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Back to School

The train clatters through the English countryside, past nameless farms and villages. You clutch the letter from the school to your chest, in case anybody recognises it. For one bizarre and irrational moment, you imagine yourself on the way to Hogwarts or some other school of juvenile literature.

Cautiously, you slide the prospectus for St Mabyn’s out of its protective envelope. On the first page, a stern looking Headmaster, Mr Wackford, welcomes you to the school.

‘St Mabyn’s,’ you read ‘was constructed in the 19th century for the education of…’ blah blah ‘…extensive modifications in the 1950s and 70s…’ blah blah ‘…closed for ten years between 1986 and 1996…’ Hmmm… no mention of the reason for the closure: Some unorthodox practices amongst its staff which resulted in a police raid and the arrest of most of the teachers.

It was rumoured that after ten years many of the original staff returned to open the ‘new’ St Mabyn’s – a high school fetish theme holiday, where adults got to dress as school pupils and teachers and act out some of the adolescent fantasies that they never quite achieved in their own school days.

For better of for worse, that is the holiday that you have chosen this year. You have taken a fortnight off work to spend two weeks in St Mabyn’s, appropriately enough in early September, just as the real schools are going back. Unlike many people, who come here for hen or stag-weeks, or with a group of friends (sometimes for a school reunion), you are travelling alone.

You flick down through the prospectus to the section headed ‘School Uniform’. A photograph accompanies the text, of a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in Catholic schoolgirl style. Although, not obviously prurient, the odd mixture of innocence and experience implied in the picture make it oddly exciting.

You notice also the article on ‘Discipline’, which states that the school firmly believes in the value of corporal punishment and that pupils are expected to obey all demands by teachers no matter how unreasonable they may seem. The accompanying photo is an exotic collection of slippers, canes, paddles and tawse.

A voice comes over the train speaker:

“We shall shortly be arriving at St Mabyn’s School. Would all passengers alighting at St Mabyn’s please ensure that they are appropriately dressed.”

At that point, the carriage erupts into a flurry of activity as passengers open bags and start putting on school uniforms and teacher’s morters and gowns. You realise with a start that everybody in your carriage at least is coming to St Mabyn’s.

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