Punishment

Tales from my Youth


The commonest for of punishment was to have the bike hung up for a period of time, serious offences drew one month of walking or catching buses. This was meted out to me twice.

In 1949, not too many cars came down our street, so it was a fairly safe place to play, and even fire an air rifle. This weapon belonged to Bobby Bimrose who lived not far away, and after school, we occasionally had a bit of target practice, slamming a slug into a jam tin 30 yards away.

Mr Thompson lived two houses down and pedaled home on his bike a bit earlier than normal one afternoon during target practice. Just as he was entering the gate, I let off yet another pellet… T_W_A_N_G, it ricocheted of the tin and into Mr Thompson's neck.

Did he swear, and to be truthful, I had never heard swearing like it in my life before, and possibly in a fit of terror, we abandoned out jam tin, took the rifle and fled through a couple of houses back to Bobby's place where I hid out till I thought it safe to go home.

All seemed ok when I did get home, but then when my father turned up, so did Mr Thompson, and I could hear him telling my father he better do something about it. One month no bike was the punishment.

What made it worse was that I called his son , Johnny, a "bloody cow" one lunch time at school. He went straight off and told the headmaster, who duly summoned me and gave me four cuts for swearing. I could hardly believe it after what his father had said to me. I kept out of their road after that.

On another occasion, I had just finished school and decided that I would play the highway-man. There was a huge Tee tree just near the school in McLeod Street that I was able to hide with my bike behind it, and await my quarry. It didn't take long before my victim, Ron Candlish, came riding by on his way home.

I drew my ruler, raced out from behind the tree and attacked, he didn't have a chance. His spokes were mangled and he crashed to the ground and I sped off victorious.

Mrs Candlish was a war widow, her husband we understood had been killed flying over Germany. She had migrated to Australia, no doubt hoping for a better life, so the destruction of her sons bike was not an auspicious start for this hope.

She lived a couple of miles away, and walked round and knocked on our door at 7.30 p.m. She had a long conversation with my father, the upshot of which was another months suspension from bike riding. My father also undertook to repair Ronnie's bike which was done the next day at Bill Fulton's1 bike shop.

Fortunately this sentence didn't last too long, my father wanted something done that required me to ride the bike, so I think it ended up being only a couple of weeks.

Guess I must have been a bit of a ratbag as a kid, I first got the strap in 1946 for being in a phalanx of kids hurling rocks at another phalanx of kids, why I was singled out, I have no idea. There after it was the cuts, "hold out your hand", whack!, whack!. The most you could get was six, but four was the most I managed to get.

All these school punishments were recorded in "The Black Book". Often wonder what happened to these books, would have made interesting archival material.