Donald’s recent acute observation that this board, School CP, has, for some inexplicable reason, few references to parental spankings, happened to coincide with a discussion I was having with someone about parents coming to school to spank their own children. As it is almost time to celebrate the birth of our Lord, and as this has put me in an untypical generous mood, I thought I would share the story with you as well.

This isn't a particularly happy story. It's certainly anything but salacious (sorry Pants Club members). In fact, I’m only about 95 percent certain that this spanking actually happened. But anything leading to or following CP is an emotive subject, and the events of this story certainly brought out many emotions in me, to say nothing of how they must have impacted the main characters involved.

In my last year at primary school there was a girl in my class named Sandra who I'm sure came from a very rough background. She had a lot of cards stacked against her, to say the least. I think she was a year older than everyone else, as she had not progressed through school properly (this would have made her about 12 as opposed to 11). She certainly didn't do well academically. She was also remarkably developed for her age and not particularly attractive. She was tall (well, maybe 5'6" but tall for a class of that age), big and broad shouldered, and had quite large breasts, which made the object of much interest and teasing amongst the boys. She wasn't very well accepted, she often bullied others, and she could in fact be downright nasty, as I found out on a few occasions when our paths crossed on the way home from school - she seemed especially not to like me as I was one of the top pupils and a bit of a know-it-all.

At any rate, one day at lunch we were allowed to stay inside as we sometimes were because it was pouring rain outside. For whatever reason, our lunchtime spent in the classroom went unsupervised and Sandra and a few other pupils began to antagonise one another. Soon, she was left friendless with a number of people picking on her all at once. She started to become aggressive, and the most popular girl (every class has one), Jenny, sort of told her off. I don't think she was actually that rude to Sandra, but because it was Jenny showing her up in a way that must have seemed very arrogant, it simply made Sandra absolutely enraged.

Sandra seemed to snap, and 'roundhouse' kicked her square in the face (quite an athletic feat, actually, for someone who didn't seem very athletic). Jenny collapsed to the floor sobbing hysterically and bleeding from the mouth. A panic instantly set in, as if Sandra had been wielding a knife. Everyone backed off in every direction with pupils spilling out into the corridor. The strongest boy (and every class has one, too) who I know sort of fancied Jenny actually seemed too intimidated to challenge Sandra, but everyone sort of looked to him to do something about it, as he had been one of the ringleaders in taunting Sandra. Sandra had totally lost it and was making threatening gestures at everyone in site. He threw an apple at her as hard as he could, nailing her, and then backed off; and Sandra, no doubt rightly feeling that the whole world was against her, broke out in tears and just ran from the classroom - with everyone scrambling in all directions to get out of her way - and then ran away from school, from what I gathered.

You can well imagine how long and how many teachers it took to sort out the absolute chaos. Fortunately, the headmaster showed remarkable calm and got everything sorted and everyone calmed down. Basically the rest of the day's lessons were a right-off, and the head spent a long time talking to our class about the issues and the underlying problems of the situation, without making Sandra seem a villain, and trying to restore everyone's dignity, etc. It clearly seemed like the type of incident for which the school's regular procedures weren't adequate, and he was obviously treating this as a freak occurrence that needed special care and attention. In retrospect, he did a superb job, though at the time I was strongly hoping Sandra would be expelled because I disliked her so much and at times feared her.

I, like most of the class, was not privy to the specifics of how the situation was handled outside the head's and our teacher's words to the whole class. Obviously, the mothers of the respective girls were called in, and Sandra must have returned to the school sometime that afternoon. What I did hear from another girl really surprised me, though. She said that Sandra's mum had taken her to the toilets and spanked her with a belt. I even remember this girl specifically saying to me 'and she got it on the bum'. I remember this line well as at the time this struck me as a bit odd to say; how else would you punish someone with a belt? (how can you tell I’m not from the North!).

Sandra's mum was a big, fat woman who didn't look very nice. I'd seen her walking to the council housing were they lived and she just looked a very unpleasant person. After how the head had responded to the class, I was a bit surprised to hear of what her mum did, as he seemed to want to avoid making a worse character out of Sandra and demeaning her further. However, the girl who told me this was a very honest type. Unless she was passing on a made-up tale from another pupil, I'm sure she was telling me the truth, and as I remember she seemed to have overheard the beating first-hand.

I have no idea if this punishment was discussed between Sandra's mum and the head or our teacher, or if it was just something she did; if she used a belt she was wearing, or brought one to school for that purpose. I also can't understand why she just didn't do it at home, since Sandra never returned to class and was absent for a few days afterwards (and I also don't know whether Sandra was formally suspended as punishment or simply advised to take a few days off). In any event, I thought you'd be interested to hear of this case, since it's the only spanking I know of happening at my school, apart from one other account of a teacher giving her own son, also a pupil, a few smacks in the corridor. I think that even people who are pro-CP would probably agree that this was a very bad way to handle such a girl, especially after she had experienced such frustration and dealt with it so irrationally, with all parties involved clearly traumatised. It was certainly the biggest single incident that I remember happening at my school. Sandra, as I mentioned, was clearly screwed up in a number of ways and probably had experienced abuse of some sort and / or severe family problems. A few years after this incident (we didn't go to the same secondary school) I heard that she had been arrested for prostitution. I don't know whether this was fact or a malicious rumour. On another occasion I remember overhearing Sandra talking very openly with another girl about shoplifting. Hopefully she managed to get her life straightened out at some point, but I rather fear that today, at best she's repeating a cycle of abuse and at worst sitting in Holloway.

(for Donald) Sandra Has a Bad Day at School F/f, r/l sets the standard to which all contributors must surely aspire. It has tension; it has calm. It has gaiety; it has sadness. It has humour. It has hubris. It has parentheses. It has bullying. It has corporal punishment. It has ‘on the bum’.

Dear Queen Steff,

How I long to sit at your feet…………. and set fire to your trousers.