Countdown
I was in the sixth-form and it was a grey and miserable lunchtime. The hammering rain prevented us having a kickabout or wandering into the village to annoy the Newsagent by breaking his "Two schoolchildren at a time on these premises" rule so we were sat around in the common room, bored and bemoaning the fact that the radio didn't have a tape player.

Within the common room was a smaller room called 'The Library'. It contained reference materials, textbooks and, pointedly, prospectuses for pretty much every university and further learning establishment in the country. These prospectuses (prospectii?) were all squeezed into free-standing files. Aberystwyth and Aberdeen in a file with a big 'A' on the front, Bradford and Birmingham in 'B' and so on right through the alphabet with much duplication of certain letters. These were all arranged in alphabetical order along two very long shelves.

Boredom can do funny things to your brains and I suddenly realised we had all the ingredients required for a game of Countdown. We got Dan to be Richard Whiteley (as he was the token speccy kid). Carol played Carol (because she was called Carol) and we put the head boy and girl together with a dictionary in the corner. They were Dictionary Corner. The rest of us (around a dozen) split into two teams. All the prospectuses were taken off the shelf and arranged into vowels and consonants, the outward facing sides (with the letters on) turned away from Carol to add a soupcant of dignity and randomness to the letters being chosen.

And so it came to pass that the grey, rainy lunch break flew by in splendid fashion. 15 or so of us laughing our acne off playing a typically rude version of the nation's favourite parlour game. Aces. So much fun, in fact, that the bell going for afternoon registration caught us all off-guard. Most legged it immediately. One or two tried half-heartedly to put everything back in a semblance of order before deserting also; Carol, last to leave other than me, saying "It was your idea, you put it all back."

Bastards. I was late getting back for registration, almost missing it completely - and Mr. Calder tore a strip off me for bad timekeeping.

But that wasn't the worst of it. My next lesson (double Computer Studies) was interrupted by a young lad knocking the door and instructing my teacher that Mrs. Grant (head of sixth form) wanted to see me immediately.

Balls. Off I trotted to her office. She wasn't known for her good humour, Mrs Grant, and when I went in she had a face like a puce harpy.

"I'm not going to waste your time or mine, Mr. Jimlad; Becky Brooks and Jennifer White have told me exactly what happened and who the culprit is."

"But I..."

"BE QUIET YOU SILLY LITTLE MAN! I have already phoned your parents, informed them what has taken place and told them to expect you home early. You are not welcome to return to this school for a period of two weeks, whereupon I hope you'll have had sufficient time to think about your actions."

And that's how I came to be suspended from school for re-arranging the university-prospectus boxes so that they read...

CAROL VORDERMANS SPUNKY TITS

I didn't have time to put them all back alphabetically so I'd improvised. Fairplay to my dad, he laughed his arse off when I told him why I'd been suspended.
(R. Jimlad twitter.com/sirmarkymark, Thu 8 Sep 2011, 18:17, 2 replies)

Which
one was "V"?
( social hand grenade I was a lurker before you were a lurker, Sat 10 Sep 2011, 21:03, closed)

Several "Vales"
And polytechnics that were named after people (Victoria, for example) if memory serves. I didn't look in each one.
(R. Jimlad twitter.com/sirmarkymark, Mon 12 Sep 2011, 12:02, closed)