Most of you probably know that Haron and I write for the Lowewood blog, set in a fictional school. My darling wife’s a regular contributor, whereas “Unstable Abel” (as the school chaplain was so ungallantly christened earlier in the year) joins in on a rather more infrequent basis.Amidst an array of fine writing on the site, I particularly enjoyed Claudia’s entry yesterday. The paragraph that especially caught my eye was as follows, in the aftermath of a poor test result:
Wearily I made my way to the front and bent over to take the pain for coming bottom. Across my bottom, naturally. Six proper cracks with the strap whilst I clung grimly to the bench, distracting myself as best I could by pondering what would happen if I actually wrenched off one of the gas taps in my efforts to stay down. Would we all have to be evacuated? Could we avoid prep that evening?
Whilst the young lady in the blog entry resisted the lure of the gas tap, I foresaw an alternative ending, in which she did indeed manage to tamper with the equipment. An alarm would ring; her punishment would have to be suspended as the whole school filed out into the playground. No doubt, on their return, the remainder of her punishment would be doubled… at the very least.
My mind wandered still further along similar lines. A girl had been called to her Headmaster’s study to be caned. Her best friend, worried about her fate, would set off a fire alarm; an evacuation of the buildings would ensue. The two girls would find one another in the melee – but it would seem that the distraction had come too late, for the first two strokes had already been administered. There’d be hugs before the pupils were let back in – and the rule-breaker would trek tearfully back to face her Housemaster to receive the remaining four strokes.
Only… their cuddles would have been noticed, and the instigator of the false alarm would find herself called before the Headmaster. Confronted with the allegation, she would break down and confess, and her dozen strokes in assembly the following morning would teach her the most painful of lessons.
*apologises profusely for being ungallant*
Your post made me remember the time when, away with work, the hotel fire alarm went off… as I was in the shower. Making my way, wet, cold and wrapped only in a towel, into the car park, I was annoyed to be met with the sight of a giggling colleague who had hung her wrinkled clothes in the bathroom, turned on the shower to create some steam to decrease said garments, then… shut the door and fell asleep on the bed.
On opening the door 45 minutes later… all hell broke loose. Including the setting off of the fire alarm.
Grrr. I don’t top, but my god, I’d have been happy to try
Aww, poor Littlenic! Does this mean you sympathized with Jason during last year’s Lowewood fire alarm?
Yes, that one made me laugh / groan at the memory!
Unstable Abel… snicker! It’s a good job Lowewood’s only fiction, isn’t it Abel?!
This reminds me of my own (fictionalised) account of a r/l incident, where I used a fire alarm to bring about some just desserts from a spell of, ahem, truanting… No such luck in reality of course, I got away with it scot free! Still, the school evacuation can be a remarkably useful device – I also recall Jason Oak’s humiliation at Lowewood last year with a suitably large grin