.

‘Fit check’

Everyone hopes they look at least presentable. In the magical wonderland inside your phone, a ‘fit check’ invites others to concur in your assessment. Outside that oblong portal, stopping to survey your own look in the window of Timpsons while asking friends to chime in is insanely narcissistic.

‘Doomscrolling’

To others within your obsessive device-fixated online community, doomscrolling is staying up to 3am reading whatever comes up on your phone. At work it’s considered weird, wrong and self-destructive. If you have to explain it you’ve lost, even if you later add you also watched three episodes of Love Is Blind, had a wank and commented ‘oh no babes!’ on Lisa’s Instagram about her 120 hours of community service.