Remembering ‘Uncle Bulgaria’

 

Original Fiction – for adult eyes only

 

What was he thinking? What was I thinking? What were any of us thinking? If I hadn’t been there, hadn’t been part of it, I would never have believed it.

But it happened and it was more than 50 years ago. I hadn’t thought about school in decades and then this morning I was waiting for a bus to Brocklehurst and it just came flooding back.

I went to St Francis Independent Grammar School (St. FIGS as it was known, sometimes affectionately) and there were five of us in the Elite Squad (as rather pompously we called ourselves). We had aced our A-level exams and were staying on for an extra term to prepare for the entrance exams to Oxford and Cambridge, the most elite universities in Britain. The school put on special classes for us and we operated as a group outside the rest of the school: where the other boys wore traditional uniforms of blazers and pale-grey trousers, we were in dark suits.

Uncle Bulgaria was one of the masters whose job it was to guide us through the university application process and to ensure that we aced the entrance exam and interview. I can’t for the life of me remember why we nicknamed him Uncle Bulgaria other than there was a children’s television character with that name.

We were myself, Geoff, Daniel, Donald and Robert, five eighteen-year-olds so full of entitlement it makes my skin scrawl even all these years later.

When did it start? Who started it? Why did we go along with it? It happened and it happened plenty of times and even back then we must have known there was something odd, unusual, queer even, about it. How could there not be?

Of course, Uncle Bulgaria started it. He was in charge, in control. He was a master after all in a school of high tradition and rules and discipline. I think Robert was the first one. Or possibly Donald. Both were gregarious types, always active, chasing the girls, game for anything, the life and soul of any party. They were the ones who could always get served in pubs.

No, Robert it was. Once Uncle Bulgaria had broken the ice with Robert so to speak the rest of us were sure to follow. I should make it clear that this was the late 1960s and although youth was in revolt across the world, that was not the case at St. FIGS. We were prim and proper and kept well under the thumb of the masters. It was an all-boys school (naturally) and thought of itself as some kind of elite public school. The headmaster Dr Henderson-Smith, certainly thought that. Tradition dripped down the walls: traditional curriculum (we did Latin and Greek for pity’s sake), traditional sports (rugger, not soccer naturally) and traditional discipline (the cane was the first not the last resort when punishment was meted out).

We did not question our masters; not openly anyway. I can’t remember us talking about Uncle Bulgaria out of school let alone questioning his behaviour.

You must understand that Uncle Bulgaria was an eccentric as so many schoolmasters were in those days. He wore a sports jacket and cavalry twill trousers in the classroom but once the day was over he would change into leathers and ride his mammoth motorcycle away from the school. Where he went nobody knew, there was a rumour that he lived in a cottage in the countryside but no one was interested enough to find out.

Also, like so many schoolmasters he was an inveterate ham actor. It wasn’t enough for him to impart information, he had to perform it. In the lower years he taught the First World War and came to class dressed as General Haig or some such character.

It must have been three or four weeks into term when Uncle Bulgaria first struck. We were five lads, highly intelligent and often with far too much energy and no way to get rid of it. I think Uncle Bulgaria had set us some work and then left the room. But we were too restless and started playing silly buggers. Paper aeroplanes flew across the class, we all made them, but, yes, I remember it clearly now, Robert had just launched his and it glided majestically across the room towards the door, just at the moment that Uncle Bulgaria opened it. It hit him squarely on the nose. It was a perfect hit, if unintended.

Naturally, we lads roared with laughter. Uncle Bulgaria who liked to be the centre of attention, slowly picked up the fallen aircraft, examined it closely and then summoning his best (i.e.. his worst) Shakesperean character he roared, ‘Hoskins [Robert’s surname] I saw that. Step out to the front of the class.’ We were still in fits of giggles and Robert quite unperturbed hauled himself from behind his desk and walked forward.

As I have said the cane was the first resort for punishment and had we been in the fourth-form can there be much doubt that Robert would be on his way to the headmaster’s study? Actually, fourth-form be damned, even a senior boy in the Sixth in similar circumstances would find himself touching toes in front of Henderson-Smith.

In fact, Donald had been in a similar position only last term. He and another sixth-former had been spotted leaving a pub and were reported. Donald had been identified but his partner in crime was unknown. The story went (and Donald made no effort to contradict this) that the headmaster demanded Donald name his companion and when he refused the headmaster gave Donald punishment for the two of them. That is, six for himself and six for the mystery man, making a total of twelve strokes. An awesome punishment indeed.

Uncle Bulgaria called Robert forward and we could see the master was about to go into full mode. He was an eccentric but until that moment we had no idea of the heights (or do I mean depths?) that eccentricity might reach. Uncle Bulgaria pursed his lips, glared like the demented schoolmaster he probably was and intoned words that included, ‘childish’, ‘outrageous,’ ‘unbelievable’ and so on. We were lapping it up and Robert didn’t seem perturbed to be castigated in this way.

Then came the punchline, the coup de grace. Uncle Bulgaria picked up a chair from behind his desk and set it in a space between the blackboard and our desks and he said, ‘If you insist on behaving like a little boy, I’ll treat you like one.’ He sat on the chair, widened his legs, and ordered Robert, ‘Come here and bend over my knee.’

Our merry demeanours instantly sagged. You could have heard a pin drop. We craned forward. What had Uncle Bulgaria just said? Robert stood still, his face unreadable. Uncle Bulgaria tapped his own thigh. ‘I’m waiting, bend over my knee.’

And Robert did.

Without a word and without changing his facial expression, Robert stepped forward, hesitated as he got close to Uncle Bulgaria, examined the master’s cavalry twill trousers and then in a single athletic move Robert dived over Uncle Bulgaria’s lap and settled himself, arms stretched ahead of him, palms spread on the floor, his knees slightly bent and his bottom raised at such an angle to give his master a perfect angle to spank him.

Which is what Uncle Bulgaria proceeded to do. Slap, slap, slap on the left check; slap, slap, slap on the right.

And that’s how it began. And it continued until the end of term. Uncle Bulgaria spanked Robert for a couple of minutes and, being eighteen years, old he never felt a thing. Nor would he if the master had used a slipper or a hairbrush or what-not. At the end Robert stood, red-faced but hardly red-arsed and resumed his seat.

The next day or maybe the day after, Geoff brought a peashooter into class and caused havoc during ‘morning playtime’; he too went across Uncle Bulgaria’s knee. The next time it was me and then Daniel and then Donald. Before we knew it a kind of rota had been created and for the rest of the term we took it in turns to be spanked by Uncle Bulgaria.

What on earth was going on? Of course it was kinky, we surely knew that. Uncle Bulgaria was obviously getting some satisfaction from slapping young men’s bottoms. But what about us? Why did we go along? Me? I think I did it because the others were doing it and we in the elite group behaved like a kind of gang and I wanted to fit in. Some of the others seemed a bit more enthusiastic. Donald, I know, even then was having identity issues which he never resolved until he got to university and once he discovered who he could be he went for everything hell for leather after that.

What would have happened if we told on Uncle Bulgaria? Today it’s unthinkable that kids got caned at school, but back then it was the most natural thing in the world. Perhaps, spankings would be seen in the same way, but surely taking a pupil across your knee and spanking his backside with the flat of your hand is a more intimate way of punishment than a caning which is always done, as it were, from a distance. There is more ritual involved in a caning than a spanking.

What effect did it have on me? None that I can see. Until today I hadn’t thought anything about school in decades. I have no kink when it comes to spanking: never been spanked, never spanked. What happened to Uncle Bulgaria? I have no idea and I can’t go searching for him online because for the life of me I can’t remember his real name.

  

Picture credit: Sting Pictures

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