When I was six, my class teacher was a Mrs Newman, who was (I think) fairly recently married and had not been in the profession that long. My problem was that I was a real little chatterbox – and I did not know when to shut up! On this particular day I’m describing, we were […]

In my fifth year at grammar school, there was a girl in my class called Julie. She was a gorgeous-looking girl but was very much a loner. She was also something of a snitch, and one day she managed to get both myself and my friend Roger caned. The next day, we decided we would […]

Not so long ago, I lost my parents, and I had the unenviable task of clearing their lifetime’s possessions. In a box, I discovered some old school reports of mine. Among the papers and a dreadful school photo was a letter, written by my old junior school headmistress. I had no idea my parents kept […]

Due to my having ADHD, I was a ‘difficult child’, as my mom put it, and sometimes I misbehaved purely out of boredom. One morning, when I was in second grade, I acted up on the school bus, and when we arrived, I was sent straight to the principal’s office. The principal, Dr Hill, was […]

This encounter took place in south east London in 1970 – it was my third of four years of junior school before moving up to secondary school. Myself and my brother (three years older than me) both had the odd smack here or there from Mum or Dad, but nothing more than that – normal […]

I’m now in my 60s, and every week I help out with reading classes at my grandson’s primary school in the north east of England. We have a lot of fun, but I still cannot believe how disorderly and noisy the classroom is (and how disrespectful many of the children are, frankly) compared with my […]

I’m a long-time reader, first-time writer! Thank you very much for the website you run. My parents were both smacked as children, and they in turn smacked me and my siblings. I and my siblings then smacked our children, and I know they have smacked their children too (some are still minors, so I won’t […]