This is a tale of my first year at grammar school, and our geography teacher, Mr M. In those days, one of the school rules was that the first year should wear short trousers. This rule wasn’t really enforced, and indeed there was one boy in our class, W, who was in long trousers from day 1. Most of the rest of us migrated to long trousers during the course of the year, rather than waiting until the second year.
One day, one of the boys was misbehaving in class and was called out to the front and told to bend over. We expected that he’d get the slipper, but Mr W lifted up one leg of his short trousers and gave him a slap on the back of his thigh. All a bit strange, we thought. I’ve no idea why bending over was necessary for this procedure.