Sat­ur­day 16 Octo­ber 1952

Tea with Har­ry Baines, my pre­de­ces­sor, who has retired to East­bourne. We com­pared notes about cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment and found we had a lot in com­mon: (a) a con­vic­tion that a sore bot­tom is bet­ter than a pris­sy moral lec­ture; (b) that, if you explain to boys exact­ly why you are thrash­ing them, they will accept the thrash­ing philo­soph­i­cal­ly; and © that there is noth­ing to beat the sound of a cane crash­ing into a tight­ly bent-over bot­tom. It strikes ter­ror into any­one lis­ten­ing out­side, next in the queue, and gives a lot of qui­et plea­sure ñ the sense of a job well done ñ to the wield­er of the cane. At one point, Har­ry stooped to do up his shoe-laces and, at the sight of his broad bot­tom, I could feel my cane arm twitch­ing. Hmmm.

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