If you read my previous Punishment Book stories you will know that I was required to pay regular visits to my Uncle Paul to be punished for my boyish misdemeanours by having my bare ass soundly tanned with my late grandfather's formidable paddle, a paddle which, only a few years earlier, had been regularly used on my youthful uncle himself! This story starts with one such visit.
I was standing to attention, naked and contrite, facing an all-too-familiar and not very interesting wall, doing my regular corner-time after a particularly vigorous paddling, when Uncle Paul broke the news. He reminded me that my mother, his elder sister, had been disinherited by their father as a result of her youthful pregnancy, of which I was the result.
"What you don't know, Davy, is that he left some money in trust for your education," he announced. "As from the September after your thirteenth birthday, you are enrolled at Harpers Academy, the school I attended myself, as did my brothers and my father himself before us. As you know, it's a school which prides itself on its discipline, and the old-fashioned but very effective way in which it's enforced. Your mother was in doubt about sending you, but said she would act on my advice. I've decided you should take your place. You'll get an excellent education, and the sort of regular discipline you clearly need."
To say this was a bombshell would be an understatement. I had no desire to leave all my friends and go to that blasted boarding school! But you know how it is, you don't argue with a guy who's just beaten the tar out of your bare backside - especially when he's still holding the paddle! So I just said "Yes Sir!" adding lamely, "But I thought I was getting all the discipline I need from you, Sir. . ."
He said he'd got better things to do than spend all his weekends tanning my backside, not that he didn't enjoy it, asuring me that our little arrangement would continue in the school vacations.
For the previous year I'd been attending the local boys' high school, where, in keeping with the modern but senseless fashion for political correctness, physical punishment was restricted to boys whose parents gave consent. Most of the time you just got detentions and the like, but if, like me, you held a parental consent card, you could request a spanking instead, which I invariably did. This was partly because, like my uncle, I never regarded detention as a proper punishment for a boy, and partly because Uncle Paul insisted I record my school offenses in my punishment book, together with whatever punishment I'd received. If I'd been in detention I'd get a paddling from him at the weekend in addition, whereas if I'd had a half decent beating he'd usually take no further action. Masters and prefects were surprised, and I suspect delighted, when I insisted on baring my butt for spankings, and politely requested them to give me at least 12 whacks - but my uncle Paul would accept nothing less as an adequate punishment, and the fact is that the slipper they used hurt a good deal less than that _d_a_m_n_ed paddle!
Harpers was a traditional British boys' Public School, transplanted to a colonial island in warmer climes. My mother was spared the need to buy me an expensive uniform, the only clothing requirement being several pairs of black cotton shorts. Uncle Paul had been head boy there, and as such had his own study complete with his choice of study "fag" (which in England just means a junior boy who performs menial chores for his fagmaster and, in return for his protection, is subject to his discipline). He had discovered that his former fag, a boy called Jason, was about to become head boy himself. He told me he had written to Jason requesting him to take me on as his study fag, which would protect me from receiving lustful attention from other seniors.
And so it was that at the end of that summer I found myself lining up with about fifty other lads of my own age to be allocated to my dormitory at Harper's Academy.
To be continued. . .