When I finally joined the ranks of ‘senior staff’ (something of a misnomer in my case, I was still relatively inexperienced) I did, on one occasion, set out to inflict such a caning – twelve strokes on the bottom. The boy’s offensive was serious enough, in my view, to justify the most severe punishment I was allowed to inflict and that was what the seemingly accepted practices of the school said was the most severe punishment I could inflict. The most severe caning I’d received as a boy was eight strokes on the bottom, and that was the most severe punishment I could claim any direct experience of in any context, and while I had regarded it as exceptionally severe, I didn’t feel it had done me any harm, and so the punishment I set out to impose was one that I regarded as one step above that. I felt justified and I began the caning believing it was the correct thing for me to be doing, that it was deserved, and that it was within the bounds of reason.