I come from quite a privileged family, and as my parents were both busy professionals it was only natural that they would engage a nanny for their three children. Unlike many such families, however, our nanny was kept on as domestic ‘help’ long after we had all gone off to boarding school, so she was part of our lives for a very considerable time.
I was brought up in the 1970s, when corporal punishment was an established and popular method of disciplining children, and most of these punishments that we received were administered by nanny rather than our parents. She started us young, with smacked bottoms when we were toddlers. She had a hard hand, and even when we were very young she was always careful to give the punishment on the bare buttocks.