Over a barrel at the jubilee party

I suppose someone is going to make the joke about having him over a barrel so it might as well be me. Well, he wasn’t expecting this to happen when he and his mates came to the Three Fishers on Sunday where we were celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. We have a lot of queens at the Three Fishers so it was only to be expected that we would take Her Maj’s 70th year on the throne seriously. The weather held up for much of the day and even though it wasn’t so warm people wanted to take off their shirts and display their bodies. We had the whole range of games set up like kick the squirrel, bonk the badger and pin the tail on the naughty boy’s arse. Yes, we were all set to have a fine time.

The beer garden was festooned with bunting – red, white and blue, everywhere and trestle tables were groaning under the weight of plates of cucumber sandwiches – white bread and the crusts cut off, naturally.

By mid-afternoon we settled down for an afternoon of serious drinking. But, there’s always someone ready to spoil the fun for everyone else

I don’t know where the yobs came from, I didn’t recognise them as regulars at the pub and I spend a lot of time propping up the bar so I should know. They might have been university students and we all know what a bunch of Commies they can be. And youngsters hate anyone over the age of 25 so you couldn’t expect them to have respect for our 96-year-old monarch. God Bless Her.

It started reasonably low key. When we had our own queens’ pageant, with people dressed in their best ball gowns there was much cheering from the regulars but oh dear, some jeers from our new recruits. I dare say it was intended to be good humoured at first but like in a football crowd banter quickly turns into something a bit darker.

There was one lad in particular who stood out. He was dressed (or I should say undressed) in only a skimpy pair of running shorts (who knows what happened to his shirt and his shoes) who was leading the insults. “Uncle Alf”, a revered figure at The Three Fishers, best known for his willingness to discipline young men, came into the beer garden to see what all the fuss was about. Uncle Alf is in his mid-forties and might best be described as having the physique of a brick outhouse. His unkempt long, but thinning, hair is complemented by a thick busy beard which together give him the appearance of a Viking.

“I would ask that you be quiet,” Uncle Alf said in that pompous way he has when he gets prepared to deal with the unruly young men at the pub. Of course, they are in on it. They misbehave in the full expectation (hope) that Uncle Alf will take a firm grip of their ear and drag them through the bar and upstairs to the function room.

If I tell you that the room is used once a month for the Whacko! Club you will get the idea of what it is Uncle Alf does. There is a locked cupboard, and only Uncle Alf has the key. There are no valuables kept inside; no gold, no Crown Jewells. Inside are a couple of old-fashioned traditional school canes hanging on hooks, an old wooden paddle and a plimsoll with a rubber sole that has not been used for its proper purpose for many decades. These are, of course, his treasure of corporal punishment instruments. Uncle Alf is an enthusiastic and experienced spanker of young men. It’s all done in fun. That is to say the spankings are real enough and any boy – strictly aged eighteen or over – who presents his bottom to Uncle Alf desires to have it blistered and battered.

Down will come the boy’s trousers and he will go over an old dining room chair that’s in a corner. There’s also a vaulting horse, purloined from a long closed down gym, that hasn’t been jumped over since at least the Queen’s last jubilee. It’s a perfect height for a young man to stretch over, either over the short end or the long end to have the plimsoll meet his bottom. The cane generally gets used when a boy is bent across the back of the chair or even, if he can stand the pain and can be relied upon to keep still during the beating, while touching his toes; rather like in the headmaster’s study of years ago.

Uncle Alf knows how to beat a backside and – this being the Three Fishers – just about everyone knows what he gets up to and rather enjoys the frisson of having this going on under their own roof. So, pity (or pity not) the lout with the big mouth who wanted to give his republican commentary to our glorious pageant (God Bless the Queen).

So, Uncle Alf asks the lout gently if he would mind shutting his cakehole and stop spoiling everyone’s fun. Then, the boy, who is a bit drunk (naturally, weren’t we all), starts to show off in front of his pals. “What’s it to do with you, old man?” he sneers. “It’s a free country, it’s what we fought the war for.” Quite who the “we” were in this statement was not explained. I reckon the lout couldn’t have been older than twenty which means he was born in 2002. What war had he ever won? None of us in the pub that day had been born when the second world war ended. I thought this but realised there was no point giving the lout a history tutorial, Uncle Alf was determined to give him a different kind of lesson.

Uncle Alf sighed one of his great wheezes; those of us who have bent over in front of him recognise this as like the starting gun going off. He is on his way and the destination will be a sore backside. One or two of the other pub regulars smirked and Cyril who’s more than somewhat on the precious side fell into a fit of giggles. We all knew the coming sequence of events; the only thing in doubt was the how of the matter, not the what.

“I shan’t ask you again,” Uncle Alf said the very tone of reasonableness. “You are spoiling our party.” They lout who was holding tightly to a pint glass (no half litres at the Three Fishers and certainly not on the Queen’s Jubilee) drowned what was left in his glass and with a rather queenly flourish waved it at a pal and intoned in what he must have thought was a Shakespearean actor’s voice, “More ale, fetch me more ale, young man.” His friend avoided the glass and said something like “It’s your round, Ant.” And so it was that we discovered that this lout’s name was Ant.

Ant waved his glass at another pal who had only got a quarter way through his pint and he too swerved. Ant must have been three sheets to the wind because then he took the glass and rather unsteadily approached Uncle Alf, he put it close to Uncle Alf’s face, not as if he was going to cut him but just to make sure Uncle Alf could see it and Ant said, “I’m sure this gentleman would like to buy me a beer to help me celebrate the jubilee of his queen.” I grimaced. I felt sorry for the sucker, he had no idea what Uncle Alf was capable of.

Uncle Alf grimaced himself and then he looked across at Irish Mick and he didn’t say a word but he definitely communicated to him his intentions. There was an almost imperceptible nod from Mick and Uncle Alf quietly moved away from the group and crossed the grass that formed a lawn alongside the beer garden. I watched unsure of his intention. It quickly became apparent. He reached a tree at the edge of the lawn and put his hand in his pocket and withdrew a knife. It wasn’t one of those knives that youngsters use to slash each other; this was a rather quaint old-fashioned Swiss Army knife, the sort we all had when children that had a blade, a can opener and a thing for getting stones out of horse’s hooves.

The blade was blunt and wouldn’t easily get through warm butter so it took a while for Uncle Alf to saw through a branch and come away with a switch. It was about a yard long and maybe as thick as a pencil. He gripped it in one hand, looked at it carefully and used the knife to whittle away some notches and whatnot. He was smoothing it down so that it could be used as a cane. Kindly Uncle Alf knew that if he didn’t do this the rough switch could take the lout’s arse off, leaving him dripping blood.

Satisfied that the switch was fit for purpose Uncle Alf returned to the group. Irish Mick, who is in his thirties and short and squat, had already positioned himself behind Ant and another of our group, Harry, had moved over in front of the lout to block any escape. Uncle Alf reached the boy and he swiped the switch through the air. I don’t think Ant had yet understood his predicament. He was still trying to persuade one of his pals to buy him a drink.

“We don’t take kindly to strangers coming to spoil our party,” Uncle Alf can sound really pompous when he has a mind to. “We have a way of dealing with louts here.” That was the cue for Irish Mick and Harry to grip the boy by the shoulders and push him forward. I thought they might clear a trestle table and haul him across it but Irish Mick had other ideas. Near the back gate, ready for collection, were a number of empty oil barrels. Empty, they were light weight and Irish Mick turned one on its side and using his foot guided it into a space near the tables.

Harry and another of our group, Little Tich, grabbed the boy by the arms and Uncle Alf took hold of the boy’s shorts and tugged them down. He was wearing tight briefs underneath but they soon went in the same direction. Ant was now completely naked. He wriggled and writhed trying to escape the clutches of his captors but there were too many of them and together they were too strong. Ant’s pals, now realising what we intended to do made a hasty retreat. They reached the gate but instead of running for their lives they halted and turned. Still in the gateway they stood, watching with great interest, and possibly excitement, at what was unfolding.

Irish Mick pushed Ant so he was face-down over the barrel and for a moment he just lay there stupefied, unsure what was going on. The drink had slowed him down and his wits were dulled. When he saw the switch in Uncle Alf’s hand he came to his senses. But before he could get up from the barrel and run for it, several pairs of hands had grabbed him. He was going nowhere, not until Uncle Alf and the other party-goers said so.

Uncle Alf took up a position to the lout’s right side. I could see that it wouldn’t be easy to whack the boy’s backside. He was positioned far too low. Uncle Alf would have to stoop down to get a good aim. It would have been better to have thrown Ant across a table. He would be at a prefect height and angle to a whipping.

But there was no going back now. Uncle Alf had to make the best of a not-so-good job. Naturally, he did just that. The stick was a little too short to connect with Ant’s quivering flesh so Uncle Alf bent his own legs so as to reduce the distance between himself and his target. Swipe! The first stroke cut across the centre of both cheeks. And “cut” is the correct word here because immediately a thin red welt formed on the lout’s backside. The gasp from some of the onlookers was drowned out by the yowl!!! Ant let out. That hurt. He shouted all the bad words under the sun but he was in no position to change things. Uncle Alf – and the rest of us – were determined the lout who came to spoil our party would suffer.

The second whipped into the underside of the cheeks and Ant howled. I did wonder if the scream would attract attention of passers-by in the street or people who lived in houses further down the road. Would the cops now be rushing to the scene expecting to find a murder in progress?

No police came. Uncle Alf who was as calm as one would expect from a chap who had spent much of the last twenty years beating backsides sawed the switch across the fleshiest part of the two hills presented before him. Tap-tap-tap, he took aim, raised his arm and whap! returned the switch with some force, making a little flick of the wrist at the last moment. It was a perfect strike. A score of ten in anyone’s book.

By now Ant had tears streaming down his face, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he sobbed. “You soon will be,” Uncle Alf said calmly, “By the time I’ve finished with you.” It was a threat to chill the blood. Some onlookers shuffled nervously; where was this going to end? Would the lout end up in hospital? Did any of them want that? Should someone intervene? They needn’t have worried. Uncle Alf believed in corporal punishment; he thought if you misbehaved you needed to be punished and if you misbehave badly that punishment should be memorable. What he didn’t believe in was torture. He wasn’t going to leave the lout a cripple, but he was determined that Ant wouldn’t be sitting down properly for many hours to come and he would have marks on his bum for days to come to remind him that he should respect the Queen and her loyal subjects.

So, Uncle Alf delivered six-of-the-best. It was an unusual Six to be sure. I doubt that even he had ever beaten a naked young man who was stretched out over a barrel. With the final blow delivered Irish Mick let go of the lout and the others holding him did the same. Ant didn’t wait to pull up his pants and shorts he shot across the beer garden, howling, clutching his welted bottom to join his mates at the gate. Together they legged it towards Widdicombe Wood.

I have no idea who they were, but I can be pretty sure we won’t see them back at the Three Fishers again. After his exertions, everyone stood Uncle Alf a drink and by the end of the day they had to take him home in a wheelbarrow.

Picture credit: Unknown

Other stories you might like:

The drink-driver

The rent collector

Lodging with Uncle Ralph

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Charles Hamilton the Second

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