Did punishments ever fit childhood crimes? T

SANDWICHES are getting more exotic, I reported. Instead of a beef and onion, young trendies are choosing falafel and hummus. Pass the smelling salts and a bag of crisps.

Many of my friends still prefer the traditional but with their own exotic twist. Such as a sausage and baked bean teacake.

Baked beans in a teacake?

I watched in awe as my chum Pixie created his own variety with the leftovers from the domino team snap: two slices of bread and anything that was left in between, from sausage rolls to quiche to beetroot to other sandwiches. If there had been falafel and hummus he would have added that, too. He has a healthy appetite for a pixie.

The age-old favourite sandwich in my straw poll, remains the egg banjo.

This appears to have its origins in the British military during the First World War, has been described on one army site as: God’s Own Food, and has travelled the world to wherever British servicemen and women have been sent.

“Civilisation and egg banjos are utterly inseparable, surely?” wrote one squaddie.

The delectation is simple HE lad was aged about seven or eight and facing an alcove in Victoria Lane in Huddersfield town centre on a Sunday morning. His mother was a short distance away outside Poundland keeping an eye on him. Had his mother sent him to stand in the corner for some misdemeanour? No, it seemed he was doing nothing more than having a sulk.

“I remember being sent to stand in the corner at school,” my wife Maria said. “I wonder if they still do that?”

The small boy’s display of passive displeasure got me considering the merits of chastisement methods of old. Like my wife, I was always taught to say please and thank you and respect my elders.

Our daughters received the same guidance, as do our grandchildren.

But lessons in behaviour have changed over the years. Children being required to say ‘may I leave the table,’ has become redundant when meals are taken on trays in front of the TV, although it is enforced at family gatherings.

Being made to wear a dunce’s cap was public shame and humiliation that has thankfully fallen out of practice, as have the once regular beatings dispensed in schools. Sending a child to their room no longer carries the threat of yore, when their room is now to create. Two slices of buttered white bread with a soft fried egg in between, augmented by salt or sauce of your choice.

A military site explains: “It becomes a banjo when the yolk and sauce dribble down your front.

“You move the hand containing the sandwich away and up to a point level with your ear as you look down your front and, usually to an accompanying ‘Oh dear,’ you wipe or smear the said yolk and sauce into your shirt with your free hand, giving a passing imitation of playing a banjo.”

Gourmets have been warned. equipped with TV and laptop.

Children may still be required to sit on the naughty step to enforce the gravity of a situation but this is light relief compared to my childhood, when I was frequently locked in a cupboard halfway up the stairs in total darkness, which makes my childhood sound Dickensian.

There were positives in the past. Children had a definite respect for authority and if the local bobby gave you a clip round the ear for cheek or minor indiscretion, your father would give you another if you were foolish enough to go home and complain.

Times change, usually for the better, and youngsters are still most influenced by their home life and, on the whole, parents are still doing a pretty good job.

Sending a child to their room no longer carries the threat of yore, when their room is equipped with TV and laptop