Youth of today

Good lord! What's all this one reads in the broadsheets about twenty five percent of todays young chaps being a bunch of oiks and cads ? Absolutely terrible and would not have happened in my day. Discipline, that's what it's all about. Blame the schools m'self. Back in my day it was six of the best and back to double lit' and woe betide you if you showed any emotion as the prefects would have you over a good blaze before you knew it, none of this liberal namby-pamby rubbish about paying the blighters to turn up. Hated Latin, didn't expect any other incentive than the threat of a damn good beating and twenty laps of the playing field if you didn't arrive in time.

Knew where you stood in those days in terms of discipline, roasting ones fag outside of the allotted hours, six of the best, double it if his screams disturbed the housemasters evening sojourn. Failure to conjugate your verbs, fifty laps of the 'Soggy Bottom' before cocoa, rogering Smythe-Cuthbertson after lights out, up before the beak and the likelihood of stout English willow being applied to ones backside. Many is the time I have seen chaps return to the dorm with a glazed expression and a faint whiff of Linseed about their shorts. 'Old Thumper' did sterling service in those days and not just on the playing fields of St Scrofulas. Nowadays it's all reasoning and psycho-babble rather than the sound thump of willow on flesh from behind the Pav'. Dashed shame one can tell you. Didn't do one any harm at all....Carruthers on the other hand...but one doesn't mention that in polite company. Always was a little strange even in those days but at least there were no camels in dorm 3.

Damned schools don't even support team games nowadays. Rugger, vital to discipline, especially the annual juniors versus Upper VI prefects XV. So what if there were a few injuries, we didn't go whining to mummy about the amputations matron used to perform. Got on with life even if it meant limping for a while until the groundskeeper got round to carving one a replacement limb from an old desk. First Pater and Mater knew about it would be when they collected us for the hols, beaming of face and wearing our wounds with pride. Discipline!

Can't even send the snotty oiks off to do some military service. Sight of a hundred wily pathans heading towards 'em with daggers drawn would soon sort 'em out. Make 'em realise what discipline is. Cold showers, cold steel and sound thrashings, the things that made the empire great.