We had been standing facing the wall for perhaps ten seconds when my friend whispered:
“Come on!”
She disappeared around the corner.
Without giving the matter a moment’s thought, the other two of us followed.
Behind us came the despairing cry:
“Girls!”
We ran around the school buildings, giggling helplessly and once again venturing into places where pupils were not supposed to be.
At the time it seemed tremendous fun.
The consequences did not occur to us until we returned to the classroom.
Our teacher called all three of us to the front.
She had already received a report about our lunchtime behaviour and was distinctly unimpressed.
We were told that she was ashamed that three girls from her class could behave so badly after repeatedly being warned by a member of staff.
The punishment which followed brought our giggling to an abrupt end.
Our teacher used the slipper, a punishment then accepted in many British schools. Whatever one thinks of such methods today, there was certainly no doubt in our minds that the afternoon’s high spirits were over.
My friend had another worry.
Would her aunt tell her parents?
The following day we decided that some sort of peace offering was required, so we made the dinner lady a daisy-chain necklace.
She accepted it and told us that she hoped we had learned our lesson.
Unfortunately, another girl standing nearby announced that we had received rather more than a verbal telling-off.
The dinner lady looked genuinely surprised.
Apparently, she had merely reported our behaviour and had not expected our teacher to resort to corporal punishment.
She quickly reassured her niece that she had no intention of mentioning the incident at home.
Looking back, perhaps the playground episode had simply been the final straw.
We had already spent much of that week fooling around in lessons and had been separated in the classroom because we could not stop distracting one another.
Our teacher rarely used corporal punishment, despite working in a school where it was still accepted.
Three normally manageable girls misbehaving all week and then being reported by a dinner lady had evidently exhausted her patience.
