BEXHILL SCHOOL

 

Well, would you believe it? Just hours after I'd spanked Nancy for losing a schoolbook, Mr Desmond arrives in my office bearing the proverbial 'smoking gun'.

He'd been looking for a mislaid railway ticket in the classroom waste-paper basket when he found a crumpled page from a textbook. It rang an alarm bell in his mind, and sure enough, when he straightened it out, it was the first page from the same textbook that Nancy had 'lost'. It had been roughly ripped out and there was Nancy's name written in the top right-hand corner. Mr Desmond asked all the girls to open their textbooks, and lo and behold, the book on Glenda's desk was missing the first page. The torn page exactly matched the tear marks in Glenda's book. Glenda blushed bright red and started pleading with the teacher, but quite rightly he marched her straight in to see me.

Glenda is a rather nasty piece of work: I suspect she's a bit of a bully. Anyway, she started blubbering out her 'excuses': apparently she'd left her textbook at home during the weekend exeat and was afraid she'd be punished, so she'd taken Nancy's book during the mid-morning break.

Despite her pleadings and beggings, I soon had her lying over the punishment stool with her knickers down and her skirt up. I proceeded to give her twelve of the very best: six for dishonesty and a further six for not owning up when Nancy discovered her book had gone.

I was jolly tempted to give her another six for her stupidity in letting herself get found out. I mean, we're supposed to be training the cream of British womanhood here at Bexhill. Our girls will go on to play important roles in the civil service, politics, commerce and industry. They should be learning the art of wriggling out of difficult corners.

We even have one cocky little miss who told me yesterday that she wants to be known as 'Margaret' in future, rather than 'Madge', because she intends to become Britain's first female Prime Minister. What nonsense! I've got a damn good mind to tan her backside if she continues to neglect her chemistry studies in favour of such idiotic daydreams.