At Dennis Road in 1961 as a new first year, I had an experience of corporal punishment, not the cane but read on.
The class had begun to gel into a unit and friendships had been formed. These were the days of the dip pen and ink well and some bright spark, I can’t remember who came up the idea of making ink and blotting paper pellets and flicking them with a ruler to the ceiling of the prefab hut which was our classroom. I did not see the offence take place, but did see the evidence along with the rest of the class. The evidence was also spotted late that afternoon by our form master Mr Koslofsky who was a very young student teacher. He interrogated the class trying to get a confession or the names of the guilty parties from the rest of the class, with no success. We were just about to leave for the day when the art teacher Mr Bunford who must have been the supervisor of the student burst into the room. With a face like thunder he began to berate us for this act of vandalism, he went through various scenarios of what would happen to us if we didn’t own up, like we would be kept back at school for an hour a night starting tonight, liberally interspersed with accusations directed at “the usual suspects” all of whom protested their innocence. I was sitting next to my new friend Peter Bennett, a lad with a similar sense of humour to me and a good mimic especially of teachers and I made the mistake of making a whispered wise crack to him and he laughed. The classic teacher response took place, “oh, a joke, let’s all share it” Mr Bunford said and out I reluctantly went to be humiliated. After a bit of pointless questioning and me denying any guilt, his attitude and questioning approach changed to one of a concerned friend, I fell for it.” Do you suffer with ear ache?, no sir was my reply. “any ear operations?”, no again. WALLOP! , I received a full force slap across my left ear “now go and sit down and keep you stupid comments to yourself”. I did sit down with a ringing ear and Tom and Jerry type stars before my eyes. I tried hard not to smirk back at the smirking audience as I returned to my seat, I think it took a few days for the buzzing to stop. Like many instances like this , I did not tell anyone about the experience.