Book excerpt: Some say that schooldays are the best days of your life. For Rikki Brown, going to school in Easterhouse in Glasgow's East End in the sixties certainly had its moments. There were the mind-numbing subjects, the belt-happy teachers who knew how to inflict extreme pain with weapons of class destruction, the imminent threat of nuclear war and, for Rikki, a luminous red tongue after a serious dose of scarlet fever. And after surviving that lot there were still the notorious Easterhouse gangs to negotiate. At the time when Frankie Vaughan was supposedly sorting out the gangs, there were also some fantastic adventures to be had and a serious amount of growing up to be done, with or without hamsters. And as the innocence of the sixties became the glam of the seventies there were mates to have a laugh with, girls to chase and LPs to walk around with to show just how cool you were. Frankie Vaughn Ate My Hamster is a funny, nostalgic and occasionally unbelievable story of schooldays and life in the scheme. It is a classic coming-of-age tale with an Easterhouse twist - where only a combination of brains, style and street sense could guarantee survival.