The Spanking Writers

We’re not going to a Halloween party, but I’m wondering about dressing up as a schoolgirl anyway. I could go trick-or-treating in Abel’s office.

There’s a chance I may get some sweets, but if an irate Headmaster was trying to get some work done, a girl who interrupted him might end up with a sore bottom. Wouldn’t that be a treat, mmm.

Back home from our marathon trip, and it seems that we’ve been missing interesting announcements back home whilst we’ve been in Japan. According to the BBC:

Thousands of teenagers had a total of 5,171 litres of alcohol confiscated in a summer crackdown on binge drinking, the government has said.

As part of a £1.4m campaign, more than 3,500 youngsters in 69 “priority areas” of England were stopped between July and September.

What I love about this, from an Abel-can-pervert-anything-to-create-scene-potential perspective is the subsequent comment, though: apparently “more than 1,800 parents were informed”.

Not only, it seems was young Haron not studying in the library on the evening in question – but she was with that boy she promised she wouldn’t ever see again. And – shock, horror – she’s not teetotal after all. Indeed (gasps of horrified astonishment) she must have been buying booze underage. Get upstairs immediately, young lady…

And speaking of the Spice Girls: Melanie B has a passage in her autobiography in which the actual spanking seems a lesser punishment than the long-drawn-out anticipation:

If I did something wrong in front of my mum, she would explode and often smack me there and then. With my dad there was never a spontaneous reaction, it would be next Wednesday after school at 6 p.m. ‘Remember what you’ve just done because you’re going to get punished for it next week!’ he’d threaten.

The anticipation was worse than the punishment. I knew exactly what was coming. I’d walk into a silent room, bend over, get smacked (by his hand or a belt), then stand up and walk out of the room without saying a word. Sometimes he used to count the smacks out loud because if I was naughty twice in a week I’d get a double dose. It was so cruel, yet strangely matter-of-fact.

Amid the frantic whirlwind of life and work I still sometimes wake up in a sweat, thinking, What am I supposed to be doing today? It’s that same feeling of anxiety that I experienced in the lead-up to getting smacked. I used to open my eyes with a sinking heart, thinking, I’ve got four/three/two more days to go. I dreaded it. Sometimes, though, I think I was naughty on purpose, just to get dad’s full attention for a few minutes.

Like Haron, I loved our afternoon with the samurai swordsmen.

The master had an impressive presence. Short, calm, softly spoken – and unbelievably authoritative as he walked amidst the group, adjusting their posture, correcting the position in which they held their blades until they were just so. I’m looking forward to applying some of his techniques the next time I have a cane in my hand, as I’m sure they’ll cross over from one art to another…

One exercise had us repeating the practice movement that a samurai would have undertaken 2,000 times each morning – lifting the sword high, practicing a blow: “forward, cut, back, lift…” We only performed the routine 100 times, as did the girl in my post-workshop fantasies after I woke the following morning. See, the cutest of the young ladies in the class had shown quite an aptitude, and had returned to train alone with the master before dawn each morning. He had been unhappy with her attitude from the start of the session; she’d already earned one crisp slap across the face.

His discontent was evident as she performed the 100-cut warm-up, her routine ragged, her swordsmanship untidy. At the end, he left her standing, the heavy sword held high, uncomfortably above her head. A long, meaningful silence.

Eventually, she broke it: “Are you displeased with me, master?”

“Did I give you permission to speak?”

“No, master.”

Silence once more, broken eventually by his instruction to her to take her sword to the corner of the room, and bring back the cane in its place.

“I will not accept such ill-disciplined work.”

“No, master.”

“Nor can I comprehend how you could show such disrespect as to only perform 96 cuts, rather than the required 100.”

“I’m sorry, master.”

He’d untie her belt and open her kimono, pushing it back over her shoulders; it fell to the floor at her feet, leaving her naked in front of him. He’d order her to pick it up, to fold it neatly, then to bend over and grasp her ankles. “You will count – accurately, this time – to 100, whilst learning that I demand rather more application from my pupils than you have offered me this morning.”

“Yes, master.”

And so he’d punish her, quickly and rhythmically: no individual stroke too hard, but their cumulative effect quite agonising as she counted towards her tally.

Afterwards, he’d make the student stand. “Go and get dressed, and leave. There is nothing more I can teach you this morning.” And she would be dismissed, bowing low before him and thanking him for her lesson.

Lest anybody think we have been completely idle on our Japanese holiday, let me assure you that we have not lacked for educational experiences. One such – and by far the best – was a lesson on samurai swordsmanship.

The stuff we learned was an introduction to stage-fighting as opposed to the sort of fighting where you try to actually chop up the opponent. Before unleashing a blow, you are supposed to utter a warning cry each time, so that your sparring partner knows to get out of the way. You bounce the blows instead of following them through for impact. That sort of thing.

Our instructor had choreographed the fights on Kill Bill Vol 1, and runs a sword-fighter acting troupe. He has a slight stature and a gentle manner, yet you wouldn’t even dream of doing anything to displease him. You instantly know that you’re in the presence of a master of his craft. Oh, how my submissive little heart was longing for a proper lesson, instead of the tourist-friendly version with its inherent not entirely deserved praise!

There was an assistant instructor, a young man who had an impressive way with his sword, and a deliciously subservient manner towards the master. I mentally cast him as my brother apprentice in a demanding training programme: somebody who would go out of his way to protect me from the master’s wrath, and yet gently nudge me forward with my learning.

The wooden swords being inspiring fantasy fodder, I also imagined myself learning to use the cane from a renouned disciplinarian. “This is the stroke you use. Flick the wrist, you’re not chopping wood. Good. Now aim for this stripe on the cushion; a hundred repetitions, please… Good. Now the back-hand.”

They do say that Japanese schoolgirl uniforms are incredibly cute. I honestly can’t say I’ve noticed over the past few weeks. (Cough, splutter, Pinocchio-style nose-growing…)

One such young lady came and sat next to us on the train crossing Tokyo last Friday, as we headed across to a temple. White shirt; fawn-coloured sweater and blue blazer; tartan skirt; white socks up almost to her knees; black shoes.

But, we wondered, why was she alone on the subway in the middle of the school day?

“She’s just been sent home for the day,” I speculated. “Suspended.” Before reflecting: “Caned then suspended.”

Only, I realised, she had chosen to sit down: perhaps the caning would still await her at home.

She left at the next station to await her fate; I was rather lost in dreams of scenes, picturing one of those occasions when I find myself with a hotel room (aka Headmaster’s study) at my disposal in central London. A schoolgirl is sent to see me in the middle of the day; I listen, lecture, then have her bend over my desk. Six, maybe eight cane strokes follow – hard, on the bare.

Afterwards, I have her sit as I take out my fountain pen and a sheet of notepaper, to write to her ever-so-strict guardian explaining the circumstances which led to her caning and suspension. I   fold the letter neatly into an envelope; address it, and instruct her to hand it over just as soon as she gets home. And then I dismiss her, sending her to travel across London on the tube in her uniform, knowing that her guardian will be awaiting her return…

Any of you out there use your phones too much? The former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell’s autobiography describes a spanking for just such an offence, although in her case combined with some rather inappropriate technical cleverness:

Mum put a silver lock on our phone to stop us making calls, but Max showed me how to hit the handset cradle button the same number of times as each digit to dial a number. She couldn’t understand why our telephone bills were so high until she came home and caught me in the middle of ‘tapping’.

We were dragged into the sitting room and punished with her flip-flop, which was less painful than the wooden spoon.

I’m imagining the conversation, interrupted: “You want me to join a band, Victoria? That sounds… No, mum… Owwww, owwwwww, owwwwwwww!”

I’ve noted in the past that many spas sound like they should offer kinky treatments. Clearly, someone in the hotel industry reads our blog, given the following description (in somewhat faltering English) from the spa menu here in Tokyo:

Candle therapy

Spa welcomes this truly indulging treatment meant to indulge in this brand-new therapy using natural aromatic warm candles to bring you to heavenly relaxation while your body is warmed and nourished.

Hold on? Wax play? At £260 for 90 minutes? I’m in the wrong business…

The menu goes on to describe their Detoxify therapy, in which “Light to medium strokes incorporate a natural technique that helps stimulate the body.” Only £195. I’m just not quite sure who’s supposed to pay whom.

Slightly more affordably, before leaving Kyoto we treated ourselves to some incense from Lisn, a new offshoot of a 300+ year old company. Each of the aromas has a different name: we thought it would be rather nice to burn 221, 274, 96, 258 and 135 in the house during a scene (respectively “naughty”, “from white to red”, “tears”, leading to “embracing” and “true happiness”).

An advertising billboard we went past on the train in Tokyo proclaimed:

“Wisdom is listening to your master.”

I’m sure it is. Masters can get cranky when they’re ignored.

I have no idea what they were advertising, but I’d love to see more slogans from the same campaign:

“Humility is taking your punishment.”

“Intelligence is admitting your faults.”

“Grace is bending over all the way.”

Any more?

The schoolmasters who lurk in a corner of my mind have been rather busy over the past 48 hours: perhaps all this Japanese travel is making me homesick for more traditional scences!

In years gone by, each idea would have been noted as the potential basis for one of my stories. Yet, time being too tight to write as much as I’d like, they’d have more likely languished for years in my “ideas” file, never to see the light of day. That’s partly why I love blogging – having the ability to capture and share the essence of a good plot, far more immediately. And, of course, readers’ imaginations can then be trusted to do the rest, doubtless just as well as I could in a longer piece of writing.

First, there was the case of the “star chamber”. As in all good public schools, prefects were entrusted with administering discipline to their fellow pupils – only, in this particular establishment, their powers were limited to setting lines, awarding detentions, or making girls stand in line outside the prefects’ room, facing the wall, hands on head. Inflicting corporal punishment? Most certainly not within their remit, although a miscreant could naturally be reported to the housemaster should a caning be deemed appropriate.

So when one such housemaster discovered that his head of house had been taking matters into her own hands, punishing girls over her knee with a plimsoll in the changing rooms before an assembled group of the house prefects? Well, that would be a most serious matter. The young lady would be called into his office, stripped of her prefectorial powers (and with it, of her prefect’s tie and blazer), and awarded the maximum-permitted eight strokes of the cane on the bare.

Second, a call to a headmaster from the local constabulary. One of his girls had been caught red-handed in a large, expensive house a mile from the school – with some of the owner’s wife’s jewellery in her pocket. The householder had proposed an innovative approach to dealing with the matter – and hence to keeping it from the courts and off the front pages of the local newspaper. Would the headmaster care to join them – bringing a cane?

Again, it would seem, eight strokes were the most allowed under the school rules. But this, it was agreed, was not strictly a school matter – and, given the severity of the offence, it was agreed that that should be doubled. The punishment took place in the drawing room, administered by the headmaster, the girl (with jeans and knickers removed) touching her toes in front of both the gentleman she’d burgled and the police officer concerned.

And then to matters more personal for my final headmaster (and into territory where my mind doesn’t usually wander). As usual at the end of the week, he was perusing the punishment reports sent in by each of his housemasters. There, amidst the typed lists of the girls who had been caned (with their offences and number of strokes duly noted) appeared the name of his own daughter, studying in the lower sixth.

That she’d been punished – four strokes – wasn’t altogether surprising: most girls were, at some point, and he’d always insisted that she be shown no favours as a result of her father’s status. But for smoking? He and she had long had a firm agreement on the matter: she wouldn’t. Ever. She’d given her word, her guarantee, her promise – and the consequences of breaking it had always been plainly understood. The headmaster – no, daddy – tidied his desk, took down his cane, and awaited her imminent arrival in his study…