In the bedroom I share with my wife (and don't worry, this isn't going to be a column full of the sordid bedroom secrets of the Curnows) there is a stack of old comics. They are mainly 1980s editions of Eagle, with a few 2000AD and Blake's 7 magazines thrown in for good measure, and I hardly need say it but they are mine rather than Mrs C's. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago my wife was spending the day in bed (I repeat, don't worry, this isn't going to get saucy) because she'd done her back in (don't go there) and in order to get our standard lamp next to her side of the bed we ended up moving the piles of comics.

Underneath, and much to my surprise, was a green cardboard folder, and I recognised it at once. It contains various stories and essays wot I wrote in class 3 at Primary School (probably what they call year 5 now they've started renumbering everything). It was the school year 1980/81, and I was in Mrs Barrow's class. Mrs Barrow was, I think it fair to say, rather large and indeed her one-line anecdotal claim to fame is the comment by one of the other teachers (a man, of course) that that day's Cross Country course would be "twice round Mrs Barrow". I feel slightly cheap about relating that tale, but as you surely know by now I have never knowingly resisted a cheap one-liner.

Mrs Barrow was an excellent teacher, as indeed were most of the teachers I ever had. Whether a product of today's educational system would be able to emerge making the same proud claim I'm not sure but as I don't want to become what Ben Elton used to refer to as, "Ooh, bit political" I won't take that thought any further. In fact, Mrs Barrow actually once typed up one of my stories for me. It was a story wot I wrote at home, and was (probably no surprise given the period) a "Star Wars" based story. It was set after "The Empire Strikes Back", and was written before "The Return of the Jedi" had arrived - which may perhaps account for the fact that one of the plot twists in my intergalactic tale was that Admiral Piett was "the other" that Yoda so tantalisingly hints at towards the end of the second film. I do in fact remember being almost evangelically filled with certainty about this at the time, although looking at it now it really couldn't be anybody else but Princess Leia could it. Oops, hope I didn't spoil it for anybody there by letting that out. And if I did spoil it for you, at least be grateful I didn't reveal that Darth Vader is actually Luke Skywalker's father.

Oops.

Anyway, to get back to the point, Mrs Barrow typed that story ("Jabba's Vengeance" it was called, which of course reveals the identity of the villain fairly quickly) in her own time. I can't now recall how I came to tell her I'd written it, or why on earth she offered to type it up (and let me clarify that this was no single sheet of A4 jobby - it was about 50 or so pages long!) but I do vividly recall her giving it to me, and being very grateful. I feel certain that I wouldn't have ever thrown it away, but equally I have no idea where on earth it is - most likely in one of the boxes of 'Miscellaneous Andrew' that are currently stored at my parents' house. Maybe I'll have to have a rummage on my next visit...

But this nostalgic recollection of lost scribblings brings me back to where I started; which was (I'm sure you'll recall) the uncovering of my work folder from Mrs Barrow's class. Of my Primary School work this is the only stuff I can remember ever bringing home. I have no idea whatever happened to the work produced in previous years (and of course I could reel off the names of all my teachers for those years, but won't) but I do know for a fact that the subsequent year (1981/82) when I was in class 4, the last at Primary School, we had to throw all our work away on the last day. I have no idea why this was, whether it was a school policy or just our teacher being particularly tidy, but I vividly remember going out to those gigantic wheelie bins that only schools and hospitals seem to have, and throwing it all away. Not unlike the archive purges of the BBC during the 60s and 70s, there is stuff that went in those bins that will never be seen again; and while I'm not suggesting for a moment that the BBC could have been onto a nice little earner if they'd been able to release my old essays on DVD, it would nevertheless be interesting to re-read "The Story of a House" and the one about the alien planet with the 'moving slime' again. On the other hand, producing even a single page on "A World Without Oil" was a struggle in 1981 and would be now, and it's perhaps as well that this particular essay will never see the light of day again, save as a title and a shuddery recollection.

But, once more getting back to the point, it is vaguely intriguing to see what I thought and, of course, wot I wrote, in 1980 and 1981, when I was nine. I can feel a Tony Hancock quote coming on (from the classic "The Diary" episode) in that I would like to continue this column with a few choice extracts so that you can all marvel at my perspicacity. What's perspicacity? I don't know, but I want people to marvel at it!

The very first item inside this dubious folder is a poem called "Space is vast." Robbed of context of course, it's very difficult to remember what it was we had been told to do, whether we were told to write a poem, or whether we were told to produce 'something' to go with that particular title, but you'll be pleased to note that the whole thing does, if nothing else, scan and rhyme - I hadn't of course heard of blank verse at the age of nine, and if I had I rather suspect it would have been frowned on in class 3B. The second verse starts with the following valiant attempt to keep going no matter what:

You gaze at space with awe

I'd say simply, "Cor"

Yes, well. Marvel away then...

Clearly this attempt to bring expletives into my work in the most lame of manners was something of a crusade at the time, as later on in this tome there's a 13 verse poem with the stirring title "Dangerous Mission". Don't get too stirred by the title, by the way, because it's probably the most exciting part of it. Again I can't remember what the 'brief' was, but I do vaguely remember being read a long poem on a similar theme prior to producing this. The gist of the poem is that there is an aircraft pilot who is up in his plane when a storm hits, and verse 8 is the one I would like to highlight. Brace yourselves:

A storm attacked with viciousness

It made his ship a wreck

He said aloud "I'm in trouble"

Then he added "Heck".

In my defence... Well, nothing really, but at least it rhymes.

There is actually another poem in here, and I do, vividly, remember this one. We all had to write poems on the subject of Christmas, and a few of them were then chosen to be recorded (by the authors!) for broadcast on Radio Carlisle on Christmas Day 1980. I hasten to add that we lived in Carlisle at the time - it wasn't some cruel present shipped up from Devon to the people in the frozen North. The reason I remember it is because of my first taste of censorship (gasp!). Having got, "Cor" and "Heck" past Mrs Barrow, I came a cropper with the following:

Christmas is a happy time

As we all know

It's full of peace and happiness

The ground is covered all with snow.

So, can anybody see the problem? Well, it's the last line (apparently). Mrs B (who I will repeat was a wonderful teacher) for some reason didn't like that last line - maybe the first three had a slightly more abstract/emotional feel, whereas the last one seems to be veering towards the materialistic? I'm not sure, but whatever the reason, I had to remove the fourth line. This means that the version in the folder I'm looking at now has only three lines in the first verse, but the more normal four lines in the other three verses. It's probably staggeringly petty of me, but do you know that still rankles with me? The fact that I can still remember the missing fourth line nearly two-and-a -half decades later is probably a sign of that; and I have visions of anybody listening to it in 1980 thinking, "Tt, schools today! Stupid kid didn't even make the first verse rhyme! Can't even count the number of lines!" I say again - staggeringly petty. But, there you go.

There are various other pieces in here, but a lot of them seem to be answers to questions, or endings we had to write for stories we'd been read, so they're somewhat inexplicable on their own. There's a couple of pages of an estate agent's spiel with the final line revealing that the 'des res' is in fact a cave; there's a piece on the Plimsoll line; there are various glowing tributes to Flash Gordon, my cousin (that's two separate pieces by the way - my cousin is not nor has he ever been Flash Gordon), and to Star Wars (of course). There's also the surprise revelation that my favourite villain is the Master from Doctor Who - well it was a surprise to me anyway, I always thought my favourite villains were the Cybermen.

Looking at that last piece now it's clear that I hadn't quite grasped the use of the 'umble apostrophe at that time, as every word ending with the letter S has an apostrophe - so although I'm right on the Master's I'm way off the mark with alway's and lot's and die's. Most touching of all is the accompanying illustration, which as fans of Doctor Who will surely attest, is an uncanny, almost photographic rendering of Anthony Ainley as the evil Master in Logopoli's.

On the subject of illustrations, it's clear that whatever else might be my bag, art definitely isn't. There is towards the end of the folder a piece on the legend of Prometheus, the picture for which appears to show the man himself out strolling in his jeans and sweatshirt. Oh, and the yellow blob in the top left corner is the sun. Or had you guessed?

It's interesting to look back at these things. I don't think my daughter's school will be allowed to throw her work away (not even if they want to!) as the educational system now seems to insist on them keeping painstaking records of almost everything. Even the school report she had when she was six was far more in-depth than any I had, either at Primary or Secondary School; and it has clearly been compiled with reference to a checklist of things a six year old should know. So there were a lot of unnatural sentences along the lines of, "She knows how the Great Fire of London started" - unless she suddenly piped up in class one day and confessed that it was 'er wot done it, I think that is just something on the list. And of course, on reading that I immediately asked her how it started. There was a long think and a lot of scratching of the head before I got even a halfway cogent answer... Not that I'm complaining about her or her school there; at the age of six I was still two years away from getting homework, and even then that was only one night a week (and I thought that was scandalous). Now they have homework all the time, and while I don't blame the teachers for that, it does seem overkill. There's only so much work a six year old wants to do, methinks. (And indeed the same is probably true, if not more so, of a thirty-two year old.)

My daughter today told me that her Cinderella story (they all had to write the story in their own words) is up on the wall at school, which is something of an accolade. I'm sure, putting the doting parent to one side, that hers isn't the only one up there, but I am pleased that she can write stories. She said that the last line is "And they lived beautifully ever after" which struck me as unusual. Apparently they had been told NOT to end their stories with "And they lived happily ever after" which my daughter had interpreted as meaning that she can get away with changing just one word. When I was in school I remember we were told not to use the word "nice" but to find a better and more appropriate word each time. Teachers teach and children listen... Sometimes.

Anyway, that's quite enough nostalgia for one week. I have in a perverse way enjoyed looking back over my old (and boy do I mean old!) work. Although I don't think I'll make a habit of it, it's has just this once been rather, erm, nice.