Be a post whore!

[Sundae]

Re backpacks - when I was at school the fashion for girls was canvas shopping bags - either plain or usually with a polital/ pressure group logo (Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Amnesty etc).

They were great because you could draw all over them and they kept your books/ folders upright which stopped any loose notes falling out. Only problem was you had to carry your lunchbox separately because it wouldn't fit. Once you've got a bag over your shoulder, a lunchbox in your hand and say a can of Coke for your breakfast in the other hand, you don't have a spare hand to read your Sylia Plath as you walk along, and how on earth are people going to realise how troubled and deep your are otherwise?

Boys just had big sports bags, which eventually they were told had to be left in the cloakrooms because there wasn't enough room in the school corridors for teenage testosterone and big bags.

As the only things boys kept in their bags were schoolwork and manky old sports clothes it's not as if anyone was going to steal anything, so it worked quite well.