Thurs­day 17 Decem­ber †1952

Anoth­er dis­taste­ful episode involv­ing my way­ward sec­re­tary Celia. I had just giv­en Watkins six of the best on the bare ñ he had been run­ning in the cor­ri­dor for the third time in a week ñ when I heard a faint cough out­side the door of my study. On going to inves­ti­gate, I found Celia kneel­ing on the floor with her ear to the key­hole. She had been lis­ten­ing in on Watkin­sí can­ing! At a human lev­el, I could iden­ti­fy. There is cer­tain­ly some­thing hyp­not­ic, even erot­ic, in the sound of a cane land­ing full force on naked but­tocks. But that is no excuse for what I regard as lit­tle bet­ter than voyeurism. A sim­ple solu­tion was at hand and I wast­ed no time in apply­ing it. Six of the best for Celia, pants down, with Watkins watch­ing! From the sheep­ish way Celia left the room after­wards, I think she had learnt her lesson.

Tues­day 14 Decem­ber 1952

… hands in his bloody pock­ets! Con­sid­er­ing he was sup­posed to be read­ing the les­son at the school car­ol ser­vice, I took a very dim view indeed. I have thought for some time that Wil­son has been get­ting above him­self, but the lit­tle ras­cal is usu­al­ly clever enough not to get caught. He also has an annoy­ing habit of smirk­ing when oth­ers receive a thrash­ing. Well, he was for the high jump this time! An exem­plary sen­tence was called for, and I took great plea­sure in admin­is­ter­ing it. First, I made him write out fifty times, ëBoys who behave like total slobs get bot­tom mark­sí. Then I marked the said bot­tom accord­ing­ly, strap­ping his bare back­side until it was as red as a ripe toma­to. He wonít be putting his hands in his pock­ets any time soon.

Thurs­day 9 Decem­ber 1952

I have intro­duced a new rule this week, at the sug­ges­tion of Mr Wheat­ley, our head of sport, who is a stick­ler for phys­i­cal fit­ness and is wor­ried that some boys seem to put on sur­plus weight in win­ter, when they get less chance to exer­cise out­doors. ëThose of you who have had to vis­it my study will be famil­iar with the unpleas­ant sen­sa­tion of being told to touch your toes while I cane you,í I announced at assem­bly, to ner­vous gig­gles all round. ëWell, from now on, boys unable to touch their toes can expect TWO EXTRA STROKES!í More ner­vous gig­gles. As luck would have it, the very next boy I had to cane, lat­er that day, was podgy lit­tle Bil­ly May­fair, nick­named Bil­ly Bunter for obvi­ous rea­sons. There was no chance of May­fair touch­ing his toes ñ or of escap­ing the two extra strokes, which I made sure were real stingers, deliv­ered full force. I sus­pect the fat slob may be going on a diet…

Wednes­day 1 Decem­ber 1952

.… which made me so furi­ous I lost my rag com­plete­ly. ëYOU… WILL… NEVER… TALK… TO… ME… LIKE… THAT…††EVER… AGAIN… YOU… SNIVELLING… LITTLE… BOY,í I roared, at the top of my voice, accom­pa­ny­ing each word I uttered with a full-bod­ied stroke of the strap. That made thir­teen strokes in all and, even though I had allowed†Crosthwaite†to retain his under­pants, the effect on his ten­der 14-year-old bot­tom can be read­i­ly imag­ined. It was not just any old strap either, but the heav­i­est and nas­ti­est one in my whole col­lec­tion ñ made inScot­land, I believe. I felt guilty after­wards. Am I slow­ly turn­ing into a deranged sadist? But I cer­tain­ly got my point across.