The Spanking Writers

Our good friend Mr Allen has been doing some research. He’s kindly written up his findings on matters of great import, and has generously allowed us to share them here. So, ladies and gentlemen, I present the most fascinating exploration of the history of the Manx Birch:

The final official administration of the Manx Birch was in January 1976. Until this time, judicial corporal punishment in the Isle of Man included a fearsome implement made from 4 or 5 straight but whippy hazel rods of about 6mm in diameter tapering to 4mm at the tips. The rods are bound together at the handle and middle section to form a “Manx Birch”. For maximum efficacy, fresh rods are cut and splayed out at the business end and administered on the bared bottom of offenders with maximum possible force. The bottom feels five stingy individual fingers of the birch not dissimilar to multiple thin dragon canes all landing at once. This burning pain builds throughout the administration and remains hours after the birch has been administered.

Officially, this implement weighed a maximum 9oz and 40″ overall length. Any heavier, it could be easier to take, just bruising the bottom. The thin and whippy implement bites in and assures a well striped and welted bottom. Remarkably it leaves minimal damage to the skin and at most minor surface grazes.

For those interested in enacting this judicial administration, hazel rods can be obtained from commercial woodland supplies where suckers are coppiced from hazel trees. Collected, expect to pay up to 50p for each selected rod. As hazel rods cannot be cleaned, make sure that sufficient are purchased for each play partner.

Assembly is simple. Wind masking tape around the handle and midsection to tightly bind the rods together. If the rods are bunched together at the business end, then the sensation is more of a thud and not too severe. Binding the rods together so that they splay out as fingers at the business end, the rods become incredibly effective. Ideally, fresh rods should be used and soaked a few days before use making them supple and springy. A few moments spent sanding down or removing the small nodules around the business end will also help minimise damage in play, something the offenders were not afforded when this implement was used in an official capacity.

Mr Allen

March 2011

That’s the theory. I should add that the practical followed a couple of weeks ago, in which I had the pleasure of joining Mr Allen as we re-introduced the authentic Manx birch for disciplinary purposes.

The rods are much heavier that the so-called Manx birches I’ve used in the past (made from, of all things, birch – rather than hazel, as I now know to be more historically accurate) – and rather less flexible.

The brave girls on the receiving end were Cate Stoker and Catherine: six strokes from each of us for each of them, followed by an additional dozen for Cate – the initial flogging having broken Cath’s skin a little to the point at which we were concerned to proceed further. It produced a delightful reaction from each of them.

The hard hand tawsings that rounded of the session for each of them, trialling Mr Allen’s latest Lochgelly purchases, were, of course, entirely cruel – and all the more fun for that!

Having now experimented once with this wonderful – if somewhat scary – implement, and having been generously given more to take away for future use, I need to go away and practice my birching technique on a few cushions; I do rather like the idea of a fuller judicial scene, which is scheduled to take place before very long!

Huge thanks to Mr Allen for sharing the fruits of his research – and also, of course, to both of the girls for playing!

A couple of days ago we went to see the play “The Children’s Hour” in the West End. There’s been a lot of attention towards it in our circle of friends, because it’s set in a girls’ school – uniforms galore with a lot of spanking potential, right?

Well, yes, we got uniforms. Lovely ones, in fact: burgundy gymslips with red sashes. But even having heaps of fantasy material parading across the stage in front of me couldn’t make up for the fact that the play was so badly directed and painfully overacted as to be laughable. I was so frustrated with it – I’m sure actors aren’t supposed to bellow their tirades at each other with no change of tone or expression – that I left in the interval, so I can’t say much about the story, but Abel assures me it got worse in the second act than the histrionic of the first act suggested.

I amused myself on the train by trying to imagine how spanking could have improved the play, by changing the characters’ reactions to the behaviour of the unappealing main character.

Teacher: Mary you lied about being late for class.

Mary: No, I didn’t! And I’m going to have a pretend fainting fit, because I’m a pathological liar!

Teacher: Very well, while you’re pretending to have fainted, I’m going to whip you with this cane. That’ll revive you.

Mary: Arrrgh! I hate you! I’m going to run away and tell Grandma that you’re a lesbian!

Hmm, maybe spanking wouldn’t improve the plot so much. How about this:

Mary: I’ve run away from school!

Grandma: Well, that’s very naughty.

Mary: No, it’s OK, because my teachers are lesbians! I swear it on the grave of my father, who was your favourite son, so you’re bound to let me stay home and feed me cookies now, right?

Grandma: You are an appalling little liar. I’m going to feed you cod liver oil and spank your bottom until you stop believing that the whole world owes you.

There, much better now. Evil punished, innocence protected. Not only is the play saved, but it can also end after the first act, letting everybody go home on an earlier train.

Any other plays we can improve by spanking? I fancy having a go at The Crucible next.

See, I’m being good at keeping to resolutions at the moment. Going to the gym and sticking to a diet – both are on course, thanks to the most wonderful support from my girls. And now that I’m on a roll, let’s have a go at keeping to my recently-discussed promise to try and overcome my writer’s block when it comes to real-life scenes.

I’ve just spent the most lovely weekend in Dublin with Emma Jane. Various scene ideas had been floated – a favoured maid in trouble with her master; an exploited girl being punished. And yet we’d not quite fallen on anything that felt right.

The reason? That, actually, neither of us wanted to do ‘dark’. We get too little time together; we’re too much each other’s equals in the real world; we want our time together to be happy and loving. And to break that magic by heading to intense, deep, sometimes miserable places? It’s increasingly not what works for us as a couple when we’re alone with one another.

Fortunately, we’d popped into American Apparel whilst out for a stroll, and some rather lovely blue gym knickers and over-the-knee black socks had found their way into our basket. So the hockey captain soon presented herself to her housemaster, having been sent to his study by the hockey mistress.

In an unplanned, spontaneous scene, the first moments are always ones of exploration – of one’s partner’s character and ones own. Strict, kind? Formal, informal? Disappointed and caring, routine and distant? And on this occassion, I immediately felt sorry for the girl before me: tired, over-worked, stressed about the balance between her games commitments and academic work.

I wanted to hug her, to tell her it’d all be fine. And yet… Being hockey captain brought with it responsibilities, which couldn’t be shirked at whim. Every good girl has to balance her studies with her extra-curricula activities. And the games mistress had, after all, been so disappointed in her that she’d been sent to me.

We talked. I tried to support, offer words of advice. But I knew that that wouldn’t suffice. I made her bend over with her hands on the bed; lowered said knickers; strapped her less to punish than to help, support, encourage. Six smart strokes, marking her clearly, a lesson to her that she could and must succeed in her various school commitments. And then a hug afterwards from a housemaster who cared.

There was a time when I enjoyed being out of control in scenes. It was delicious to have the top decide my fate, to have no say – other than in the general sense of limits – about what was happening to me, to be surprised.

For some reason all these things are now my idea of spanking hell. If I’m going to play, I want to know exactly what I’m getting into. I want to contribute into the decision on implements to be used, and how hard they’ll be used, and for how long. And please, don’t try to spring a surprise on me; I’ll just pretend I expected this turn of events all along, and secretly seethe.

I don’t know why this change has happened, and can’t even put my finger on when, but in masochistic terms I’ve turned into an utter control freak.

Pop psychology says that people who are in control in their personal life and at work are supposed to long to give up control come playtime. Well. Back when I enjoyed being under others’ control, I was a dazed recent immigrant and a student, not exactly the boss of anyone.

Now I’m older, more confident, and work for myself. I should be craving a dominant hand to take away the stress of having to be a grown-up. Yet, I’m enjoying being a grown-up so much that in spanking play I just want
more of the same, whether I’m topping or bottoming.

I can’t say I’m entirely happy with this state of affairs, because I no longer feel like joining in with a lot of play that I would have previously found attractive, and I miss it. That said… there must be other ways of playing – the way of control freaks, so to speak – which is there for me to discover and enjoy.

So, how about you? Are you a control freak or control phobic in the scene context?

A challenge was thrown at me (ever so nicely) in conversation a little while back: “Why don’t you write more about the real-life scenes that you play…?”

It’s an interesting question, and one that’s had me pondering. I love real-life roleplay – in many ways, the thoughts and fantasies I generate and share here so regularly really are a means to an end: if I could play out every scene idea I write up on the blog, I’d be a happy (albeit tired) man.

And I do – lucky man that I am – get to play pretty regularly. So what holds me back from describing the scenes I play with my partners and other friends? When Rebecca came to visit last autumn in the guise of an evacuee, picked up from her local station with her 1940s suitcase, the scene was quite excellent. Likewise the scene in which masonic types conspired to keep a girl – Jessica – out of formal trouble in the courts, if she was sent to one of their number to be whipped her for her offences. Lovely evenings in recent months playing scenes with Eliane and Toby; whackings administered at the always-marvellous Lowewood Academy shortly after the turn of the year; a great recent group roleplay under the guise of St Anne’s School; spankings galore (albeit more informal) at parties with dear friends… All have passed unblogged in the past few months.

So, why don’t I write about them? After all, I love it when others describe scenes I’ve played with them, and it’s something I used to do far more often. It’s just that somehow these days, it somehow seems easier to describe scenarios I’d like to play than those I have just enjoyed.

Partly, it’s time. I travel so much that it’s not always easy to find a moment to stop, reflect, compose my thoughts, in the days immediately following a scene. Writing a too-brief account, or posting it weeks later, would somehow trivialise it.

Partly, it’s the difficulty of transferring the magic of a scene from real-life to the written word. Somehow once I’ve dressed the part, spoken the words, acted out the deeds, the typed version feels a mere shadow of the event itself. For even the most wonderful scene, a blog post can only offer a pale imitation of what actually happened.

Partly, it’s wanting to hear my play partner’s perspectives after the event: I know what I felt during the scene; I’d like to hear her views.

Partly, it’s fear of breaking the magic spell cast by a successful spanking encounter. If we’ve both enjoyed it, yet the person I’ve played with doesn’t like my written account of what we did, it might end up making the memory of a good scene somehow less satisfying. I live in fear of not doing justice to proceedings, of causing offence – and yet, I guess, by not blogging it at all, I may end up doing precisely that.

And partly, I guess, the thought of writing down details of spankings behind closed doors can sometimes make me feel rather shy – especially when it comes to discussing play with my loved ones, as opposed to that with other friends.

Excuses, excuses… but it is a genuine block. I’m determined to try to write more along these lines – but I’m also curious as to what others think. Do my fears ring true? How do others of you with your own blogs overcome said barriers when it comes to writing descriptions of real-life play?

There’s a certain pleasure in realising I need a new school shirt.

(And yes, I really do need it. My old shirt has an odd, jagged rip in its sleeve, the origins of which puzzle me.)

Ordinarily I hate shopping for clothes, but school uniforms are not really just any clothes, right? A white school shirt may be the simplest part of the outfit, but there’s still a lot of pleasure in choosing it. The shape of the collar, the length of sleeves and the presence or absence of the breast pocket all matter, as well as the tightness of the top button.

Even though this time I’m most likely to order my shirt online from John Lewis, I have fond memories of previous school shirts being bought in uniform shops all over the country. Aitken and Niven in Edinburgh is an old favourite; it’s a shame I’m unlikely to go there any time soon. Old-fashioned department stores can also be quite promising.

I’m looking forward to my new shirt. Very much.

“Go straight to jail! Do not pass ‘go’… and during your sentence, you’ll be ‘privately whipped’.”

But when? Which would be more traumatic:

(a) knowing you’d be punished on admission to the jail

(b) knowing that you’d be punished on a certain, specified date some time into your sentence

(c) not being told the date – merely that it would happen, and could take place at any time of the guards’ choosing during your imprisonment?

I’m travelling right now, and a thought that’s been with me a lot is the idea of bringing staff with you wherever you go. The lady would have her maid with her, wouldn’t she?

The maid would be responsible for packing and carrying her own instrument of correction. It’s impractical to travel with canes and birch rods, and unwise to rely on being able to borrow or otherwise procure an implement if the need arises. There would have to be a special travel implement that the maid would know was reserved for punishment on the road.

I’m thinking, maybe a short leather strap with the lady’s mark on the handle. Or, perhaps, a special hairbrush? Or that foreign invention, a martinet?

I can’t decide what would be best, and my preference changes depending on whether I picture myself as the lady or the maid!

Perched in the lobby bar of my outskirts-of-Rome hotel earlier in the week, sipping a cappuccino and nibbling a delightful but decidely diet-unfriendly biscuit (bad me!), I was distracted by the arrival of a flight crew.

They’d clearly flown in from somewhere in Asia; the stewardesses looked cute, immaculate and gorgeous in their designer uniforms. My mind wandered…

They’d be tired, of course, after their lengthy trip. The routine would be the same whenever and wherever they landed after a long-haul flight: check in, shower, then catch a nap before heading out for dinner at a nice local restaurant.

Oh, but I miss one important step for the lass looking downcast at the back of the group – the one who’d been caught sleeping en route when she should have been serving customers. Her hotel routine would be rather different: check in, shower, then report to the captain’s room for punishment.

He’d express his disappointment in her – for so selfishly letting down her colleagues, and for failing to take proper care of her travellers. And then he’d make her stand facing him and take down her trousers and knickers, before bending her over his knee: the shame would be as much part of the punishment as the prolonged hand spanking that would follow. She’d plead, apologise, beg for mercy, apologise more, and eventually allow her tears to flow. And afterwards he’d hug her tight, before sending her back to her room…

(Any alternative endings in which he cuddled her closer and they shared their post-flight nap chastely together on his bed would be quite improper. As would any variations in which her recuperation was less chaste, as she made amends – or he made her make amends – for her misconduct. Honestly: I know how some of you think: you’re such perverts!)

In the last couple of posts I’ve been looking at the 1930s book “Letters to schoolmasters”, and its author’s no-nonsense attitudes to education. I’ve found some pretty useful tips for future role-play, if ever I find myself in the position of role-playing a schoolmistress.

Before we say good-bye to him, here are some ideas for how non-corporal punishment can be used in the classroom:

Punish slightly at first and, so far as school custom allows, by punishments which touch you personally, such as short passages of repetition. But remember that repetition may be the most uneven of punishments: one boy may memorize in a twelfth part of the time another takes. It is your business to rectify this: watch the self-satisfied smirk and turn it down for a wrong syllable; carry the lame dog over his stiles.

…A really forward class needs drastic measures: it takes a stubborn lot to hold out long against repeated doses of dictation (use all sorts of language like the builders of Babel!) served out to them too fast for their comfort but not so fast as to give an excuse for recalcitrancy, until the manliest spirit wilts.

I particularly enjoyed the last bit – I can just see a class of miscreants, scribbling away, languages swapping every few paragraph, with a promise of a caning to the bottom three spellers in the class.