The Spanking Writers

At the moment our hallway is decorated by what could pass for a large bundle of kindling. It’s quite a large bunch of hazel twigs tied together with string, like a pauper’s bouquet. And we didn’t have to take a single step into the woods to acquire this prize.

How do we come to own a great big pile of switches?

Well, Abel, Emma Jane and I were driving along last week, when suddenly EJ said, “I’m so glad you didn’t notice that sign. That said “Hazel sticks for sale”.”

“What? Where?” Abel and I both exclaimed. He immediately started to look for a place to turn around and drive back.

The sign by the side of the road was very prominent, and indeed promised hazel sticks to anyone who would turn off the road and drive a little distance towards some randomly spaced warehouses.

One of these warehouses was full of hazel. Most of the sticks it offered were more like poles, twice the height of a human, and breaking the rule of thumb three times over. But beneath these monsters were bundles like we now own: some pretty thick sticks, which helpfully sprouted smaller, more manageable twigs.

Abel bounced out of the car and went to buy a bunch. I just overheard him answering the vendor’s question about needing them as a decoration for our house.

Well, now they’re decorating the hallway. And I must think of something to do with them before vanilla visitors arrive tomorrow.

But I’m still stunned at the ease with which one can obtain several birches’ worth of hazel twigs while simply driving through the countryside.

This morning I woke up in my boyfriend Jimmy’s bed – he was still fast asleep, but I needed to think about getting myself up and catching the train home.

Luckily, I woke up early enough that I had time for a little fantasy: I was a schoolgirl who had sneaked out to see a village boy, and now I was going to have the scale the wall of the school, and sneak back in through the bathroom window. If I got caught, I would surely be caned, and most likely even sent to the Headmaster.

Funnily enough, although I kept imagining the most dreadful punishments I would have to face if caught, in my fantasy I actually escaped discovery, and safely returned to the dormitory, where I was congratulated by my slightly envious friends. I was very pleased with myself for engineering such a lucky escape.

A 48-hour extended roleplay inevitably involves far too much activity to blog in full. There’s a case, too, to an extent of “what goes on in the reformatory stays in the reformatory”: some details are perhaps best left in the depths of the dark woods in which we hid away last weekend. Yet the past weekend’s Victorian-era institution contained too many lovely moments for me not to document at least some of the goings-on.

The five girls had crafted wonderful profiles in advance, each dreaming up her character and the crime(s) of which she had been convicted. The four masters’ profiles were a little more straightfoward – here’s mine, for example:

Abel Jenkins started his working life as a schoolmaster at St Agatha’s in Co Durham. Noting the particularly enthusiastic way in which he corrected girls at the school, the Headmaster suggested that a change of career might be appropriate, and Jenkins therefore ‘resigned’.

He subsequently secured a post at Cramlington College of Correction, an approved school for delinquent girls. His strict, no-nonsense approach attracted the attention of the Governors, who wholeheartedly recommended him for a new position elsewhere. He therefore joined the staff of the Lowewood Reformatory last year.

He enjoys taking full advantage of his position as a member of the institution’s staff. A firm advocate of the power of the rod, he believes that girls in an establishment such as this deserve the strictest treatment, and he takes great pleasure in his work.

To give you a taste of what went on, here are just a few highlights from the rather lovely proceedings:

• The remedial punishments on the first evening: girls arriving in my room for twenty minutes a time to be lectured and punished (over my knee, by hand, hairbrush and small paddle), before being sent on their way to the next master.
• Chastely cuddling Haron and Emma Jane before they went to sleep later that night: a moment of very loving intimacy, far from the madding crowd of the roleplay.
• The line-up of girls in the staff room after breakfast on day two, each lifting her skirt as the four masters walked along the line administering a swift, painful morning spanking.
• Wandering the garden with secateurs on the Saturday morning, whilst other masters taught their lessons, cutting switches from weeping & pussy willow trees with which to whip the girls later.
• An afternoon stroll, out of character, during which I casually asked the two girls whether they were going to skinny dip in the lake – and watching them do so. (That’d be an all-time fantasy fulfilled, then!)
• Breaking Haron’s oh-so-self-confident character during Saturday’s remedial punishment, holding her roughly by the hair and making her look at her sobbing self in the mirror as I scolded her for her crimes and attitude.
• My own struggles with the constraints of my character: I struggled with *not* helping around the house. The girls had complete responsibility for preparing food and drinks, setting tables and clearing away; for a master to assist was very much not the done thing. Real me, as opposed to character me, found this incredibly tough – and quite entertaining, too!
• Sunday morning’s horticulture lesson: I’d arrived with compost, seeds and planting trays, to teach the girls a lesson in self-sufficiency. That they – pretty much – behaved throughout may, by some, be seen to be counter-productive in excuses-for-spanking terms; I actually rather *liked* the fact that the lesson seemed to work so well. And they each now have a plentiful supply of cucumbers and radishes to look forward to later in the year.
• I’m a top (rather than a dom) – and my primary fetish interest is corporal punishment (rather than BDSM in its wider sense). Yet two of the girls, Jessica and Scarlett, found themselves punished in ways that had little to do with spanking; both sessions were incredibly hot. There’s something about a naked (or semi-naked) girl in front of a clothed, abusive gentleman that rather worked for me.
• The climax of proceedings, Sunday afternoon’s ‘birching out’ ceremony, in which each girl in turn was called in, bent over the table – hands held by two masters – and flogged to the tune of 36 strokes.
• Birching both Haron (who’d been ill, so who had’t been birched out) and then Emma Jane (who I thought would benefit from an extra thrashing) at the very end of the afternoon, after the end of the formal proceedings: 36 strokes each, as they lay flat on their bed in turn, pillows positioning their bottoms perfectly for the rod

It was a weekend full of lovely experiences, powerful moments. It’s left me with a desire to play an even darker reformatory scene – shorter, more intense, the characters even more deeply in role.

It is an absolute privilege to be invited to an event of this nature – and the hard work that our hosts put into organising the event is quite remarkable. To them, my very sincere thanks and the greatest respect for pulling off another memorable event. To the girls who attended, likewise – playing with you was a delight, and I’m grateful for your wonderfully good-natured participation throughout such a lovely, long scene.

To finish off our 5th bloggerversary celebrations, I’d like to share a pair of amazing birthday cards we got for the blog.

This one comes from Jessica and Lord Fawcett. I can only imagine what the printers thought, when asked to produce it:

And this card is from Bandree and Master Retep, drawn by Bandree’s own fair hand. I bet you won’t be able to resist spending the next 20 minutes meditating on the intricacies of her cool spanking alphabet:

So, here’s how it goes after the girl is condemned to her fate. The gentleman selects the implement to be used, and then tells the girl to adopt the position in which her punishment is to be inflicted. An entirely predictable, consistently-followed, time-honoured sequence of events.

And yet… I wonder if I’ve got it the right way around. Picture instead the girl being made to bend over – bottom bared, perhaps – and then (and only then) the gentleman choosing his implement behind her. Taking canes from the rack; flexing them; cutting them through the air in search of just the right item with which to punish her.

I suspect that the delay – combined with the uncertainty as to what would be used and the evident care he was taking to ensure she was properly, appropriately punished – would add rather considerably to her nervous, anxious anticipation of what was to come.

I must try it sometime. Soon.

We are spending this weekend in a Victorian reformatory organised by our clever friends Jessica and Lord Fawcett. Abel is, of course, one of the masters, and I’m Meredith Delaney, aka Merrie – an actress from an itinerant troupe, convicted for public brawling. (I was attacked first, okay?)

Reformation so far has involved being forcibly washed with carbolic soap, intimately inspected by head master Dr Grimace, and a healthy dose of spanking from several of the masters.

The most memorable punishment session so far was a pretty humorous encounter with Mr Murdstone. He ordered me over his lap and proceeded to spank me quite smartly, all the while lecturing me on an indignities nature of my chosen career and my path of crime. The lecture went something like this.

Mr Murdstone: “A girl of your intellect – SMACK – should be applying herself – SMACK – for her betterment. – SMACK, SMACK. – Turn your mind to white-collar crime. Forgery, for instance.”

Merrie: *boggle* Er, yes, sir. Better crime sounds brilliant. Thank you, sir.

Today will bring more reformation, more spanking, and, quite likely, more humour, but for now I’m sitting in my White Victorian nighty at the scrubbed kitchen table, ready to bring coffee to one of the masters. I hope he’ll be too tired first thing in the morning to do anything mean.

I’ve been meaning to post about our party last weekend, but somehow the past week’s overtaken me. (A week? Is it really? It seems only moments ago that the house was filled with the most wonderful group of people!).

I’m not always a great player at parties. Despite what you might imagine, I’m actually quite shy about asking people to play with me – and at one’s own event, a paranoia about being a “bad host” means that I tend towards refilling glasses more than whacking bottoms. Yet last week was an exception; I played so many wonderful scenes, with so many lovely people. There were canings, strappings, hand spankings… and numerous whackings observed, too.

Amongst the fun, a school scene as the one with the most players. In an interesting role reversal, HH played a housemaster, whilst I was the headmaster. (Usually, we play the other way around). Unlike the previous day’s scene with Emma Jane, planned in some detail, this was far more spontaneous: he gathered four girls together, ready to bring them in.

As it happened, one other young lady was in my office at the time – not, actually, to play. But I quickly seized the opportunity – to play with her, and to get the girls outside into the right mindset as they heard whackings from within and then saw one of their fellows emerge rubbing her bottom. And then HH lead them in, sharing in disappointed tones that they’d been caught out of bounds. He’d have punished them himself were it not for the dire warning I’d issued (apparently!) in assembly only days before about such misbehaviour, and so he’d deemed it necessary to bring them to see me.

As housemaster, it was of course his duty to punish them for the actual offence: eight strokes each with the tawse for each of the first three girls, and then six with the cane for Emma Jane as a prefect who should have known better. As headmaster, I then doubled the punishment – on the bare this time, another eight tawse whacks for the first three culprits before our prefect took eight of the tawse and six of the cane.

It summed up everything that’s lovely about our community of friends – our shared kink, the degree of trust to be able to play a scene (of not insignificant severity) on the fly, all players confident in the others’ abilities, interests and good intentions. As the evening wore on, more cane strokes followed, hands were tawsed, freshly-cut switches left in fragments across the office floor – and, I hope, a rather good time was had by all!

PS in the interest of discretion, I’ve not named all of the participants – but if you were one of the whacked, and feel like sharing your views of the scene, I’d love to hear your side of the story!

A new episode of our spanking podcast, in which I talk about the best ways to actually get to play at a spanking party.

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A couple of years back, one of our annual summer “Best of the kinky rest” selections was an article about “The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine”. This nineteenth-century journal was published by the widower of the famed Mrs Beeton, and its letters column at times degenerated into (or some might say ‘was enlivened by’) lengthy discussions about Victorian corporal punishment.

I’ve since been reading Kathryn Hughes’s magnificent biography, “The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton” – a truly exceptional work. It describes the Victorian era as “a time when middle-class homes could afford to keep a full complement of domestic staff, none of whom would think of answering back”. Indeed:

“One magazine, the Ladies’ Companion, dedicated a regular monthly column to dealing with servants (what to feed them, how much to pay, what to do when they answered back).”

Anyone care to guess their recommendation on the final point? I’m imagining the liberal application of the hairbrush to maids’ bare bottoms for their cheek, with birchings for more serious or regular insolence.

There’s a description of the school that Isabella attended – yes, to my shock, Mrs Beeton had a first name other than “Mrs”:

“The Heidel’s establishment had started as a day school in the late 1830s, providing a rigorous syllabus for the daughters of well-to-do local people. However by 1850 the 40-year-old headmistress Miss Auguste Heidel was actively seeking British girls as boarders for her school, which occupied a series of premises in the picturesque heart of the city…

Isabella probably entered the school in the summer of 1851, when she was fifteen and a half. It is most likely that she was accompanied by her stepsister Jane Dorling who was vitually the same age.”

‘Rigorous’, eh? Who else is imagining cold showers and regular canings?

Then, on to the “Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine” itself – and the corruption of the letters column, or ‘Conversazione’ as it was known:

“The scandal started quietly enough, with a couple of letters that appeared in the spring issues of 1867. A mother wrote to say that she had returned from abroad to find that her daughter had been subjected to a ‘system of torture’ at the hands of her headmistress designed to reduce the waists of her pupils by means of tight lacing.”

The correspondence then “took flight into erotic fantasy. Every month there would be more letters, purporting to be from regular readers, which nudged the debate into distinctly sado-masochistic territory”:

“Just when it looked as if the tight-lacing correspondence was about to die down for good, an even more controversial conversational thread started up in the ‘Conversazione’. This time the subject was that well-known staple of soft porn, the whipping of maidservants and young girls…”

Readers “eagerly sent in accounts of ‘real life’ experiences which grew more preposterous by the month. Correspondents with pseudonyms such as ‘Etoniensis’, ‘A Rejoicer in the Restoration of the Rod’, ‘Miss Birch’ and ‘R.O.D’ told in immense and repetitive detail of ritualised floggings in ladies’ boarding schools and in clergymen’s studies”:

“The virtues of different implements were discussed with relish, as were the elaborate performances of removing clothing and strapping down the victims, the penitent tears and the urgent begging for mercy. Running in parallel was a second stream of letters purporting to be from women who had undergone such punishments and remembered them with gratitude, not to mention an enormous amount of detail.”

Sam Beeton published the material in a two shilling supplement, which “in addition to the letters themselves… carried advertisements for canes, whips and birches, as well as A History of the Rod and Flagellation and the Flagellants by Revd W. Cooper.”

It’s rather as though some respectable modern-day magazine – Tatler, say, or The Lady – suddenly branched out and produced a “spanking special”. And why not, I say? Perhaps we should all try writing in with appropriately inappropriate letters, and see if we can start a trend.

A short additional post today, to draw your attention (if it’s not already been drawn) to a couple of noteworthy things in the spankosphere.

First, Haron’s other blog – “Spanking Model Speaks”, written as her alter ego Adele Haze – has just had a wonderful redesign. The update marks the fifth anniversary of that blog – hey, we’re big on celebrations round here right now! If you’ve not seen it yet, do click over to the site and have a look – although be warned, it’s certainly not safe for work!

And second, we wanted to mention a wonderful post yesterday by Indy – a regular commenter here and a dear friend. “The blogs are all right” builds superbly on my recent post, “Whither the Spankosphere”. It’s thought provoking, excellently-written, and well worth a read. (And thanks to her for her kind words about The Spanking Writers and our readers, henceforth to be known as the “Friends of TSW”!)