July 1, 2000 An excerpt from the English gay writer Beverly Nichol's memoir of his father, Father Figure: "Consider the question of flogging as it was administered in Malborough College during the days of the First World War. When a new boy arrived at his school, he was allotted a bed in a dormitory sleeping some thirty other boys. In the center of a long gaunt room hanging from the ceiling was a pair of gymnastic rings. On the new boy's first night it was explained to him by the dormitory prefect that he would be required after four week's practice, to perform what was called a "turnover" on those rings. A "turnover" is a gymnastic exercise in which the body is slowly elevated by the arms, with the legs pushed out at an angle of ninety degrees, after which the arms straightened and the body performs a full circle.
What if the new boy failed to perform this exercise? Then, explained the prefect, he would be given ten strokes, in pajamas in front of the other thirty boys.
For the prefects, the flogging was keenly pleasurable. In the weeks preceeding the ordeal they would lie in their beds discussing among themselves the procedures, and often they would come up to the dormitory before lights out, to watch the clumsy efforts of the frightened boys practising on the rings. Sometimes, while they were watching, they would take out a cane from their lockers, and swing it down on to a pillow, as a foretaste of what the boys had coming to them. It was always the prettiest boys who were flogged the hardest.
Unfortunately, Nichols never describes one of those canings. By the way, I apologize for the complete absence of line breaks in the quotations from Crabbe in my last submission, "An Erudite Perv's Reading Journal." I had submitted it in the form of lines of poetry, but evidently the program does not know how to handle poetry.