Room 2D

The last of the proper St Angela’s stories (a captioned photo-story appeared later but was a completely different style). From Roué 19 . The recent statement of the European Court regarding corporal punishment in schools must assuredly have come as a great shock to educational establishments throughout the land. One of the most hallowed of British traditions apparently declared unlawful?! Fantastic! And presumably at all our finest schools caning will now merely be a thing of the past? Quite unbelievable! Retired old gentlemen must have been having fits! And undoubtedly such an earth-shattering pronouncement must have caused heated debate and discussion up and down the country. Yes, this is certainly true, but on one score at least those old gentlemen may relax. Because at one noted school, at any rate, debate on this topic was virtually non-existent. I refer of course to St Angela’s School for Girls. Where the girls all knew without asking, without being told, that such a ruling wou

Story from Roué 19, the final instalment in the adventures of St Angela’s alumna Julie Williamson ( Room 2D Continued ,  Episode at St Angela’s ,   Bankable Spankable Assets! Part 1 ,   Bankable Spankable Assets! Part 2  and  Ninth on the Agenda ) It wasn’t until half-past-four, when the books were balanced, that the twenty-five pounds deficit was discovered. One of the cashiers must have accidentally overpaid a customer. Twenty-five pounds was neither here nor there to a prosperous, thriving bank like Boutts dealing in hundreds of thousands daily — but a deficit is still a deficit: the error had to be traced and the cashier reprimanded. Ralph Hardcastle, the deputy manager, decided to look into it himself. There had been four cashiers on duty that day. Albert Potts, the senior cashier, was above suspicion: he’d never committed an error — however slight — in all his forty-seven years’ devoted service, and as he was now nearing retirement age it would have been unreasonable to  hint

Story from Roué 18, following the further adventures of St Angela’s alumna Julie Williamson ( Room 2D Continued ,  Episode at St Angela’s ,   Bankable Spankable Assets! Part 1  and  Bankable Spankable Assets! Part 2 ) Basil Boutts, illustrious heir apparent to the Boutts Bank millions, munificent patron of the arts, and chinless wonder personified, yawned loudly and settled himself back more comfortably into his boardroom chair, How he hated and detested board meetings! Invariably he dozed through them, his only utterances sonorous snores and pig-like grunts. This never failed to embarrass and infuriate the other directors, particularly the manager of the central bank, Mr Martin, since it imparted a most unwelcome element of farce to the august proceedings: the presence of a noisily slumberous director-in-chief proved a distinct impediment to the complex structural changes which Martin was forever trying to introduce. The meeting that day was of particular importance since Martin was