LT wrote a blog post about one of his schoolmasters, whom he remembered as a decent man, but recently a different side was shown on a website about the school, where another ‘old boy’ recalled him as having a heavily disciplinary side, which Tim didn’t know of at all.

I went to an all girls’ school, where it was different, of course.  No one ever laid a finger on us, it just wouldn’t happen, though caning and so on was still a feature in many schools, I was given to understand.  Were girls ever hit in any school?  I don’t know.  It’s just so wrong now that it can hardly be imagined.  I do remember thinking about the subject once – there must have been some trigger for the thought – and I knew that, if ever there were any physical discipline perpetrated on me, I would never return to the school.  My parents would have backed me up, too.

What I did remember though was the one time that I was given “lines” to write.  It was a gentle school. I don’t remember any punishment ever, except for one teacher’s rather nasty verbal sarcasm.  One girl, a year older than I, was expelled for smoking on the premises, but that was another matter.  And, I acknowledge, I was a good little girl.  I kept my head down, didn’t join in, didn’t argue, didn’t misbehave – and I wasn’t the easiest pupil because I was so disengaged from anything that didn’t enthuse me.  But for some reason – probably extreme untidiness and not having done anything but the sketchiest homework – an exasperated teacher gave me 100 lines.  So unpractised at doing so was she that she didn’t say what I was to write or when I was to give them in.

That night, deeply irritated, I sat down at my desk at home – a rather nice little mahogany folding writing desk which is now in my sister’s house – and contemplated a piece of paper.  I started to write something.  By the third repetition I was bored.  By the seventh, it being on unlined paper, my writing had started to slope down.  I wrote the first half of the next line and it sort of joined up with the second half of the line above.

Very soon afterwards, I stopped bothering and threw the paper away.  I never mentioned it to the teacher and she tactfully didn’t mention it to me.  I didn’t change my behaviour or attitude – actually, it was History, which I liked and was good at – and that was that.

I do have another memory, which demonstrates the kindness of the school.  It was a convent and, one day, I was going downstairs for assembly and there was an elderly nun in front of me.  I was in a hurry and she wasn’t and I accidentally trod on her habit and brought her to a snap halt.  Of course, I immediately said “I’m sorry, Sister,” and she turned and gave me the sweetest smile.  And then, of course, we walked slowly down together.  I actually never saw any of the nuns being unkind or losing their temper, they were genuinely good people.  Though, as we girls all agreed, weird.