No, never did that at the Crib. Racing desks, carving names, sticking lids down. But we never really used the desk interiors having a locker each instead, rotating about the classrooms occupied by each subject. Neither was the ink well used directly. The ink monitor supplied ink, but for use in fountain pens, unless you had a more modern cartridge pen. This in part was to discourage ink blotting - the firing of ink soaked blotting paper balls at your enemy, or to effect the appearance said enemy had fired it off, to be caught and punished, a speciality I took great pride in pulling off.
We did nick mercury from the labs and keep it on a modified pen. This was then used, as a marble might be, to traverse surfaces, recaptured and stored away. Indeed I am not sure we were allowed marbles. I think you had to have permission, as they were obvious ammo for home built weapons. I recall the weeds had a marble competition one year. I am sure something nasty was done for such an obvious bit of favouritism from the Beaks, in the hard nosed world of a public school, but I fail to recall what it was. Marbles are pretty indestructible, and just breaking them would be far to obvious. Yes, public school taught you to be pretty devious.
