DAWN Griffis remembers her moment of horror when she saw two red crosses in her school maths book, and the word ‘LAZY’ in big red letters.

She knew immediately what to come – the dreaded slap.

She recalls: “Generally, I had gold stars on my exercise pages, except for two pages that faced each other.

“On those pages, there were big red crosses and ‘LAZY’ written in large red letters. For the laziness on the second page, I earned the punishment Miss Govier only dished out on very rare occasions.

“She would roll the sleeves up of the offending hand, place your palm in her hand and with her other hand, give you several resounding slaps to the back of your hand.

“Your hand would become red, but I think it was our pride that was hurt the most. I can only remember getting this punishment once. Believe, me, there were no more lazy pages in my book.”

Mrs Griffis, whose maiden name was Alsford, attended the village school at Aynho, near Banbury, and despite the punishment, she has fond memories of Miss Govier.

“She had a great way of teaching. She would make it interesting and show us short cuts to make things easier to understand, especially in maths.

“I don’t know of any child who didn’t love her. She was very strict, but very fair, and she could get things out of us that no other teacher I have had since could.”

One girl had a particular reason to be thankful to Miss Govier.

She wore her Sunday best pink skirt to school one day and as the pupils made Christmas decorations, one of her pigtails dropped into an inkwell, splashing ink all over her skirt.

“She was so upset and so scared of what her mother would do. Miss Govier took her to the back room, found a costume for her to put on, then spent the rest of the day working on the skirt, until she was able to get the stain out. She saved the day.”

Mrs Griffis, who now lives in the United States, has included these and other memories in her book, Aynhoe Village Life – the Way it Was, Then, Before and Beyond, published by Lulu.

l More of Mrs Griffis’s memories soon.