The Spanking Writers

The other day we went to a new furniture store in our area, and the only remotely attractive thing we saw there was this sign, extolling the virtues of rattan.

It says: “Rattan, from the Malay ‘rotan’, is the most versatile of materials… Rattan is light, very hard and when pressure-boiled, becomes extremely pliable… (it is) eye-catching, exotic and never goes out of fashion.”

Yes, some of our canes are very hard, all right. And extremely eye-catching, when bent into a bow between the hands of a housemaster.

I don’t think they’re very exotic, though.

I saved a magnificent article from Time Out a couple of months ago, which listed little-known legislation that still applies in our capital city.

Did you know, for example, that a London cab driver has to ask alll passengers whether they are suffering from smallpox or the plague, before letting them in the cab? Or that it’s illegal for commoners to permit their pet to ‘have carnal knowledge of a pet of the Royal House’?

What really caught my eye, though, was the work of the “statute law revision team”, which repeals obsolete legislation. According to its team leader:

“Most of the London acts we’re repealing are about provision for workhouses.”

I wonder… Some deep, dark, dusty legal tome… An ancient Act, permitting – nay, requiring – gentlemen to administer sound thrashings for misconduct on workhouse land…. A new building, constructed on the site of the old workhouse (so still deemed legally to be covered by the Act)… A girl misbehaving… The subsequent thrashing administered with the full authority of the law, even in these modern times…

In connection to yesterday’s Punishment Book post by Abel, I’m compelled to tell you about a role-play I invented for myself when I was about 10 years old.

My aunt, who was a teacher, often brought “spoiled” forms from her school for me to play with; rather than be tossed in the bin, they were my sketchbooks and notepads. Once she brought an empty class register: a thick book with spaces for names, subjects, contact details in the back, teachers’ notes, the work. A secretary had made a mistake filling it in before the year started, and it was dismissed as unusable.

Unusable by the school, perhaps. But not me. I tore out the offending pages, and began to run a school of my own.

I came up with 35 names, boys and girls, and listed them in my best hand. I invented the subjects they studied, and their teachers names, and their marks. And in the form where the teacher would normally record homework for the following time, I kept a punishment book. The school was set in the future, after corporal punishment had returned.
Don’t ask me where I’d got the idea: at the age of 10, I was inventing the wheel, and adjusting it to my own headspace. As far as I was concerned, this was the most wonderful game in the world: to list names, and offences, and the punishments they suffered.

There were never any particular details; these were in my head, in case anybody found my book and questioned my strict running of the imaginary classroom. I had “Sokol, Anna – tardiness – 10.” (Strokes of the birch, of course.) Detention featured as well, though not much else, I stuck to what I thought would be reasonably used. In my head, though, I had entire stories, with lengthy dialogues (the begging; the scolding), additional punishments (a boy kneels in the corner, holding the birch: I’d read that one in a book), colours and sounds. It was a whole world.

Since then, every time I come across a real punishment book, I can’t help imagining the world behind it, with its own colours, sounds and stories. A simple list of names can send me on a adventure in an imaginary school, with its imaginary rules. If the book is authentic and detailed, all the better, but it doesn’t matter: a world grows around it all on its own, without much help from me.

…I think I destroyed my original punishment book in a fit of horror, when I found out that my spanking addiction could be seen as a sexual perversion. When you’re sixteen, you don’t want to be a pervert. Maybe some other books survived, though; I was never any good in cleaning. I’d love to know for sure what I’d written.

The libraries archive in East Riding contains some gems, according to their online catalogue. There’s the “Offences and punishment book” from April 1938 – March 1947 for a workhouse and school in Bridlington, for example:

“Arranged by date of offence. Includes details of name, date of offence, punishment, approval for number of strokes if corporal punishment, date of punishment, master’s initials, observations.”

I wonder what ‘observations’ were made? Detailed accounts of the extent to which the young ladies writhed under the birch, perhaps?

And then there’s Hull Newington High School’s records, including its “punishment book 1945-1967″.

What price Data Protection?! I somehow doubt they asked pupils to sign a disclaimer: “I accept that I am about to be caned for misbehaviour, and agree that it’s OK for the authorities to make the details available publicly in the local library in forty years’ time”?

One Spanko’s Thoughts is a brand-new, hot-off-the-press spanking blog by my long-time online friend Jen.
Jen has written many very hot spanking stories over the years. Here’s a quote, for instance, from her story “What She Needed”:

He pulled her up off his lap, and took her by the ear again to lead her to the chair in the corner.   She squealed as her sore butt made contact with the hard chair.

“Put your hands behind your neck, and put your legs together.”

She did, and he put the hairbrush on her lap.

“That’s to remind you that you’re going to get spanked with the hairbrush again after your cornertime.   You will sit in the corner until I come back up here, and don’t move.   I want you to think about why you’re being spanked and why you’re sitting in the corner.”

There is not much on the new blog yet, but I’m looking forward to anything Jen has to say about spanking.

I’m surprised the following story, from The Peninsula newspaper in Qatar, didn’t attract more attention at the time it was published last year. Frankly, howls of protest should have been forthcoming from the White House:

A criminal court yesterday sentenced three young Arab expatriates, one of them a woman holding an American passport, to 40 lashes each after they were found guilty of drinking and quarrelling with one another.

There were actually four youngsters rounded up [but] one, a Qatari national, was acquitted since traces of alcohol were not found in his blood sample…. The court on hearing all the sides to the case decided to sentence three accused to 40 lashes each for drinking, while acquitting the Qatari on that count.

The Qatari later told The Peninsula that although his fiancée was of Arab origin, she was not familiar with the Arab and Qatari culture. She had been brought up and educated in the west, and so could hardly speak Arabic, he said….”I will go in appeal against the court verdict,” said a visibly upset Qatari. The woman’s father was present when the court gave its verdict.

I do hope the appeal succeeded, for all I’d relish a fictional story along these lines.

Two days ago Abel said: “When I come back from work tomorrow, you’ll be dressed in your school uniform.”

Mmmm, I thought.

“In fact,” he said, “you’ll spend all day in your uniform.”

Mmmmm, I thought. And then I remembered: “I’ve got to go to the supermarket. Shall I do that in my uniform?”

He giggled. “Perhaps not. We don’t want to give anybody a heart attack.”

Then we got distracted from the conversation by the fact he was about to cane me, and we didn’t talk about it again.

This evening he came back from work, and found me dressed in jeans-and-T-shirt. “What happened to your uniform?” he said, puzzled.

I had to explain that I’d worn it all day, but that my crisp white shirt wasn’t compatible with the cleaning chores I’d suddenly got inspired to do in the evening, and particularly not with going out into the yard every five minutes when all the neighbours were congregating outside.

It was kind of a shame I’d had to change, we both agreed.

Especially after I’d worn the uniform all day.

Particularly after I’d gone out to the supermarket while still wearing it.*

I think the plan went a bit wrong yesterday, on the whole. I have concluded that cleaning is bad for your kink life.

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* Under a long white mac. Duh.

Former Member of Parliament Brendan Bracken started his career as a schoolmaster. An interesting account explains that -

like many teachers who take little interest in the weaker pupils, he substituted his cane for encouragement…. at times the queue for cross-questionings and thrashings stretched from Bracken’s door along the passage and half way down the stairs….

One day Bracken stopped a teacher friend in the corridor and grinned, “Come and listen at my door. I’m about to teach one of my boys a real lesson.” The teacher declined but heard the anguish of the caning from a distance.

I rather like the idea of a queue of girls outside my office, listening to plaintive cries of their compatriots as they awaited their own dose of my attentions.

In addition to yesterday’s squeeing (and at risk of looking like a total geek): you may want to listen to the first 10 minutes or so of the most recent (15th) Snapecast,* where, among the discussion of the trailer, there’s a fair bit of spanking and British boarding school talk.

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* Obviously, if you’re a Snape fan, you may want to listen to the whole thing: I thought it was a particularly fine episode.

I suppose, everybody has already seen the newest trailer for “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix”? I’m a bit late catching up after my trip, but…

Watch the stretch from 0:30 to 0:38 (or, if your screen is counting down, 1:43 to 1:35), and tell me this isn’t the kinkiest bit of film you’ve ever seen.

Snape! Squeeeee!