There were many changes for me going from primary to secondary school.  Aside from getting used to my long trousers chafing, we had actual desks.

At primary school we had tables.  Our new school, deep in darkest Tooting, had wooden desks.

There was much carving on my desk.  The desk was so old, I almost expected to see drawings of buffalo or mammoths carved into the top.

The desk had a lid on it.  I gingerly lifted it up, checking that no one had written “Pandora was here” on it.

Assuming that all the world’s ills were not in the desk, ready to fly out, I continued to open the lid; the contents were disappointing.  There were no Post-It notes on the inside with any instructions for finding secret tunnels; invitations for illicit liaisons (no bad thing given I was only eleven and it was an all-boys’ school) or the answers to that week’s French vocabulary test. 

There was, however, a fossilised iced-bun.  At first I thought this had been left by some Neanderthal who’d lived in Tooting when it was all lavender fields and/or marshy swamps?  It wasn’t until the first break, when iced-buns were sold, that I realised I hadn’t uncovered a neolithic food storage site.

I did discover, mainly during supremely dull French lessons, that the desk was very comfortable and easy to sleep on. One of the many reasons I failed French O-level or never became a palaeontologist.