[dotti34]

Regarding the cane. The first school I attended had had the same headmaster since the year dot – or so it seemed. He believed in the cane and used it quite often but only on boys. When his current cane either broke or ‘disappeared’ (strange how often that happened) he would ask for a couple of volunteers to go for a walk down the fields and bring him back a long branch that would make another. There would always be two who would volunteer thinking it would be free time out of school but when they returned with suitable stick, all excited because they’d found one and expecting praise, the dear old headmaster would instead try it out on them first to make sure it was a good one. Some boys would fall for this every time. Suckers!

When he was caning a lad he always made sure that he caned the hand not used for holding a pen (by the way, this was long before the biro was invented!!!!) and then he would place the end of the cane under the hand, then over, under, over, under and then whack! whack! whack!