My darling wife and I were struggling to fall asleep the other night, what with the cat (a born hunter of toes) nibbling at the fringes of the duvet, and the wind howling around the house. A spanko conversation became inevitable…

I started to picture the lovely pub-restaurant-with-rooms in which I stayed in Hampshire a couple of weeks back. A businessman – not me, although it was certainly the same place – had been staying for three nights, his waitress for each meal a delightful lass. Long dark-hair; elfin looks; witty and well-educated: a student, maybe, or a recent graduate learning the hospitality trade. Conversation between them flowed, even when she should have been attending to other guests.

On the final evening, disaster at the dinner table: wine (or was it a plate of food) spilling everywhere. The girl was mortified; the gentleman calm (worried only that she seemed so upset). And then the manager appeared, with profuse apologies, drawing the girl to one side.

The gentleman was unable to hear the lecture, but the body language and tone made the scolding plain. As did the demeanour of the waitress when she re-appeared.

He tried to intervene with the manager: how good she’d been, how professional, how he’d caught her arm accidentally. (He hadn’t, but he could try…).

Soon after, she disappeared upstairs, following shortly by her boss. As the guest sipped his coffee, footsteps could be heard on the wooden floor above: the manager’s office, at the end of the corridor of bedrooms.

Footsteps. Followed by silence. Followed by a familiar whack, a pained yelp, echoing down into the restaurant below.

Six strokes, as befits a traditional sort of establishment, each leaving the diners below in no doubt that pooor service would not be tolerated.

The businessman finished his coffee, and headed upstairs, back to his room. As he unlocked the door, the waitress emerged from the manager’s office. She looked down, trying to avoid his eyes, but his whispered words of reassurance led her to him, to a hug… to his room, as he bundled her inside when the office door started to open (“He’ll sack me if he finds I’m still here”).

And there, dear readers, we shall draw a veil lest our thoughts of what subsequently went on between them corrupt you. It was all very chaste, I assure you. At least to start with…