Last night’s New Year’s Eve party at our Malaysian resort was rather ghastly, the otherwise excellent hotel management cynically exploiting their captive audience by charging disgracefully inflated sums for food that was no better than usual, a band that would shame a third-rate karaoke joint, and a CD of seventies disco classics.

Things looked up on the stroke of midnight, though, with a spectacular fireworks display, and before very long guests were welcoming 2008 by diving into the swimming pool in their posh frocks. The new year was therefore a mere quarter-hour old before it inspired its first kinky imaginings.

I pictured a giggling group of girls from the hotel staff diving in to join the fun, carried away by the spirit of the occasion into forgetting that they were still on duty. And then their supervisor appeared. Orders were barked; bedraggled girls in hotel uniforms clambered, dripping out of the pool.

This morning, the General Manager’s first duty of the new year was to deal with the miscreants – silent, nervous, regretful, downcast – lining the corridor outside his office. He’d leave the door open as he called them in one by one, the sounds of their canings floating down the hallway to add to the lesson being learnt by their friends.

PS as to how any fathers might have dealt with daughters drenching designer dresses, I shall leave that entirely to your imaginations…

PPS 10.30am, across my knee as I sat on a sun lounger, if you were wondering when Haron’s cheekiness first got her into trouble this year. The beach was pretty quiet, but she still seemed a little alarmed when I started to pull down her swimming costume…