I was only in my later formative years when I administered a smacked bottom. I have to say, it turned out to be something of a rare occurrence – I myself was smacked as a child and acquired something of a taste for being more on the receiving end, as you might say.

Anyway, here is what happened. The year would be around 1960 and I happened one day to be close to a playground, where quite a few younger ones were happily playing on the swings and other equipment.

As I watched, I observed two boys throwing stones at the other children. One of the stones hit a little girl, who quite naturally started to cry.

I must have felt that as almost an adult (at least in my head), I had a duty to intervene. So I went over to the boys, admonished them and told them I was going to smack thier bottoms for them.

I went over to one of the swings, and rather to my surprise the boys obediently followed me – maybe they were fascinated by the prospect of having thier bottoms smacked by a girl not much older than themselves, or perhaps they thought it was a better alternative to being reported to their own mothers, who no doubt would have made a much more thorough job of the punishment!

Whatever, I sat down on the swing and I turned both boys over my knee in turn and smacked thier bottoms. I only smacked on the seat of their shorts and I didn’t think I’d done it very hard either, so I was quite surprised when both boys cried. Again, this could have been what they were used to at home, and an expected part of the required show of contrition.

Anyway, there were definitely tears, and they rubbed their freshly-smacked bottoms vigorously when I’d finished with them. For my own part, I was quite satisfied with the first smacked bottoms I had ever administered.

This was 60 years ago, and I haven’t given many more bottom warmings during those six decades.