Did you ever receive a detention or other punishment at school, and if so, what for?

Although I wasn't the best behaved child at school, I rarely received formal punishments.

When I was at prep school I fell out with the music teacher, I can't remember why, and he threw me out of the choir and the orchestra! I was a bit pissed off, because I really enjoyed them, but the worst thing was still to come. We were doing a school production of Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat. I had been cast as one of the brothers (due to a shortage of boys in our year who could sing), and my role was taken away from me! I ended up being an adoring girl, which is sooo not me! That annoyed me!

The following year though, we had a new music teacher so I was reinstated in the choir and the orchestra!

When I went to senior school in Edinburgh, I was a bit more badly behaved, as you may know! I got detention a few times, but I can't remember what for. The bad kids had to go to the library and sit there for an hour doing whatever they liked, but quietly! I think I read books mainly! It didn't have any lasting impact on me!

At school in Dumfries I only got one actual punishment. I was in a french class, which was taught by a bloke so young he must have been a college leaver, and didn't really have a clue how to control a class. I was talking too much, so he gave me a punishment exercise to do. He picked out the longest passage in our text book and told me to translate it, and give it to him when it was done. He didn't realise at this point that French was my best subject, and by the end of the class I not only handed him my class work, but also the punishment exercise completed and correct! I did feel smug about that one - I must have been a real pain in the arse for him!

Another time, some friends and I were caught smoking byt the headmaster, and we ran away. We were called to his office, and given a strict talking to, and all the while another friend was outside his window making funny faces at us! We were trying to look contrite, whilst simultaneously trying to hold in our laughter!

I never really worked very hard at school - languages came naturally to me, so I coasted through those exams. I did study for Biology and Chemistry, but I got bored with them and ended up re-reading all my Famous Five Books! I worked damned hard for Geography - we had a project to do which counted towards our final marks. I quite enjoyed doing it, but the teacher, who was disgusting (he once picked his ear and flicked the wax at a pupil in my class) went through my project, made corrections and suggestions and told me to edit it on the computer. He was most put out when I told him we didn't have a computer - he obviously thought that everyone did, and thought we weren't normal. This was 1993 - it wasn't that common then. My dad had typed it out for me, so we had to re-type the whole thing. That teacher's attitude stank.

I didn't get many punishments at school on a whole, apart from my one major low point which is in an earlier post either in this blog or the other one.

I was either pretty well behaved, or too smart to get caught!

You decide!