The Spanking Writers

The American girl at the next table wasn’t the only young lady in trouble in the Oxford coffee shop last weekend. For, sitting next to the window, were an older couple – early 60s, well-spoken – and a pretty young thing with an eastern European accent.

The arrangement was obvious: they were retired academics, who’d taken in a student for the summer to help her to prepare for the local equivalent of her A Levels. They’d be taking her out on tours every day, talking to her incessantly, immersing her in the English language and culture.

She looked miserable, though. For last night she’d stayed out late – well past the 10pm deadline that had been agreed both with her hosts and her own parents before the trip. She’d forgotten her house keys; the smell of alcohol on her breath when they let her in had confirmed their suspicions that she’d spent the night in the pub rather than the cinema.

They’d taken her into the drawing room; she’d stood before them whilst they talked to her about her behaviour. They’d explained how these matters were dealt with traditionally in England, and would have made her take down her jeans and knickers, before bending over the gentleman’s lap for a sound hand-spanking on her bare bottom.

Afterwards, she’d been told to stand. He’d warned that if there were any repetition, he’d have no choice but to take off his belt and make her touch her toes to be punished. Hard. And only then had she been allowed to pull up her clothes, and been sent upstairs to bed.

I’ve cut out the following passage from a Sunday magazine, but can’t remember which one it was. It does paint a yummy picture for me:

It seems inconceivable today that an 11-year-old would be put on a train and told to disembark at a town she knew only from its name on a postcard. I adjusted my hat and was putting the postcard in my blazer pocket when I heard a voice booming down the platform: ‘Are you PH?’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘Well, old thing, we do not wear our hats like that.’ In one swift movement the stocky figure straightened my offending panama. ‘And I am not “miss”. I am Miss White.’

Of course, in the fantasy where it’s me disembarking from the train, she also added: “If you forget next time, you will get a black mark. Ten black marks add up to a spanking, so it’s best if you pay attention.

Oh, how I enjoyed teasing Haron with thoughts of canings whilst she wandered round Oxford colleges with our visitors the other day. I waited for them to return from their tour in a bookstore’s coffee shop, and couldn’t help but observe the table to my right.

Three young American women. Students in the UK for the summer, talking about their course. Two read learned textbooks; the other slouched across her chair with a novel in her hands. And no, she explained to her friends, she wouldn’t be doing the reading they’d been set: it was the weekend!

I was in little doubt that she would be asked to stay behind at the end of their Monday morning tutorial. “Could you explain why you’re so unwilling to complete the assignments I set you?” the academic would ask.

When she could not, he’d offer her a choice – she could be sent home from the course (letters to her university, her parents…). Or he could give her a final chance – “I’d be willing to deal with you in a way that’s proved very effective for some of my undergraduates over the years, with six strokes of the cane.”

She’d be shocked, but would choose the lesser of two evils. After all, she’d think, it couldn’t hurt that much, and the alternative was too terrible to contemplate. He’d clear space amidst the towers of papers on his desk – and a few minutes later, she’d emerge a very sorry girl indeed from his study, determined to work flat out for the remainder of the course and get the very highest grades.

I went on a walking tour of Oxford colleges to indulge my fetish for old buildings. Abel chose retail therapy instead. As I stood among a group in the Quad of the New College,* my phone buzzed with a text message.

Girl on tour heads through the door marked ’strictly private’. Finds herself in Master’s study as he returns. He decides to introduce her to the college’s traditional means of dealing with disobedience.

This improved the already excellent tour a great deal. I could picture the chastened girl walking back through the cloisters, with the students lounging there giving her knowing looks…

*So called for being the oldest, obviously.

To dinner the other evening in one of London’s more original new restaurants, Inamo. It combines outstanding Asian fusion cuisine, with “an interactive ordering system” whereby the menu is projected on to the table in front of you. You make your selections – and place your order – by clicking on the relevant options using a trackpad embedded into the surface of the table.

While you wait for your food and drink to show up, you can select other menu options to change the colour and design of the image shown on the tabletop, or to play battleships with your friends, or to read details of other things to do in the local area. (Sadly, they missed “why not pop in to the Janus shop around the corner, to stock up on canes and c.p. publications” – but otherwise it’s fun. You can even use it to call a taxi!).

And then there’s the Chefcam – a live video feed from the kitchens, so you can watch your food being prepared. But what I really wanted was ManagersOfficeCam. Moments after a cute waitress had made a mistake of any nature, you’d see the office door swing open and she’d appear before the restaurant’s manager. He’d stand, take an implement from the wall, and tell her to lift her skirt and bend over.

You’d watch as he administered the requisite number of strokes, no doubt debating at your table as to how many she deserved, and how hard. Punishment over, she’d be sent on her way – re-emerging into the restaurant itself mere seconds later, rubbing her bottom, wiping away tears, blushing at the certain knowledge that her correction had been observed by any of the diners who’d been tuned in at the time.

I dreamed I was a prefect. This almost never happens: I’m more likely to be dealt with by prefects in my dreams, than be one of them. My boyfriend, also a prefect, had caught a few younger girls smoking, and was about to cane them in his study.

I knew that he particularly disappoved of smoking, and felt sorry for them. I said to him, “Look, I know you have a cricket match tomorrow, you have to preserve your strength. Let me cane them for you.” He was surprised and grateful, and I got to lead the girls to my study instead. I suppose, I caned them after all, but the dream hadn’t stretched that far.

I remember the feeling of responsibility: I mustn’t let him deal with the girls while he’s angry. I must step in. I didn’t want to cane them myself, but felt it was my duty.

I think, I must have been glad when it was over.

I was an army officer in my dreams last night; I found myself on a parade ground, standing before lines of soldiers captured from ranks of the other side of a civil war. They all happened to be female, quite conveniently from a kink perspective.

I addressed them briefly, promising that they would be well-treated in captivity – provided they did what they were told. And then I walked along the ranks, inspecting: they seemed tired, resigned, defeated. Until, that is, I found myself in front of a young woman I recognised from the days before the conflict.

“I’m glad to see that you’re safe,” I observed. “Just a shame that you chose to fight on the wrong side.”

She paused, looked me defiantly in the eyes, then spat in my face.

I turned to my sergeant, standing nearby. “Take her to the guardroom, and add her name to the list of prisoners to be flogged in the morning.”

Sometimes Abel scares me. (In an exciting way.) Here, for instance, is a memento I found from one of our recent scenes:

We were just sitting at home one afternoon, when Abel called me from upstairs, and threw down a sealed envelope that contained the notice. I was feeling quite wimpy, but the spontaneity made me smile.

I got to choose the offence myself, and in the half-hour I had before the appointed hour, I’d decided on vandalism (graffiti, I would explain if asked, but I wasn’t asked). Also, unusually, I was asked how many strokes I’d been sentenced to, and foolishly chose eight.

For some odd reason, the cane hurt more that day than it ever had. I burst into tears after stroke three, and sobbed my way through the rest. And yet, in an odd way, it worked, for all its severity.

And I kept the notice. It was scary, but I liked it.

To the Royal Academy with Haron, to ogle at their John William Waterhouse exhibition – a collection of ‘erotica masking as serious art’ the likes of which I’ve not seen in a major gallery for many a year.

The paintings clearly made an impression, for two of Waterhouse’s works featured vividly in my dream the following night. In the first, he was dealing with the model seen emerging naked from the river in “A Naiad”:

She’d been well-warned: “Stand still while I paint, girl, or I shall punish you.” A final warning had gone unheeded. “By goodness, young lady, I’m going to teach you a lesson. Fetch the cane from the back of the door, and touch your toes. And be quick about it.” Six sharp strokes had followed, before she was sent to stand motionless once again whilst he continued painting – not daring to reach back to soothe her striped behind.

The same model re-appeared in his studio for another work some months later. Again, I pictured the painting quite clearly I my dream: the young woman, naked, outstretched on her back on a stone floor, her wrists chained above her head to the wall. Another girl, being unable to help her escape, was giving her comfort – lying between her legs and exploring. In the background, unbeknownst to the girls, an officer was approaching, whip in hand, having spied their lewd misconduct.

Only, on waking and remembering the scene oh-so-clearly, I also realised that there had been no such image in the exhibition…

Two fellow bloggers have written posts that look at the same issue from opposite points of view, and, like Indecisive Dave from Fast Show I found myself agreeing with both of them. The issue is being dropped into trouble by your friends.

Jessica writes:

There’s something wrong about telling tales. I hardly ever do it, unless I am totally sure that the other person wants, either secretly or openly, to drop them in it. But I would never take private business into the Dom’s Domain. It’s just wrong – underhand, sneaky, and not playing the game.

And Emma-Jane writes:

Most of the time I’m a nice girl. A good friend, empathetic and sympathetic. But sometimes I like to stir it up and get other people into trouble. Especially when I’m not there. Getting a comrade into trouble is almost like playing vicariously. And the brat in me loves it!

On the one hand, I feel for Jessica: suddenly getting spanked for something that you thought was a private moment with friends has to be unpleasant, possibly a safeword-compelling moment for me. The point of girlfriends and bratboy-friends is that you let your hair down around them, as a grown-up, even if you don’t behave like one. It’s your private space, and it can be jarring if the scene-space then expands to swallow it up.

On the other hand, it can be quite nice to get a spanking without having to work hard to attract one – like a gift from your friend. Being quite shy, I’ve been known to dispatch Abel to guys to impart the high-school-worthy message of “My wife fancies you” (or “wants to be spanked by you”, anyway). When friends take care of this for you, it seems thoughtful, helpful and generally fun.

I suppose, my reaction to being dropped into trouble for behaviour the top hadn’t personally witnessed would hugely depend on the tone the spanking would then take. If they have the sense to approach it lightly and playfully, I’d enjoy it. If they try to make a Serious Discipline Session out of it, I’d probably be resentful and unresponsive. Poor tops; so much depends on them.