The Spanking Writers

I have just posted a new entry on the Punishment Book, it’s called “Helping your neighbours”.
It guest-stars our blog commentator and friend Sarah (though I hasten to add that she has managed to stay right-side up throughout these events).
Head on over there if you would like to commiserate with me.

The marvellous BBC’s “People’s War” project encouraged those who had lived through World War Two to record their memories for posterity. Inevitably, a few of those who discussed their school days reflect on some of the more painful incidents. Here are a few:

We had to go to school at six am, get buckets of coal and fire-lighters into all the rooms…I laid a good fires of wood and coal. Before long it was all going merrily, everything was all spick and span and I felt so proud of it all. The other girls came in at 8:30 and stood around the fire warming their hands and saying “Oh, what a lovely fire”.

Then in came Miss Brentnall. She looked at the fire, then she looked at me, looking pleased. She immediately took up the shovel and started to shovel out the fire. This caused black smoke and ash to fly everywhere.

While doing this she was screaming at me, “Eight black marks for wasting coal.” She knew that we had a point system and the eight black marks meant that you got the cane. I was sent down for it. Miss Nobles gave the cane and she asked me why I had been sent to her so early in the day. I had to tell her that I’d given eight black marks for wasting coal.

I stood there with my hands outstretched and the swish across them was too painful to describe.

Once a bird’s nest was robbed and the headmaster asked for the culprit to come forward and confess. No one confessed so he caned every child in the school – boys and girls of all ages.

In those days the cane was used very frequently and there were certain children in the senior class, including the girls, who were always being caned. In fact, on misbehaving and being found out, these boys and girls would be at the front of the class with their hand held out almost before the headmaster had called out their name.

He had a number of thin bamboo canes, all with curved handles, and it was not uncommon for these to split and break up while being used. Many a time the junior class would hear the bits of cane that had broken off hit the partition.

One dodge the senior pupils got up to was to push pins down the end of the cane while the headmaster was absent and this encouraged the cane to split when in use.

Haron! Put that pin down at once… (Trust me. Try it. The cane will indeed break in use. Not the one with the pin. The one I’ll make you fetch as its replacement).

This has nothing to do with spanking… but everything to do with the sort of language young ladies should not use. But hey, it comes from the “Times” wildlife column.

There was a time when this column was banned by The Times. Or at least, by the newspaper’s anti-filth control, which is intended to protect staff from pornography and gambling on the internet.

We couldn’t understand it. Every now and then, I would e-mail the week’s column over and it would never arrive.

At last, we found out why. The banned columns all contained the word “tits”.

The Times journalists are really screwed if they want to write columns about Essex, Scunthorpe, or the Arsenal football club…

The best of this week’s blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants.

This Week’s Picks
Half-Nekkid Blow Job
” We could hear people walking past and talking so they’d be able to hear us as well.”

Masturbation on a Memory
“I let the first time I had sex with your flash back though my mind.”

Reality Check: Handling Long Calls
“While I get my share of quick cummer calls I have several clients that like to talk for hours.”

Mr. Sugasm Himself
Christian Friis

Editor’s Choice
A Non-Monogamy Lexicon

More Sugasm
Join the Sugasm

One school corporal punishment policy helpfully published on the web includes a not uncommon exemption clause:

Corporal punishment may be administered as a form of discipline unless the parent/guardian files a written, dated objection with the school principal. It is the responsibility of the parent/guardian to see that the written, dated objection is submitted each school year to the principal’s office.

I’m picturing her, standing before her father, pleading with him to write an exemption letter for her to take in on the first day of the school year. He looks at her solemnly: “You understand the consequences? That if you merit a punishment at school, but I have submitted this letter, we will deal with the matter still more severely at home?”

This particular school district, by the way, requires a witness every time a paddling is administered:

It must be done with the approval of the principal and administered by the principal or his/her designee, privately, in the presence of another certified school employee but not in the presence of other students.

When watching a girl take a punishment in a scene, it’s always a debate as to whether to watch her backside as the strokes land, or to focus on the expressions crossing her face. I wonder which option is preferred in the real-life Principal’s office?

The Times on Saturday reports with barely disguised pleasure the hilarity caused by the performance of the teams’ national anthems before England’s match against Croatia:

The singer [Tony Henry] … should have sung Mila kuda si planina, which translated roughly as “You know my dear how we love your mountains”. Instead he appears to have sung Mila kura si planina, which can be interpreted as, “My dear, my penis is a mountain”.

Film of the build-up to the game shows Croatian players and mascots giggling as Henry performs.

For some reason, I keep getting images of schoolgirls, mangled school songs and canings in assembly the following day.

I do sometimes allow my kinky sense of humour to creep into my work. There’s the slide in my presentation on communication skills that discourages the use of abbreviations, with “S&M” included in the list of examples. And there was that keynote conference speech earlier in the year, which offered witty observations on tactics for leading teams, including the advice to “spare not the rod when necessary”.

At the start of December, I’m running a session with a newly-formed group, and we’ll be doing some team-building work. I’ve just written an exercise that will have them producing neatly-measured documents against the clock – think a manic production line of scissors, paper, staplers and rulers.

Ah, yes. Rulers. You see, part of the game will be that each team member will be given a card describing a secret quirk. And one of said quirks reads:

You have an allergy to wooden rulers.

I wonder if any of them will wince knowingly?

And here’s a really strange thing. Haron and I went shopping yesterday to buy the materials for the event. And could we find wooden rulers anywhere? Not a chance. Have the Health & Safety mob conducted a risk analysis, and decided to protect potential victims? Have crowds of mischievous girls stormed the stationers and cleared the shelves of the threat? (No, can’t be: our Woolworth’s still sells wonderfully-effective plimsolls).

I’m heading off on the long drive south for work later today. Haron’s been set a task in my absence: to locate and purchase six wooden rulers. That’d be the five I need for the event, and one extra…

Abel, Martha and I saw this sign in the courtyard of Victoria and Albert Museum last month.

I’m glad they approve of traditional discipline, and I’m even more glad don’t think the only way to smack people is on the bare.

Humphrey Searle’s memoirs describe the early morning routine at the school that he attended:

Before 9a.m. the boys were lined up, in school order, round the walls of the gymnasium. Precisely on the stroke of the hour the entire teaching staff would appear in academic robes, headed by the headmaster, Mr. J.S. Granville Grenfell, a stocky figure of somewhat nautical appearance with a small pointed beard. He would say: “Good morning, gentlemen”…

He would then read out rewards and punishments for the day. If any boy was to be caned Mr. Grenfell would point his finger at him and say: “Boy, go to my study and await my presence”. The double doors were flung open and the wretched boy would totter out.

Mentally substituting the boys with girls creates a fascinating idea for a scene. That said, it might not actually work, since one would presumably wish to send all of the girls out of the assembly hall, and that’s not quite the point…

I heard a shriek from upstairs this morning, and rushed to investigate.

Abel was in the shower. I have never seen him scared of water before, so I worriedly asked what was wrong.

It appeared that the cold weather of the last few days tempted both of us to have hot baths rather than showers, and so the temperature settings on the shower remained the same as during my reformatory birching scene.

That is, not quite freezing, but still pretty damn cold.

Did he notice this before turning on the water? No, he didn’t.

Awww.