The Spanking Writers

The young ladies sitting opposite us on the train, late on Friday afternoon, were casually dressed – but expensively so – and their haircuts cost more than my suit. Their accents were pure top-drawer; their folders revealed them to be pupils at a particularly prestigious girls’ boarding school.

The discussion turned to the fate awaiting some of their fellow students:

“Surely they won’t be suspended for having cigarettes?”

“No,” I leant over and replied. “The Headmistress will cane them on Monday morning – having left them to fret about their punishment over the weekend.” (Only I didn’t, of course. And she wouldn’t!)

One of their number looked particularly concerned for her friends. “I went pale when they said there’d be an inspection. Thank goodness they didn’t catch *me*.” (“No, young lady, they didn’t. But I shall be writing to your Headmistress this evening…”?)

Another memoir, another caning episode – this time from the screenwriter Jimmy Perry’s “A Stupid Boy”, which we happened upon in a local second-hand bookstore. He’d been caught bunking off school to go to the local theatre, and failed with his attempts to extricate himself from the situation:

The next morning I presented myself at his study for the obligatory six strokes of the cane. I waited outside with three other boys. They were pale and frightened, but I was determined that no trace of fear would appear on my face. I heard my name shouted from inside… one of the boys whispered, “Good luck, Perry.”

I went in. The assistant headmaster just pointed to the chair and I bent over it.

It’s difficult to describe the searing pain of the first stroke and you think you cannot possibly stand another five, but not a sound came out of me, though my whole being wanted to scream and plead for him to stop.

When it was over I could hardly straighten up for a searing, red-hot pain that racked me from head to toe.

His twisted face growled, “You, Perry, are a liar and a cheat. I’m only allowed to give you six strokes, but if I had my way I’d thrash you until you couldn’t stand… I’m giving you a note to take to your parents, and don’t entertain any thoughts of destroying it: I’ve said I want an acknowledgement.”

Reading this sort of account sparks some interesting questions.

I find myself mentally swap genders for the recipient of the caning, substituting ‘girl’ in place of ‘boy’ throughout as I read. I wonder whether other readers whose interests are confined to anecdotes of females on the receiving end do the same.

And then there’s the fantasy versus real-life debate. This is long enough ago, and the author seems to have survived the experience without any deep psychological damage, that I can somehow park that too as I read. Again, I wonder whether others have that nagging guilt of “should I be finding this hot” – and whether some just simply don’t find that real-life accounts spark any spanko interest.

Yesterday morning I made an awful transgression which, Abel decided, merited an immediate punishment. So he sent me upstairs with the words, “Choose a cane and wait for me!”

Choose a cane. Easy for him to say. We have hundreds of them, one nastier than the other. How am I supposed to pick which one I fancy being striped with?

Generally, I prefer the thick, thuddy ones. They’re cool. But they look so bloody scary, even if I know in my head that I really do like them. Then there are the whippy ones, which look, well, harmless – on account of their thinness – but I know pretty well the little bastards slice into you like a razor.

And then there are the dragon canes, which are whippy and thuddy at once, and are really not very good for anything but scaring a girl to death, but I like being scared to death.

So how can I just go and choose?

Anyway, I picked a thinnish cane we haven’t used for a while, mainly because we haven’t used it for a while. I thought it might be getting bored, and felt sorry for it.

I’m sure it felt a lot better after biting me six times in quick succession. That’s what canes like to do, I think.

Today is the feast day of St. Agatha. I know that you’re all expert in the lives of the saints, but thought you might appreciate a brief reminder before you fall to your knees in prayer:

A beautiful Christian girl named Agatha lived in Sicily in the third century. The governor heard of Agatha’s beauty and brought her to his palace. He wanted to make her commit sins against purity, but she was brave and would not give in…

“Sins against purity”. What a nice euphemism!

The governor tried sending Agatha to the house of a wicked woman. Perhaps the girl would change for the worse. But Agatha had great trust in God and prayed all the time. She kept herself pure. She would not listen to the evil suggestions of the woman and her daughters.

After a month, she was brought back to the governor. He tried again to win her….

When he realized that she would not sin, the governor became angry. He had Agatha whipped …

…and then sent to prison. She was later martyred at Catania, Sicily, in the year 250.

The moral of the story? “Be obedient, or be whipped”, perhaps? (Let’s just forget the martyring bit!)

“Metro” reviews the DVD of Will Ferrel’s film “Step Brothers”, saying:

The plot is just an excuse for the two leads to clown around and, though some of the ensuing slapstick backfires, there is always a foulmouthed one-liner on the horizon to raise the chuckle count…

However, the best turn is delivered by Jenkins, who steals Ferrell’s thunder by spanking him like a baby.

What really? I mean, literally? I need to know. It may be a bit of a disgusting idea, but come on, is it a proper movie spanking, or is the reviewer being funny?

I see that they’ve been wasting our head-earned money again. The latest? A government-funded book of nursery rhymes for kids, which has re-written ‘What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor’.

The new version reads:

What shall we do with the grumpy pirate?
What shall we do with the grumpy pirate?
What shall we do with the grumpy pirate?
Early in the morning
Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Hooray and up she rises
Early in the morning
Do a little jig and make him smile
Do a little jig and make him smile
Do a little jig and make him smile
Early in the morning.

Clearly, it’s important that we protect the sensitive feelings of drunks and seafarers everywhere. That said, the new version seems designed to cause great offence to miserable ocean-going bandits, and should therefore be banned immediately.

So, why blog this? Aside from the fact that the person responsible should be flogged, the BBC’s article points out that:

Although the Drunken Sailor version familiar to children already leaves out some of the saltier verses.

The original includes such suggestions as: “Shave his belly with a rusty razor”, “Stick him in a bag and beat him senseless” and “Put him in the hold with the captain’s daughter.”

The captain’s daughter was a euphemism for a lashing from a cat o’ nine tails.

On reflection, I’m not actually sure that the flogging reference isn’t less thought-provoking in this particular instance that the vanilla interpretation of what might go on in that hold – or why the captain’s daughter might be there in the first place…

The snowpocalypse has descended onto the North of England. I wonder what it would be like to be spanked in the snow.

The reports of this activity are extremely varied. Some friends claim it’s incredible adrenaline-fueled fun, and others swear, “never again”. This sounds like something I shoud definitely experience for myself.

Although on the whole I’m not fond of the cold, snow is special: it’s fluffy, and fun, and you build snowmen out of it. It improves everything. (Unless, that is, you have to actually get anywhere, in which case it’s a major pain, but I’m not being pragmatic here.) Spanking is good, snow is good, therefore spanking + snow should be twice as good, in theory.

I need to find out.

A quite remarkable story in yesterday’s Independent*:

A woman has been convicted under a 137-year-old law of riding a horse while drunk. Georgina Whitelin, 31, admitted a charge under the 1872 Licensing Act of being drunk in charge of a carriage horse, cattle or steam engine…

Newcastle magistrates’ court was told officers found Whitelin slurring her words and she was unsteady on her feet on 29 October last year. For the prosecution, David Thompson said: “It is not a charge you see every day. The concerns were that she was in control of a large animal where there were other road users [and] it is clear that she was drunk.”

Mark Humble, for the defence, said: “It is a very unusual case nowadays. She accepts she had been drunk on the afternoon in question…”

Under the terms of the 1872 Act, Whitelin was sentenced to be “soundly whipped” by the magistrate. The punishment was administered in the cells beneath the courthouse, at the close of the day’s proceedings. The Official Notice published that evening on the court noticeboard confirmed that the whipping had taken place. Whilst details of the flogging were kept private – and Whitelin was unavailable for comment yesterday – the Act sets out a sentence of “no fewer than twelve, and no more than thirty, strokes of the riding crop to be administered across the bare buttocks.”

* I may have changed one or two details just a tad. (It was a gentleman who was found guilty, and he was fined – but surely an 1872 Act could have some more creative remedies for convicted young ladies?)