Back in the mists of time...
...I used to live with my folks on a particularly rough council estate in Sheffield. It wasn't dangerous, there weren't any guns, rapings or murders, but we were all poor and there was plenty of thieving as a result.

At school, there was no such thing as fashion - most of us got our clothes from the Education Department, and as result all had 'Eddy jackets' (kind of like them black Technics. jackets from years back, but bright blue, with red trim), beige cords, the heaviest footwear known to man, underpants made of hessian, that kind of thing. Some of the pics you see of us all at the time are hilarious because the clothes are shocking, and we've all got wonky haircuts (if it's cut at all) because our mums saved money on sending us to the barbers.

Anyway, despite the whole school populace being more skint than a Nambian goat-herder, there were always some cracking tale-spinners around, who seemed to be practically swimming in money despite the fact they lived in shitty area of a shitty city with shitty prospects:

Like Danny, whose dad owned a Martial Arts centre next door, and had actually sparred with Bruce Lee. Despite the fact that Danny lived in middle of a terrace and Dad was a tubby bitch.

Or Sid, who upon seeing a lucky soul with the first pair of Nike Air Jordans on our estate claimed that his dad had just got a job as a sportswear importer and as such Sid would be getting the latest gear off the boat from the US. Did we see his promised Air 180s? The Puma Disc? Reebok Blacktops? No, we didn't. Like the rest of us Sid got his shoes from Jonathan James because his family was skint and dad was unemployed. His attempt to claim that his Ricochet (remember them) pumps were re-branded Adidas was met with more scorn than a misguided Sudanese teddy-bear renaming competition.

Then there was Adrian, whose dad worked for MI5 and was living on the estate on long-term undercover work, had access to all sorts of government secrets and high-tech gadgetry but decided to settle down, leave the high-life behind, and stay in the shithole we resided in because he liked it so much.

Liam, who never got involved in waterfights because he was 'allergic to water' and was off to America in the summer for specialist treatment, costing thousands of dollars. Of course we weren't meant to know this, and he only told his schoolfriends because 'he trusted us'...

Simon, who had something called a 'satlink' (this was the late 80's, the internet was something that sounded like it would have featured on Doctor Who for most of us Brits back then) that allowed his ZX Spectrum to talk to people in America.

Oh, and then there was David. Who had... a graphite bike, a PC (A PC! IN DARK AGES POST-STEELWORKS-AND-PITS-CLOSURE SHEFFIELD!!!), a scaled down, driveable electric motor car, his dad was good friends with Jimmy White, used to be a roadie for Def Leppard and was not a talent scout for a major record label. Oh yes.

Do you know the was was most galling about this? I believed most of them, because I was impressionable and gullible. And very bad at telling lies myself.
(scentless_apprentice takes two bottles into the shower!, Sat 1 Dec 2007, 19:05, 1 reply)

Sounds like
You lived down the Manor mate! Grew up in Mosborough myself. Either way I knew kids like that at school... and fell for every single one of them.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Mon 3 Dec 2007, 20:19, closed)