Last week’s Sunday Times Magazine featured a “day in the life” feature by the Headmaster of Eton: a soliloquy about things he will normally do on a working day.
Apparently, while the boys “take refreshments” mid-morning, the staff at Eton come together every day for “Chambers”, which, the esteemed gentleman says –
…enables the house masters to see me if there is a disciplinary problem with a boy – anything from missing a lesson to more serious matters. The boy gets summoned to my office, usually just before lunch. It’s a pretty formal appointment: the system is called “the Bill”. I always listen to what the boy has to say. Sometimes he has a different perspective on a situation. It’s not always a simple exercise in administering punishment.
But mostly, it’s about punishment, right? I can see a fantasy school adopting this formal summoning procedure. The glowering housemaster, the menacing pause.
“I shall be speaking to the Headmaster about this at the Chambers, young lady.”
Milk and chocolate biscuits tasting like paste, as she wonders what is being said.
The summons.
Ooh, I like it…
There’s nothing worse than waiting for the summons.
Sarah – if the waiting’s worse than the punishment, you’re not being whacked hard enough 😉
Abel – Did you perchance mean to address Simon? I disagree with you though, I’ve been whacked decidedly hard enough before now and found the waiting before hand to be much more stomach churning, knees-knockingly awful… so much so that the punishment has been a blessed, if painful release, lucky for me because that’s exactly how I like it the best
I must afraid with Sarah on this. Even though I just had a very, very serious taste of the punishment paddle!
I find it depends on whether I know what’s going to happen or not. If I don’t know, I’ll be fretting over that while I’m waiting. If I do know what’s going to happen, I’ll either be apprehensive or downright scared 😉 In which case the punishment itself can be worse than the waiting.
Sarah: My guess is that Abel has you in his sights. That would thus make this the waiting and fretting time, and then when the punishment occurs he can confirm that his opinion was indeed the right one. Right Abel?
Okay, I’m intrigued now. I find the waiting and the anticipation of it to be the best part.
It’s so deliciously… exquisite.
Hmmm… Maybe I’m not being spanked correctly. 😉