The Spanking Writers

Emma has been lamenting the lack of attention her knickers get when she’s being spanked – a sentiment I completely share:

Knickers are far too often whisked down without so much as grudging compliment or a lingering rub of soft lace or delicate silk. Even cheeky messages on such knickers, agonisingly chosen for their needling ability are mostly ignored. And poor knickers spend most of the time around knees or even worse hanging off feet. It’s really no way to treat such beautiful and sexy items…

So to combat this knicker vendetta from toppy types I’m suggesting a sleepover for all my kinky girly friends where we’ll just sit around in our yummy knickers and bras and such and admire each other all night. We’ll even try out the most suitable bending over angles that show of said knickers to best advantage. And it goes without saying there’ll be unlimited changing of knickers with various hands helping in the removal and adjustment of such. There might even be an occasional gentle pat on the bottom, over knickers of course.

That sounds like the very image of heaven, actually.

It makes a huge difference during a spanking to have some warm-up over the knickers. Not because it hurts any less (seriously, a flimsy piece of cotton isn’t going to protect me much). I’m not sure why, actually.

Perhaps, because it signals the seriousness of intent: we’re settled here for a while, you’re not going anywhere, young lady. This is just the beginning for you.

Or perhaps, because it adds another stage to the embarrassing act of exposure: I don’t just bare my bottom in one brave yank on my jeans and knickers together, but have to undress in stages.

Perhaps, instead of a play party, a political party is in order: Respect the Knickers, or something like that.

It struck me that the list of records of the Liverpool Girls’ Reformatory, discussed in my previous post, was missing one important category of documents:

Letters, confiscated

Every letter written by the girls to their friends and families would, of course, have been checked by the staff. And any notes complaining about or discussing the conditions in the Reformatory – strict rules, birchings received – would have been confiscated.

Haron and I lay in bed on Sunday morning speculating on the contents of the file – after, that is, I’d given her six cuts of the cane (much deserved for her somewhat inebriated behaviour the evening before).  Our conclusion was that the most interesting letter in the archive wouldn’t be one intended for a recipient outside the Reformatory; rather, it’d be an intimate billet-doux from one girl to another:

28 June 1922

My dearest Eileen,

It’s so tough in here. Your kisses mean so much to me. I long for the secret moments we find together, for the gentle touch of your fingers.

With love from your sweet friend,

Flora

A good historian would doubtless correlate the date on the letter with the contents of the Admission Register to identify the girls – both aged 18, it would seem – and the Reformatory Punishment Book:

29 June 1922. Eileen Turner. Indeceny. 12 strokes. Cane.

29 June 1922. Flora Denby. Indecency. 12 strokes. Cane.

Both entries would show the govenor’s signature. The only matter left for speculation would be where the punishments took place. In his office, bent over next to one another, taking alternate strokes? In his office, the first girl called in to be caned as the other listened, trembling, outside the door? Or my hunch: in the refectory, after lunch, bent over in full view of the other girls – the caning both punishment and deterrent?

The Times yesterday published this picture of the actress and singer Juliette Lewis enjoying some crowd-surfing at her band’s concert:

I got completely mesmerised by it. In “Natural Born Killers” Ms Lewis’s acting was a perfect example of how vulnerability, violence and sexuality can fuse together; I often think about this when I write.

Also, her bottom is just a little bit perfect.

Oh, and the name of her band? “Juliette and the Licks.”

Oh, how I want to go to the Lancashire Record Office for a day. See, their catalogue shows that they hold the complete records of the “Liverpool Juvenile Reformatory Association”, comprising:

Minutes 1855 – 1924, 1934 – 1956, letter books 1872 – 1919, log books 1909 – 1954, admission registers 1892 – 1955, licence register 1900 – 1914, medical reports 1903 – 1911, 1926 – 1934, punishment books 1909 – 1924, various registers 1904 – 1940 (Including Red Bank School, Newton-le-Willows; Akbar training ship/Heswall Nautical Training School; Liverpool Girls’ Reformatory; and Nile Street and Grafton Street Industrial Schools, Liverpool.)

Punishment books? For the Girls’ Reformatory? Wow!

A little more digging shows that said establishment was located at 6 Mount Vernon Green, Liverpool. It opened in 1857 for 80 girls then expanded in 1912, closing four years later. The staff list for 1891 made me smile: “Superintendent, Mrs Dearle ; assistant superintendent Miss Ferguson ; schoolmistress Miss Callis ; Chaplin Rev. R.G. Breary.” I’m rather curious as to whether Rev. Breary might have been called on to help with matters disciplinary as well as spiritual.

Last issue of the Private Eye has given us this cartoon:

Actually, the season for best switches has passed by now. OK, I’ll stop with the nerdery.

Last night I stayed with a friend, and we watched an old spanking film. The girl in it was spanked over her knickers: white cotton, high-leg, snug but not too tight.

“That’s pretty much my perfect kind of knickers,” said my friend, sounding awfully content.

I saw what he meant, but I wasn’t sure I had the same love of a particular kind of knickers. White cotton is nice, but, say, polka-dot is also cute. Then there’s silk. Or lace. They’re all very spankable kinds of underwear.

Do you think a specific kind of knickers is particularly suitable for a spanking, or is the choice dictated by the occasion?

I found myself observing a course about business writing the other day. The tutor (a top journalist) explained that it was OK to start a sentence with ‘And’ or ‘But’.

One of the participants piped up, “My English teacher at school would have caned you for that sort of thing.”

Cue laughter in the room. The delegate concerned looked surprised: “Literally. Well, actually, it would have been the belt: it was Scotland.”

Later, we reviewed some samples of the participants’ writing. I was rather disappointed that we couldn’t apply the traditional local methods to correct the young ladies’ mistakes…

——-

P.S. Later, the course tutor led 1::1 sessions with each participant, in which he reviewed examples of their writing.

“It’s like being called in to see the headmaster,” one of the girls commented.

“It’s OK: I won’t use the cane,” the trainer responded.

“That’s a shame,” another of the lasses exclaimed.

Last night I dreamed that Abel and I were invited to a very intense spanking party. There would be much heavy play involved. I was actually quite apprehensive about this, not at all sure I wanted to go and be spanked and caned that hard.

But my apprehension wasn’t as acute as Abel’s, when he realised that the party was going to happen in the woods, and we would all have to sleep in tents.

And that, my friends, was a complete deal-breaker.

We’ve fallen completely in love with one of the pubs nearby. Real ale, wonderful food – and two of the cutest and friendliest barmaids you could imagine.

They’re usually fairly relaxed – smart jeans, black T-shirts, chatting merrily away to all and sundry, But the other night? Smart dressed, serious looks, clearly stressed.

Over to our left was a large table set for dinner for twelve, above which floated “Happy 60th Birthday” balloons. And the barmaids? One walked over and scanned the table, frowning – adjusting the placement of a spoon here, lining up a tablemat ever-so-slightly-more-neatly there, checking chairs were perfectly in line. A gap of a couple of minutes, and the other barmaid would be across, fussing over the layout. Another two minutes, and the first lass was back making yet more minute adjustments.

We realised the reason for their concern pretty much straight away. The guest in question was a local dignitary; it was a great honour for the pub to have been selected for his celebration. The landlord had made it very clear that the service for the group must be absolutely spot-on, and that any infractions would be punished after closing time with a sound strapping. Indeed, perhaps one of the girls, or both, had already had to hold out their hands that evening for a taste of the tawse, after the boss’s initial inspection had left him unimpressed…

What a lovely series of images flashed across my imagination last night.

Haron had been out for the evening, and I’d dozed off before she got home. When she climbed into bed, I woke with a start. See, I’d just been dreaming about her. I was her Housemaster, and we’d just walked past the Headmaster together. And I happened to know it was the first time that she would have seen him since he’d caned her a few days before. She politely said, “Good morning,” with not a flicker of emotion, but I could sense her blinking back tears.

Later, I had a girl to cane. Now, most of the girls in my stories learn of their fate via letters in their pigeon-holes, prefects arriving at the classroom door, or notices proclaiming their impending punishment. This time, we were in the school dining room at lunchtime. I’d finished my meal, and walked along the table past the girls in my house. I stopped in front of one of them. “Miss —-. Could I see you in my study after lunch?” Both she – and the other girls around – would know that this could only mean one thing…

And my story-girls often still have a faint glimer of hope that they might escape punishment when they walk in to see their Housemaster. Such optimism is usually crushed by the sight of a cane on the desk, or the schoolmaster walking towards a locked cupboard to take out an implement. Before the night was out, I’d dreamt of a new spin on the old routine – when a girl walked into my study, and saw that the curtains were closed. For my office overlooked the playground, and a caning should be administered in private. I rather liked the idea that a girl’s heart might sink simply at the sight of drawn curtains, knowing what this inevitably meant…