when I was in my first year at grammar school there was a geography teacher who used an old trouser belt on boys — he kept it in his desk drawer. Now I’m sure that cannot have been within the regulations. (Well, I don’t really know for sure, I haven’t checked and I’m not sure how I’d go about it. But it would seem surprising if it had been officially permitted; and yet it happened.) It wasn’t brutal, and it was never used in anger. Among the boys, it was felt to be worse than the slipper, but I think that was more a mental than a physical matter.