Many would describe Jimmy Blonde as mischievous. He is not really. It is just that this lively eleven year old would sometimes get his fantasy world mixed up with the real world. So it was to be in the case of the town`s Coat of Arms competition.
Wetherbury, a small town of some ten thousand souls, had no Coat of Arms, and the council decided that it should have one. They organised a competition among the local schools to see which one could come up with the best design. Jimmy attended the Wetherbury School for Boys, a free council run establishment. Just down the road was the King Edward School for Boys, an independent fee-paying boarding school. The latter had all the best facilities, including an art studio and an art teacher, but the boys of Wetherbury School were determined to give them a run for their money and were working hard on various designs.
It was here that Jimmy`s enthusiasm and fantasising got the better of him. He imagined himself as a spy creeping into the rival school and sneaking a look at their drawings! It became an obsession with him! After all, one of his heroes, James Bond, gets into all sorts of places where he is not supposed to be and bluffs his way around. Jimmy ignored the fact that James Bond usually has to make a hasty retreat on a conveniently placed moon-buggy or in a high powered speedboat or perhaps had a pretty girl outside at the wheel of a fast getaway car! There were fifteen hundred boys at the boarding school and nobody would notice one stranger amongst them! There was just one snag. The uniforms of the two schools were, of course, different. So it was just another one of Jimmy`s silly dreams!
Or was it? The weather turned very hot and the forecast was that it would remain so for the foreseeable future. At both schools the boys were allowed to discard their blazers and neckties. It was then that Jimmy realised that it was impossible to tell the boys of the two schools apart. Black trousers, black shoes and white shirts at both establishments!
Saturday morning arrived. After breakfast Jimmy changed from his normal weekend casual attire and put on his school short trousers and shirt. He managed to slip out of the house without his mother seeing him and brimming with unjustified confidence he made his way to the boarding school. He climbed over a fence; spies do not walk in through the main gate! Unlike Jimmy`s school, the King Edward has lessons on Saturday mornings and all the boys were in their classes. He crept into the main doorway to find himself in the middle of a long corridor. He decided to turn to the right. He was looking for a door that had something to do with art marked on it. However, so far all the doors had been unmarked. Then he came to an area where the doors had people`s names on them. As he was passing one of them it suddenly opened and a man appeared in the doorway.
"Hey! You, boy! What are you doing here? You have all had it made quite clear to you that the masters` quarters are strictly out of bounds to all boys!"
Jimmy was at a complete loss! "I-I-I..."
"I know!" said the master, "You are taking a short cut to T4 because you are too lazy to walk round the outside, arn`t you?"
Jimmy felt grateful to be given an answer! He had no idea what T4 was but it seemed as good an excuse as any!
"Er. Er. Yes sir!"
"What is your name, boy?"
"Smith sir!" - The first name that came into his head.
"What form are you in?"
The school had a junior school a few miles away. Boys did not start at the main school until they were eleven. Jimmy had heard that these boys spent their first year in something they called the prep form.
"Prep form, sir!" said Jimmy, just hoping that that sounded right.
"I thought so! I don`t take the prep form. That`s why I don`t know you!"
So far the bluff was working! Jimmy was feeling quite pleased with himself! Soon he would not be!
"Come in here!" said the man, standing aside so that Jimmy could enter. "You are not at junior school now, Smith! You have all been told that any breach of school rules will be severely dealt with! I am going to teach you a lesson here and now! I am going to spank you!"
Jimmy`s tummy somersaulted! This was something he had not bargained for! Should he come clean and tell all? No! That could make matters worse! It would be reported to his own headmaster who, on very rare occasions, used a slipper! Jimmy had never been spanked, but, he reasoned, a hand spanking must be less painful than a slippering! He was well and truly trapped! There was nothing for it but to go through with it! That soft, tender part of his anatomy began to tingle as if it was anticipating what was coming to it! Jimmy found himself being led over to a chair. The master sat down and pulled Jimmy across his lap!
CRACK!...Boy! How that hurt! CRACK! CRACK!...That hurt even more!
Jimmy was wondering how much he could take! It was getting unbearable!
CRACK!..."Aooowl!" He could not stop himself yelling out!
CRACK! CRACK! "Aooowl! Aooowl! Aooowl!"
He knew that any more and he would have to cry! But to his relief there were no more! The master let him get up. Jimmy vigorously rubbed his bottom, which felt as if it had been attacked by a thousand bees!
"Let that be a lesson to you, young man! Now go back the way you came and don`t go into a restricted area again!" said the master sternly.
"No sir! Sorry sir!" replied Jimmy, and, still rubbing his hot seat, made a hasty exit from the room.
Things had not gone quite as he had anticipated! This sort of thing just should not happen to a special agent! He thought that perhaps he had better abandon the idea of being a spy and make his escape while the going was good! Then, when he reached the main door he happened to glance at the other end of the corridor, and there at the end was a door marked "ART STUDIO." Well, is not this what he had come for? Why give up now, especially after what he had gone through to get this far? He walked gingerly to the door which had a glass panel in the top half. He peered through. There was nobody in there. He opened the door and entered the room. Along the wall was a row of filing cabinets. He walked along reading the labels until he came to one with the words "Coat of Arms Project" on it. This was it! Excitedly he opened the drawer. It was full of folders. He began to lift one out when he suddenly froze!
"Who are you, boy?" came an authoritative sounding voice from behind him. Jimmy turned to find himself facing a tall man in a black gown!
"Er! Er! Smith Sir! Er! Prep form sir!" It was not going to work this time!
"Are you really? And do you know who I am?"
"Er! No sir!"
"I am the headmaster! I know every boy in this school and YOU are not one of them!"
Jimmy glanced nervously to the left and to the right. Not a moon-buggy in sight! The river was five miles away; not much hope of a speedboat either! And the chances of a last minute rescue by a pretty girl with a fast sports car seemed fairly remote!
"Um! Um! No sir!"
"Well! What are you doing here? You`re trespassing!"
Jimmy had not rehearsed any answers to questions like this!
"I-I-I just wanted to see what this school was like sir!" said Jimmy rather unconvincingly!
"I`ve never heard such nonsense in my life!" roared the headmaster, "What are you doing at that filing cabinet?"
Before Jimmy could think of an answer the headmaster looked at the label on the open drawer.
"So that`s it! You were spying on our Coat of Arms designs! I can hardly believe this! You walk into a strange school as bold as brass and start rummaging about in the filing cabinets!"
"I-I-I`m sorry sir!" was all Jimmy could think of to say.
"I`ve seen you before, boy! You go to the Wetherbury School, don`t you? I have seen you coming out of the gate when I have been talking to your headmaster!"
"Yes sir!" admitted Jimmy.
"I shall speak to your headmaster about this! I shall expect him to deal with you very severely first thing on Monday morning! Unfortunately this sch
ool is not in the same system as yours is, otherwise I would deal with you myself! If you were one of my boys you wouldn`t sit down for a week! What is your name boy? Don`t try giving me a false one! I can easily pick you out again!
"The name`s Blonde! James Blonde! Er. Sir!"
"Now get off these premises immediately!" ordered the headmaster as he wrote down Jimmy`s name.
Jimmy did not have a very happy weekend! His mother wondered whether he was sickening for something. He only picked about at his food and left most of it. He wondered if he should feign illness and not go to school on Monday, but then he thought better of it; it would only put off the evil day.
When Jimmy dressed on Monday morning he had an extra item of clothing to wear,- a piece of cardboard which he placed next to his bottom underneath his briefs! It was not very comfortable but he thought it was a necessary accessory on that particular morning! The butterflies ensured that breakfast was a very light meal indeed!
Jimmy`s story had leaked out from the King Edward School and reached the ears of one of the parents of a Wetherbury School boy. Hence, by the time school started virtually everybody had heard of Jimmy`s weekend exploits! He entered his classroom and sat nervously at his desk. The lesson had only just begun when a monitor knocked on the door and spoke to the form-master, Mr. Grant.
"Blonde to go and see the headmaster, sir!" he announced.
Mr. Grant looked at Jimmy. "Alright Blonde! Off you go! I wouldn`t want to be in your shoes!"
The boy sitting next to Jimmy whispered to him "I wouldn`t want to be in your trousers either!"
There was no outer office and no Miss Moneypenny to wish him good luck! The headmaster treated him to a tirade of angry rhetoric that seemed to go on and on! Poor Jimmy could only stand there and say "Yes sir!" and "No sir!" where appropriate! Obviously "Q" was not well pleased with agents who fail on their missions!
"At twelve o`clock today," continued the headmaster "when morning lessons finish, you will go to the King Edward School and apologise to the headmaster! He will be expecting you!"
Now the dreaded moment had arrived. The headmaster produced a slipper from a drawer!
"You can consider yourself fortunate, Blonde! If the headmaster of the King Edward had had the authority to deal with you he would have caned you! We are not allowed canes here! More`s the pity! Normally six strokes of the slipper is the maximum I award, but in your case I am going to make it nine!"
He brought his chair round to the front of his desk.
"Bend over that chair, Blonde!"
With his fingers crossed and sending up a silent prayer, Jimmy got across the chair. In his youthful naivety he did not realise that his cardboard armour plating would be anything but invisible! As his trousers stretched tightly around his bottom the square shape showed up like a sore thumb!
"Get up again!" ordered the headmaster. Jimmy stood up.
"What have you got under your trousers, Blonde?" the headmaster demanded in a curt voice.
"My underpants sir!" said Jimmy truthfully!
"I don`t mean your briefs! What else have you got under there!"
"A piece of cardboard sir!" Jimmy reluctantly admitted, "I`ll take it out sir!"
"You will do more than that, boy! Just for that you will take down your trousers and briefs! You are going to get it on your bare posterior!"
Jimmy was forced to lower the garments and was ordered back across the chair, his young bum-cheeks now sticking up completely unprotected! How embarrassing! And how painful it was going to be!
WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
This was far worse than the hand spanking he had had on Saturday! It was stinging like mad!
WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!
Jimmy was wreathing and squirming. He could feel the tears running down his cheeks.
WHACK! "Aooowl! - Aooowl!" WHACK! "Aooowl! - Aooowl -Aooowl"
That was only eight! Why the delay for the last one? The pain was excruciating, Jimmy just wanted to get up. Was it some sort of mental torture by keeping him in suspense? Actually it was nothing of the sort. It was just as well, perhaps, that he could not see what the headmaster was doing. From a bottle of drinking water he was thoroughly soaking the sole of the slipper! There is nothing like a drop of water to liven a slipper up!
WHACK! "Yeeeooowl! Aoooooowl! Aooooowl!" cried Jimmy as he sprang up without waiting to be told!
"Does that hurt?" was the headmasters silly question!
Jimmy would loved to have retained a molecule of dignity by replying "Ha! Ha! I hardly felt it!" - but that would hardly have fitted in with the image of a boy furiously rubbing his bottom and with tears pouring down his face!
"Yes sir!" he blubbered, feeling as if he had just sat down on a bed of red hot cinders!
"Now go back to your class and don`t forget where you have to go to at noon!"
Jimmy did not go straight back to the classroom. He went into the toilet and kept dabbing his tears with toilet paper until they stopped running. He had resisted the temptation to rub his eyes with his hands. Being a somewhat shy and bashful lad he did not want anybody to see that he had been crying because he did not want to admit that he had had a whacking when he got back to the classroom. He knew that his classmates would laugh at him if he did!
"What did the headmaster do to you?" asked Mr. Grant when he returned.
"Oh! He gave me a good telling off!" replied Jimmy, only telling half the truth!
"That`s all? Just a telling off!" said Mr. Grant incredulously, "Well I must say you are a very lucky boy! Alright, go to your desk and sit down!"
This was going to be the difficult bit! With his bottom still on fire Jimmy would have liked to have eased himself gradually onto his chair, but he dare not show any sign of the pain he was in! He plonked himself down and had to clench his teeth to prevent himself calling out!
The visit to the King Edward School was not as bad as he had feared. The headmaster accepted his apology and made him lower his trousers to show him his red bum, but at least it had been in the privacy of the headmaster`s study! It was only about five hundred yards back to his own school but walking was becoming increasingly uncomfortable as his briefs chaffed against his sore backside! Jimmy was not feeling much like a secret agent! He felt more like a naughty little boy who had had his arse thoroughly whipped!
Four o`clock could not come quickly enough! Jimmy walked home. He was not going to tell his parents that he had had his bottom whacked! He would be far too embarrassed! Monday was his father`s day off away from work so he was at home when Jimmy arrived. His father, from the living room, called him as he closed the front door behind him.
"Yes dad?" he said as he dumped his school satchel into an armchair.
"I went down to the Carpenters Arms at lunch time. Guess who was in there having a pub lunch?"
"I don`t know dad. Who?"
"Mr. Grant, your form-master! He`s been telling me about your little adventure at the weekend! You`ve really excelled yourself this time, haven`t you?"
"I`m sorry dad, I didn`t mean any harm! I just wanted to....."
"And what`s more Jimmy," interrupted his father, "he told me you got away with just a talking to! I can hardly believe it! Your headmaster should have whipped your backside off! I have never spanked you before, son, I am going to now!"
This was no time to be bashful! Jimmy would have to tell his father what happened!
"No dad! That`s not quite right! The head gave me the slipper this morning!"
"Mr. Grant said you just got a telling off!"
"That`s just what I told him!" pleaded Jimmy, "I didn`t want my mates to know!"
"You mean you lied to Mr. Grant! What have I always taught you about being truthful?"
Jimmy realised that he had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire! - Or at best into another frying pan!
"But it was just a little fib dad, honest!"
His father ignored his plea! His arms closed around Jimmy`s waist and for the second time in three days he found himself being put across a pair of knees! At least on the first occasion he had started with an unblemished bottom! This time it was so sore he could barely sit down on it even before the spanking began!
"No dad! Please dad! Please no! Dad...dad...dad......"
WHACK! "Aooool-aooowl-aooowl!" WHACK! "Aooowl-aooowl"...And so on...and so on...and so on!
At this moment in time our intrepid intelligence gatherer could not care two hoots who won the Coat of Arms competition!