The Spanking Writers

We finally emerged from the cocoon of our lovely resort this morning, for the first time since we got here 11 days ago. It being New Year’s Eve, and that being officially a big day for Ukrainians, Haron wanted to be taken shopping. We hiked for miles in the blistering midday heat (OK, strolled for ten minutes along the lovely shady path), and found ourselves in a duty free shopping mall, where a girl was indulged to her heart’s content.

More importantly, though, it meant that we were able to finish 2007 with one of best startles of the year, for next to the shopping centre was a most wonderfully-named complex. Its name, helpfully translated on the sign outside?

Correctional Academy of Malaysia

Our imaginations went into overdrive, as you can no doubt imagine. The lack of fences suggested that this was not some high-security institution. No, we decided: this would be a school for girls being given their ‘last chance’ – good girls, from good families, whose behaviour was giving cause for concern.

The regime would be strict, of course. Each morning, at dawn – before the temperature rose too high – the Governor would inspect a parade of all of the students. That day’s newcomers would be brought to the front, to be given their introductory caning: six hard strokes, to deter them from incurring future punishments during their stay.

Miscreants from the previous day would then take their turn, being strapped down over the tressle to receive an appropriate number of strokes for their offences. And woe betide any girl who arrived late for the parade: she’d be directed to join not the girls lined up in their ranks, but the back of the queue of girls to be caned.

Now, why do I have a feeling that Haron might be caught later, having escaped from the Academy…

PS a quick search on the internet on our return revealed the Academy to be a training school for prison officers, but who are we to allow reality to get in the way of fantasy?

PPS in the words of one of our favourite songs, by The Divine Comedy, we’d like to extend our very best wishes for the coming year to “the friends that we’ve known, and those that we now know, and those who we’ve yet to meet”

My kindly Housemaster, giving his final caning recently, spawned the idea of a somewhat less loveable colleague also taking his retirement, leaving a legacy for his successor.

The handwritten note in the sealed envelope in the desk drawer of the Housemaster’s study would list of those on their ‘final warnings’. Young Samantha’s first report card of the following term might fall short – again – of the expected standards, but he was no longer here, and the slate would have been wiped clean with her new Housemaster.

Her face would drain of colour as the letter was taken out, opened, read, confirming that she had been told most clearly at the end of the summer term that “in my opinion, any further poor performance would suggest that a sound caning would be both necessary and helpful.”

We were chilling out by the pool in our hotel in KL, when Abel let out an enraged roar, and jumped like somebody had poured a bucket of water over him. Looking around, I realised that my impression hadn’t been far off: the gardener who was watering the bushes behind us had missed the plants with her hose, and showered Abel instead.

This would have been funny rather than annoying, if he wasn’t holding his iPod, which had come inches from being dowsed in water. I’m reliably informed that this is not good for an iPod.

While Abel glowered at the gardener and muttered unflattering comments in her direction, I imagined a different girl, in a different society to ours. She was not lucky enough to miss a piece of expensive gadgetry when her hose accidentally slipped in her hands. The hotel’s important guest’s laptop was irrevocably ruined.

There was no point in suing the girl for the damage: the laptop had cost far beyond the sum of the price of all of her possessions. It was clear to everybody that the only way she could compensate the businessman would be to enter into indenture servitude to him.

After a short negotiation in the hotel manager’s office, the girl signed on the dotted line, beneath the agreement that made her the man’s maid. He would feed and house her (the price of this would be added to the cost of her debt, of course), and in return she would serve his family until she had paid off with her work everything she owes him.

When she put down the pen, her new master gave her a cool look.

‘And now, young lady, we have something to discuss. Did I, or did I not hear you laugh after your sprayed me with that hose?..’

I shall leave the outcome of this scene to your rich imaginations…

Abel’s 40 today (and he doesn’t behave a day over 14). *g* That’s quite a few birthday smacks for yours truly… Oh, dear.

Luckily for me, we had to leave our assorted canes in storage at our previous hotel. Unluckily for me, this hotel has provided us with brand-new rubber beach flip-flops. Abel hasn’t worn his at all; apparently, from the moment he saw them he knew that one of these would be perfect for his birthday spanking.

I have rarely been spanked with anything that looked so fearsome, and hurt so little! Even though I’d managed to earn extra strokes (for missing out the year 1999 in my count, for example), my biggest problem throughout the spanking was a violent attack of the giggles. I suppose, it did start to sting a bit once we got into the new millennium, and the one to grow on was quite ouchie… but a terrible ordeal it was not.

And that’s fine, you know. After all, birthdays are for laughing, being happy and eating cake, right?

Happy birthday, my lovely husband

PS Abel’s just read that the arrangements for the poolside buffet on New Year’s Eve include ‘viking style seating’. He’s wondering whether he’ll be expected to join in the raping and pillaging, or whether he’ll just be able to punish any girls who try to escape.

I wondered in my most recent post whether the two consecutively-paddled girls in the hotel would avoid one another thereafter, or be united in adversity to become firm friends. Sarah’s comment proposed the latter, suggesting that “they would end up getting into mischief together and consequently getting punished together too”.

I immediately thought of the excursion programme that our resort offers every morning – dull-sounding trips to dull-sounding places. (Other than feeding the eagles, that is: but that apparently requires spending most of the day at sea, and neither Haron nor I can face the idea).

Fathers, though, would think of the idea of excursions as a ‘good thing’: their young ladies should ‘take in some culture’. It would be ‘educational’. By pure coincidence, our two heroines would find themselves, reluctantly, dragged by their respective fathers to the hotel reception at some ungodly hour, for the “Towns and Temples Tour”.

The girls would recognise one another, of course, and as they clambered into the minibus together, they would sit beside one another and shyly start to chat. “You two look as if you know one another already,” one father would comment. One of the girls would blushingly whisper an embarrassed explanation.

Later, the group would stop to explore a ruined temple. The girls would set off on their own, stern fatherly warnings not to be late for the 4pm departure ringing in their ears. Only neither of them would have a watch; the temple would turn out to be fascinating; they would lose track of time. It would be nearer 5 by the time they return to the had-been-worried, now-furious waiting party.

Their fathers would step forward; their explanations, their excuses would be brushed aside. “It seems that neither of you has learned from your punishment earlier in the week,” one would say.

–

I can’t decide whether the fathers would cut switches from some nearby tree, using the tour guide’s pocket knife, and bend their girls over by the dusty roadside, next to one another, to punish them there and then…

…or whether they would be taken back to the hotel, where one father would suggest that it would save the hotel staff some work if the duo were to be paddled together this time. The other would offer the use of their room, and the girls would find themselves bent over the crisp white sheets.

And even in the hotel, decisions remain: would they be bent over facing one another, or side by side? Would they be allowed to hold hands? Would both fathers be used to administering discipline on the bare – or only one? And if so, would the latter require his daughter to lower her shorts and knickers too this time, “as it’s only fair that you be treated equally”?

Would one girl be punished, then the other, or would the strokes alternate? And if the strokes alternated, would the paddle be passed from one father to the next after each whack, so each punished his own daughter – or would the first father administer (say) the first ten whacks, five to each girl, before allowing the other a turn?

I’m sure our names sound ridiculour to a foreign ear, but I had a juvenile giggle reading an article by a Malaysian journalist by the name of Dick Tan.

Ouch! Sunburn there would hurt; I hope he’s careful…

The “guest directory” for our ever-so-nice Malaysian resort lists essential items that the traveller might have forgotten, which can be provided simply by calling the service desk. Contact lens solution, highlighter pens, phone chargers, nail polish remover, paddles, paper clips, staplers and strollers are amongst the items listed.

OK… maybe I’ve extemporised slightly. But they should have a paddle (or cane, or tawse, or a selection) available, right?

I’m picturing the scene: the young lady who’s persisted in fooling around next to the pool, eventually soaking her father and assorted other guests with a particularly ferocious splash. He’d apologise profusely, promising that the matter would be dealt with, and would lead her straight to her bedroom. The phone call would be made; the daughter – still in her swimming costume – made to stand, disgraced, in the corner until the hotel staff knocked some minutes later.

Daddy would make her answer. The hotel employee would proffer the paddle: “I assume that this is for you?” She’d nod.

“Please could you call to for us to collect it once it’s been applied?”

From deep inside the room, her father’s voice. “Please don’t put yourselves to any further trouble. I’ll have her return it shortly to the reception desk.”

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the resort, another father would have placed a similar call. “Unfortunately, sir, the paddle is currently being used by another gentleman. We expect to have it back soon, though. Perhaps if someone could wait in the lobby?”

And so it would come to pass that the first girl, tearful and freshly punished, would duly pass on the paddle to the second, tearful and about to be punished, giving her a hug as she did and wishing her well. The transaction would take place under the watchful eyes of the hotel employees.

But I wonder? Would the two lasses avert their eyes from one another when they found themselves at adjacent loungers next to the pool the following day? Or would their common bond unite them, acting as a spark to future friendship?

As a little festive present to our readers, here’s a new story – inspired by the gorgeous hotel room we stayed in last week in Kuala Lumpur, before we headed to the beach.

–

FIVE STARS, SIX STRIPES

She’d sorted the forms, as usual, into the order he preferred. A girl’s profile came first, printed onto yellow paper: date of birth, length of service, department, grade: the basics of her existence within the hotel hierarchy. Then, neatly attached – with a paper clip, mind, never stapled – came each of the three reports that had occasioned that afternoon’s forthcoming encounter. Sorted chronologically, the details of the offence that had led to her first misconduct mark, followed by the second and the fateful third.

He liked the girls’ details presented alphabetically by surname, inside a plain blue card folder, which she placed, as always, on the leather surface of the desk in his suite. It was two in the afternoon now; he’d soon be emerging from his weekly conference call with Head Office, which rarely left him in the best of moods. The girls – four of them this week – were due outside at three. Sharp.

Georgina paused, looking down at the folder. A moment, turning into a minute. The same routine as she’d completed every week since her promotion to the post of Executive Assistant to the General Manager of the Royal International Hotel. His ‘right hand woman’, his ‘help in time of need’, his ‘number one ally’, as he described her.

Only there was one difference. For, this week, her own details were recorded within the sheaf of papers.

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The Times the other week had a column on the instances of mistreatment of works of art by drunken or careless owners. For example -

While a house guest at Rousham Park in Oxfordshire, the young James Lees-Milne was horrified to witness his drunken host, Maurice Hastings, slashing the portraits of the Dormer family by Sir Godfrey Kneller with a hunting crop.

Eventually satisfied that several generations of dead Dormers had taken a good whipping, he stalked around the William Kent landscaped gardens with his gun, taking aim at the statues and blasting away at the private parts of Apollo.

I imagine a party of schoolgirls being taken on a trip to a country house hotel. They stash away bottles of booze, and, when sufficiently drunk, they rampage through the corridors and gardens, bringing a personal touch to statues and paintings.

They roll a condom onto Apollo’s, erm, arrow, stick a bottle into the jaws of Samson’s lion, and draw moustaches on portraits in the hall.

I also imagine a line of girls in the hotel lobby, bending over with their bottoms on display, as their teacher walks along the line with the cane. The hotel manager walks alongside her, witnessing that each stroke is precise and effective.

The view from the check-in desks would not be at all obstructed.