I looked at the crumbly, ivy-covered walls of St. Britney's through the closed gates and sighed. It was my own fault of course; I hadn't been content with the occasional slap from Sister Tiffany's ruler and wanted the big experience, the kind my brothers got at their boarding school. So one day I went to the GP, told him I was a teenage nymphomaniac and was put on the pill which I promptly began to sell to the first-years in the playground, right under Sister Tiffany's pointed nose. My hope was that she would take me to the gym, tie me to the vaulting horse with my regulation navy knickers round my ankles and proceed to lay a dozen huge cane weals across my bare bot from hip to hip - well, isn't this every girl's fantasy? But instead I was summarily expelled.

My parents were furious, especially at the disruption to my education with GCEs looming, and the highly regarded Xavier Academy wouldn't touch me with a bargepole, much less beat me with one - word gets around when you're a troublemaker in a small town. So in the end it had to be Bishop Bugburrow - this co-ed school would have anybody fresh out of Borstal or the asylum, it was where all the local hard cases went, and the teacher turnover was astounding. The new head was determined to turn things around, however, and it had been in the local paper that he'd caned a whole group of lads who'd sought to resurrect the Mods and Rockers wars, so all in all it was probably the place for me.

It took me a few days to acclimatise, and pick out a bad boyfriend for my parents to disapprove of. I eventually settled on Trevor Tennyson, a smoky, surly no-hoper who was leading the fifth year cane-stroke competition with 42 in only the second term, he'd surely lead me astray. He did; it wasn't long before we were caught in flagrante delicto (I'd learnt Latin, briefly, at St. Britney's) behind the art room and were despatched for punishment to the head, Mr. Matteson. Trevor was called in first and I soon heard the whack of the cane boosting Trevor's total to 48, and I felt a pleasant thrill as I realised that I'd be next. Soon Trevor strode out stiffly trying to feign indifference and I in turn entered the dread portal of the headmaster's office. But the cane was nowhere to be seen, and all I received was a stiff lecture on playground morality and a detention!

"They don't cane girls here," explained Trevor later as he groped around in my cleavage.

Shit! "Never?" I asked.

"Well, probably once or twice a year if that. But girls have got to be really, really bad, and you're too posh!"

That did it! I was going to rise to the challenge and get caned, and very soon!

Bishop Bugburrow was a town centre school and most of its pupils were bussed in from outlying sink estates; my status as Trevor's girl allowed me to sit upstairs with the bad boys, smoking and swearing and occasionally throwing the bus light bulbs out of the windows at passers-by. It was about a week later that we had a nervous young conductor on the school run who climbed the bus stairs like a scaffold:

"Fares, please!" he said hopefully, with a sickly smile.

I hitched up my skirt slightly, looked at him with a faux simper and asked him whether there was anything extra he'd like from me; the lads whistled.

"Just sixpence, same as the others, love!" he said, blushing furiously.

A woman scorned, I brought my hand up sharply against his moneybag and coins flew everywhere, mostly into the eager hands of my young tearaway friends, and the conductor had to scrabble on the floor to retrieve what he could before fleeing in tears. The bus stopped with a jerk, and the driver, a much older man, came to the back, climbed the stairs and brusquely ordered the guilty parties off the bus; faced with a long walk to school, we didn't bother and went to the amusement arcade instead.

That was yesterday, and here I am in assembly blowing kisses to Trevor in the boys' half of the hall. In walks old Matteson with a long, thick cane under his arm, and solemnly lays it on the table at the front. Ooh! Nobody pays much attention to the cursory hymns and prayers; everyone wonders what will happen later, and who to. Up gets the head and gives a half-sermon half Hitleresque harangue on decency and citizenship, in which certain pupils are, in his opinion, clearly deficient. Such as Tennyson, Parks and Morris who are summoned to a 9.15 appointment with the cane for an incident on the bus which, he explains, will deprive the hard-working kids (actually very few in number) of their transport as the bus company has just suspended the school service.

"Sad to say, it appears that the chief culprit in this matter is a girl, and a new girl at that, who I now want to make an example of," he continues, and, despite the bad English structure of his sentence, my heart begins to beat faster.

"Come out here, Mary Kate!" he barks.

I make my way not-too-eagerly to the front, conscious that my new pink frilly briefs - they don't check for regulation knickers at crummy state secondary moderns - would soon be on show to the world. Will it really hurt? Mattie looks mad, I hope it will. I stand before him, waiting to bend over the table and show my all.

"Hold out your hand!" he orders.

Huh? My hand?? Nobody mentioned this! Am I to be thwarted by modesty? I uncurl my fingers, lift my arm and - whack! across the fingertips - I hiss with pain and curl them up again like a live oyster squirted with lemon juice. He waits. Hand slowly unfurls.

Whack! To the base of the fingers, and I howl and try to cram them in my mouth. I hear childish laughter somewhere beyond the cloud of agony I'm enveloped in.

Open slowly. Fingers straight. Arm out. You can take it, girl. Whack! Across the palm this time, and now my hand's shaking and dancing to its own tune and I provide the vocals.

"Other hand!" he says. It could be a long morning.

It is a long morning. I'm in the isolation room, used for pupils coming down with communicable diseases and, in this case, bad, bad girls. Five hundred lines:

"I must not disgrace the good name of Bishop Bugburrow."

So far I've done about thirty, and my hand is cramping and my writing spidery and shaky as I try in vain to find a comfortable way to hold a pen against the throbbing weals. I got my caning after all, but let's just say that it wasn't all it's made out to be.