I can still see him coming at me now, a black-clad threshing
machine, strangely convinced that a 70 per cent test result
was ample justification for brief but brutal punishment.
Brother Brickley was a legend, the Irish Christian Brothers'
forerunner to mad Father Jack in the Channel 4 comedy,
Father Ted. While Jack flails at a world which won't provide
enough drink, Brickley flailed at his pupils to bang Latin into
them.
Two blows - the minimum punishment - from his leather strap could render your hands incapable of writing for the rest of a lesson. Brickley, the most slap-happy of his peers, even had a name for his weapon: Excalibur. He wore it in the pocket of his black cassock as a Western gunslinger would carry his six-shooter.
Two blows - the minimum punishment - from his leather strap could render your hands incapable of writing for the rest of a lesson. Brickley, the most slap-happy of his peers, even had a name for his weapon: Excalibur. He wore it in the pocket of his black cassock as a Western gunslinger would carry his six-shooter.