The Spanking Writers

This episode from the schooldays of Lawrence Olivier has stuck with me since I’d read it a couple of years ago, to the point where I had to go and look it up again. In most accounts of public school punishments and supreme rules of prefects we see the events from the point of view of the recepient of the punishment.

Not so in Olivier’s case:

The High Church was good on incense, slums and stark schools. St Edward’s was stark… Prefects could beat their juniors, or give up to two hundred lines as punishment, to be copied from the works of Virgil…

[Olivier] recalled that he once had a hand in unjustly beating a smaller boy, Bader, who was uppity and terribly good at games, and who had incidentally bowled him out in a house cricket match. Olivier was jealous, and had him hauled up before the president of his form room for cheek:

“And I think I had the luxury, because I had made the complaint, of delivering two of the blows, and I simply loathed myself.”

(From “Olivier: the authorised biography” by Terry Coleman, p. 15)

I think I’ve found the coolest place in the world to administer a spanking. Our friend Martha and I went for a day out to Alton Towers recently (American readers: think Disneyland with the fast rides, but without the folks in the irritating costumes).

Linking the various sectors of the site is a cable car. And at 11 in the morning, the gondolas are relatively quiet. Like, we had a 10-person car to ourselves.

Of course, I gave in to temptation, and the young lady was duly spanked several hundred feet above the ground, the gondola gently swaying from side to side with each swing of my arm. And yes, there were gondolas going the other way at the time: I hope they appreciated our attempt to make their journey more scenic.

The Evening Standard last week gave Abel a piece of good news:

Damn… It was close this time! *covers bottom with both hands and runs away*

Now, who was it who asked for more of my stories on “Love our Lurkers” day recently? Harriet, Evie, you inspired me – with a little help from a certain dear friend, whose misbehaviour last week gave me just the idea.

You know, the folks around me on the late train from King’s Cross on Friday evening seemed so impressed at my dedication to work, as I sat typing into my laptop. If only they knew…

The perils of drink
By Abel

Interruptions to class were rare, as if the teacher’s chamber was somehow sacrosanct: “do not disturb” the abiding motto. And the girls knew by now that those occasional knocks at the door – once, twice a term? – were inevitably harbingers of doom, announcing the arrival of a prefect with a message of imminent discomfort for one of their number.

The routine was the same: “My apologies, but Mr. ……. asked me to deliver an urgent message.” And the crisp envelope would be passed over to the teacher; the audience would hang on tenterhooks as if watching some awards ceremony in reverse – no winner of a statuette being revealed here, but rather the pronouncement of which girl was destined to face a most uncomfortable encounter.

And the teacher would shake his head solemnly, scanning the expectant, nervous faces. A pause for effect? A solemn revelation of the verdict: “It appears that Miss ….. is required in her Housemaster’s study.”

Sometimes the girl would be expecting it: all eyes would have swivelled to her as the prefect entered the room. So it was true? And he was going to cane her? And she’d be nervously tidying the pile of books on her desk even before her name echoed through the room, any vain hope extinguished by the sound of the knocks.

And on other occasions?

The moment of disbelief. Did he say me? The questions – what for, or (maybe) how did he know? The burning cheeks, embarrassed at the shocked stares of her classmates. Legs turning to stone, scarcely able to carry her to the door.

That long, long walk along the empty corridors, practising her excuses and her pleas for mercy, trying not to contemplate what would happen were they to prove unsuccessful.

“Miss Barlow.”

Which rather took Jennifer aback, that Friday morning, then shocked her to the core as she realised what must have happened.

– Read the rest of this entry »

We often talk about fantasy celebrity spankers, and somehow, more often than not, they turn out to be actors. That’s quite understandable: we see them a lot.

Yesterday I chilled out with an audiobook on my iPod, “The Waste Lands” by Stephen King, read by the author. And I found myself thinking: ooh boy, wouldn’t it be nice to get a spanking from him… He has some incerdibly hot spanking and semi-spanking episodes in his books, and I bet he could create a real feeling of dread were we to play a scene.

This made me think. I spend much more time in the company of my favourite writers (or anyway, their books) than I do watching any actor, and yet I had never before pictured one of them as a fantasy spanker.

So, Stephen King is the spanker for me. Who else? I’d have to say, Neil Gaiman. He’s not one of my favourite writers, but on a shallow physical level… well, he’s hot.

I have considered and discounted Kazuo Ishiguro (he pretends that he doesn’t write science fiction, and therefore we have irrevocable ideological differences; damn shame, ’cause he’s also hot), Terry Pratchett (hot, yes, but you could never be sure whether he’s taking a mickey out of you) and Ian McEwan (although he has a suitably sick mind, I just don’t know what he looks or sounds like).

I’m sure I’ll come up with more candidates upon reflection.

How about you? Which writers would you like to spank or be spanked by? (They don’t have to be alive.)

For some strange reason, I’ve been having interesting ideas about girls driving white vans. I’m picturing a young lady hiring such a vehice for a weekend. Not your usual white van driver, by any stretch of the imagination: rather, an educated girl – moving materials for some event, let’s say.

Her driving technique would quickly adapt to her vehicle: she’d cut up a more patient driver en route, waving the rudest of gestures in his direction. Unfortunately for her, she’d subsequently find that said gentleman was attending the same event. She’d therefore find herself being bared for a sound spanking in front of the other guests; her return journey would be far more sedate – and uncomfortable.

One of my favourite poets, W.B. Yeats, had some painful moments in his school days, if you trust his “Autobiographies” (1926):

I was very much afraid of physical pain, and one day when I had made some noise in class, my friend the athlete was accused and I allowed him to get two strokes of the cane before I gave myself up. He had held out his hands without flinching and had not rubbed them on his sides afterwards. I was not caned, but was made to stand up fo the rest of the lesson. I suffered very much afterwards when the thought came to me, but he did not reproach me.

Call me cynical, but I actually think the athlete friend was loving it. Oh, what a hero he was, to have taken the cane on behalf of another boy, and taken it so bravely. Just look how happy similar circumstances had made Tom Sawyer!

A school helpfully publishes a historical perspective on education on its website:

Teachers handed out regular canings. Look inside the “punishment book” that every school kept, and you will see many reasons for these beatings: rude conduct, leaving the playground without permission, sulkiness, answering back, missing Sunday prayers, throwing ink pellets and being late.

Boys were caned across their bottoms, and girls across their hands or bare legs. Some teachers broke canes with their fury, and kept birch rods in jars of water to make them more supple. Victims had to chose which cane they wished to be beaten with!

Now, and this is where I could be accused of having a mean streak, I’m imagining a good girl facing her first-ever punishment. Other, less-well-behaved young ladies would have been thrashed regularly before; they’d offer some ‘friendly’ advice during the break before her caning was due.

“Choose the thick, dark brown one,” they’d say. “It may look bad, but it doesn’t hurt half as much as the lighter canes.”

Only this particular rod would flex and whip just like the thinnest of the rattans – but would be much denser and heavier. The worst of all to choose, in fact. But girls can be cruel sometimes.

Abel found this hotel website that’s doing a do-not-disturb sign competition. They give you bits of design, and you can put together your own sign with your own text.

Obviously, Abel couldn’t resist:

After he emailed this to me, with some of his other suggestions, I couldn’t resist having a go with my own creative design effort:

Note, in case you want to have a go: you have to provide a name, but it doesn’t have to be a real name…

I really shouldn’t eavesdrop on conversations. But there were five* things I particularly liked about the young lady in her mid-20s from the touring choir, who was perched at the next table in the Executive Lounge of the hotel the other night:

1. She was quiet, shy, intelligent, with a gentle humour.

2. She was my ‘type’. (Any of you who know me in real-life will understand that there’s a certain type of girl who makes me go weak at the knees. And she seemed quite oblivious to how attractive she was).

3. She and her two female friends had chosen not to go out with the rest of the group: the others were too rowdy and the three of them felt like a quieter evening exploring. (Show me a room full of strangers, and I’ll head straight for the fringes!).

4. She was East Coast American. (I have a very soft spot that part of the world, having a number of dear friends who hail from (or have lived) there – my first play partner included).

5. She’d taken her punishment bravely when the choirmaster had paddled her for her wrong note in that afternoon’s rehearsal. He’d given her ten whacks across her jeans, right after the others had left. Hard, since the following night’s concert was so important.

* OK, only four of these are definitely true. One might have been the product of my over-fertile imagination!