The Spanking Writers

Last night I caught myself having an oddest, perviest thought.

It was quite late, and I was tired, and I was shuffling books around, making space for more books. I picked up one of Abel’s travel books – a guide to Brussels, all glossy and nice – and leafed through it.

And realised that I was thinking, quite dismayed: “But it doesn’t have a section about spanking! Where do you go in Brussels to get a spanking? It just doesn’t say! Not very good for a travel guide…”

Indeed.

Peering out of the window of the hotel restaurant earlier in the week, through the Swiss rain, I spied a parked van.

It displayed a website address that intrigued me:

vices.group.com

I was ready to change companies; over my croissant and coffee, I started to mentally polish up my resume.

Sadly, when I stood up, I noticed that the rest of the address was obscured, and the vehicle belong to the ’services’ division of a large multi-national. Oh, well…

Abel went out to a see a day of cricket, and came back with the two signs they get handed at the match, the ones you hold up to show the player scored 4 or 6. He thought they might be useful in announcing the number of strokes.

I’ll do my best not to giggle when in the middle of a scene he shows up with this:

or this

Although, knowing him, I’m now slightly concerned about getting

or even

Hmm, recycling bin, I think.

How many times have I written, fantasised or played scenes in which a girl reports at the annointed hour for some well-earned judicial thrashing?

It’s only just occurred to me that a young lady facing such a predicament might be tempted to fortify herself before her appointment.

The court officials would smell the alcohol on her breath, of course. They would wait until the judge who had originally heard her case had a gap in his schedule for the day, and would take her before him.

Her insobriety would cost her dear, for the judge would not be amused. Her birching would be deferred for one week. “In the meantime you need to be taught the consequences of your contempt for this court.”

The court officers would be asked to detain her for the remainder of the day, until the judge had finished hearing the afternoon’s case. “And then you are to give her a cold shower to make sure she sobers up, before bringing her to my chambers so that I may punish her.”

He turned to the culprit. “I shall be giving you twenty strokes of the cane on the bare when we meet again later. I hope that the afternoon will give you sufficient time to reflect on your behaviour and anticipate its consequences.”

Sometimes the silliest little things amuse us. The other day we were looking at leaflets for various cultural goings-on in our part of the world, and Abel’s hand was magnetically drawn to this:

I ask you. Five words on a piece of paper, not even a spanking picture in sight – and he’s all excited.

I must admit, my gaze also lingered on the leaflet, although the subject isn’t really my kink at all. Futurists, ughhh, that’s sick.

Author Michelle Spring wrote a fascinating article describing the inspiration behind one of her books, which has just jumped to the top of my must-read list:

I wrote Nights in White Satin because of a seventeen-year-old mischief named Daisy Hopkins. She strutted the streets of Cambridge in 1891, wearing a navy blue costume trimmed with gold edging, head held high, catching the eye of the young men. By all reports the exclusively male band of Cambridge students – or scholars, as they were then called—liked a good time every bit as much as students do today. Daisy didn’t want for admirers.

Daisy was arrested on December 2, 1891 and not for the first time. She was sentenced to fourteen days in gaol.

She was detained in the Spinning House, “a dour building constructed centrally on Regent Street”. And what a grim place it was: “tiny cells” where “in the winter, snow drifted between the bars. There was no heating. There was no artificial light; when night fell, they were plunged in darkness.”

One might have imagined that a week spent in these chilling conditions would be punishment enough, but not so; the Town Crier was engaged from time to time to provide more specific forms of discipline. As the Corporation Accounts record: Paid Horner Johnson, by order of Mr Vice Chancellor, for whipping 10 girls… 10s.

For what was particularly interesting was that “for much of its existence, the Spinning House was under the control not of the Borough of Cambridge and the Cambridge magistrates, but of Cambridge University.”

Founded as a workhouse, by the late 18th century it had evolved a “specific and singular purpose: the confinement and punishment of women of ill repute.” The University authorities regularly scoured the streets for offenders, in one notorious incident seizing and flinging into jail “seven young milliners on their way to a party”. Eventually, “the University had finally to surrender some of its ancient rights and to accord the police and magistrates of the Borough the responsibility for maintaining moral order within the boundaries of Cambridge.”

Now, where to find a Cambridge graduate wishing to re-enact episodes from the darker side of their alma mater’s?

The Observer today reviews a clearly very odd ballet called “Impressing the Czar”. The review doesn’t take up that much space on the page, but my eye was drawn to it for some reason. Hmm, I wonder why… all it had to illustrate it was this picture:

Apparently, the final part of the production -

“sees the stage filled with the entire 40-strong company dressed as English schoolgirls. Whirling, stamping and flashing their knickes – St Trinian’s meets “The Rite of Spring” – they dance the piece to a louche, climactic finish”.

Right, not kinky at all, then.

Royal College of Disciplinarians
Examination paper – June 2007

You are administering a caning of twenty strokes. After 12 strokes, the young lady in question asks politely whether she might rub her backside. Equally politely, you decline.

After the fifteenth stroke, she stands up and clutches her backside. What is the correct course of action? You may choose only one answer from the following list.

A. Hug her, and tell her that as it’s obviously hurting so much, you will waive the rest of the caning.

B. Make her return to her position and administer the remaining five strokes.

C. Make her return to her position and administer the fifteenth stroke again, followed by the remaining five strokes.

D. Make her return to her position and administer the full twenty strokes again from the start.

I’m fairly sure I got the answer right when faced with this dilemma whilst playing with a friend last week!

According to The New Yorker, C.S. Lewis faced the traditional boarding school experiences of his generation and class. At one establishment, the snobbish headmaster “raced down the length of a room with his cane to beat a lower-middle-class boy, enraged by his social pretensions”.

It had a certain effect: in letters, Lewis apparently -

named the women he’d like to spank, and for a time signed his private letters “Philomastix”—“whip-lover.”

Anyone noticed any hints of his interests in the Narnia books?

As I waited in the reception area of a client’s office recently for an early meeting, I happened to glance out of the window. Across the street was a school playground, surrounded by a high mesh fence, and full of surprisingly well-behaved students in immaculate blue uniforms.

A supervisor monitored new arrivals. At 8.20 sharp, he reached for his keys and padlocked the only gate. Tardy new arrivals continued to drift up, but the entrance remained firmly locked in their faces.

Doubtless there’d be letters home and detentions to serve. Apart, perhaps, for the one girl who tried to climb the fence, aided and abetted by three of her friends in the playground.

The supervisor would catch them: they’d be hauled up to wait outside the Headmaster’s study. He’d call in the three ‘insiders’ first: young ladies should understand the importance of upholding school rules, not aiding those who would seek to undermine them. Two sharp strokes each would teach them the error of their ways.

They’d be sent on their way to their classroom.
Their fence-climbing friend would, by now, be in no doubt as to her fate, having heard whacks and yelps as she waited outside the office, having seen solemn faces and clutched bottoms as her punished friends passed her by.

There was her late arrival: not for the first time this term, and thus incurring a standard two strokes. And there was her attempt to break into school premises: “quite disgraceful behaviour”, as the Head would describe it: “Dangerous and dishonest conduct cannot fail to result in the most severe punishment.”

Five strokes in total, came the judgment, “as I am minded to err on the side of leniency since this is your first visit to my study.” Like her friends, inflicted on the bare as she touched her toes. Unlike her friends, administered with the *senior* cane and a short run-up. And equally unlike her friends, attracting an extra stripe for failing to hold her position after one particularly excruciating whack.