They didn’t use the cane on us at my Primary School. In the Junior School you could get the slipper, and I did once, from a male teacher, bent over a desk in front of the class. But whereas I can still remember every detail of the leg smacking nearly 65 years ago I can’t even recall exactly how many whacks of the slipper I got. Two? Or was it only one? It certainly can’t have hurt much. The only memorable thing about it was that the gym shoe used belonged to one of my would-be academic rivals who for some time afterward assuaged his disappointment at every academic defeat by reminding me that I’d been whacked with his slipper. Poor chap, in the end, I got the 11+ to the coveted local Public School and he finished up at the lesser of the two Grammar Schools. But yes, I was whacked with his slipper, I just can’t remember anything about it!

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