The Spanking Writers

How I love the theatre! So far this year, I’ve seen some amazing productions – Sir Derek Jacobi’s impressive  King Lear, Rory Kinnear’s magnificent Hamlet, director Danny Boyle’s truly remarkable Frankenstein, Tracy Bennett’s deservedly-acclaimed performance as Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow.

Yet how I wish I lived in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, for the theatrical productions there sound far, far more interesting. Here’s an account from the Portsmouth Patch of April 22:

The beautiful weather of last weekend made an historical walking tour of Tiverton Four Corners all the more charming. The birds were singing, the air was crisp and the historical tales came to life with the help from actors of the Portsmouth Community Theater…

Around the corner, [Cindy] Killavey transformed herself into another townsperson from the past. She told a story from 1810 about a young woman who was sentenced to a public flogging for being unable to pay a town fine. As she was being tied to the whipping post, the governor at that time, Governor Wilbur, drove past the scene.

The crowd flocked to him and begged that he stop the public punishment. He calmly responded that if there was no whipping post, there couldn’t possibly be a flogging. The crowd revolted and tore the post from the ground.

I’m picturing a slightly different outcome in a future production, whereby the actor playing the Governor ends up unfortunately delayed. The other members of the company would have no choice, in the interests of dramatic integrity, other than to continue with the flogging, as the crowd cheered them on.  Not, I hasten to add, Ms Killavey, if you’re reading, that I would wish you any harm: I think we might need to send a volunteer to act as your understudy.

Try and tell me you’ve managed to avoid all the Royal Wedding hysteria. Not even Abel, the world’s most dedicated anti-monarchist, has managed to hide himself away from the coverage, poor thing.

Anyway. Remember 1996? Remember how we first mooted the idea that Prince William might be a spanko? Back then, Abel wrote:

One of Diana’s qualifications for a royal marriage was supposedly that she could arrive at the altar in pristine virginal state. I’m given to wonder whether the same criteria are being applied to Prince William’s apparent beloved, Kate Middleton.

Miss Middleton is rather cute. If sex is not an option, the heir-to-the-heir-to- the-throne presumably has to find alternative ways of ‘entertaining’ her on their holidays together, without actually doing the deed that might debar her from a role as a future Queen.

Now I don’t want to start any scurrilous rumours, but I can’t therefore help but wonder whether spanking forms part of William’s must-not-have-sex repertoire?

Well, now that virginity isn’t an issue any more, are we thinking the spankings will continue? It would be a shame to stop now, wouldn’t it?

Here’s a new toy for you: the Dutch airline KLM are using traditional Delft tiles to decorate the planes, and we’re all invited to design our own tiles on this website.

Here’s one Abel came up with:

And here’s mine:

Have fun creating your own version!

Our previous visit, a couple of years back, to Cragside – the wonderful Victorian-era National Trust property in Northumberland – inspired numerous kinky thoughts. A return trip over Easter proved similarly inspirational – even if the three lovely girls who accompanied me did seem to simultaneously roll their eyes heavenwards at various moments as I corrupted some entirely innocent feature of the tour!

The kitchens were a particular delight, with their description of the differing ranks of maid. At the foot of the ladder were scullery maids, such as 14-year-old Anne Crozier, earning £8 per year (equivalent to £400 today). More senior were kitchen maids, on £14. And they might in turn hope to progress to the lofty rank of housemaid, with their generous annual salary of £18. I pictured the butler, helpfully explaining to the more junior staff that he was only beating them to be helpful – for if their standards failed to improve, they couldn’t hope to achieve promotion.

We reached the dining room, in which a table would be pulled up before the fire on cold winter’s mornings. Who couldn’t imagine the master of the house asking for a pen and paper, and sending a note back, perched atop on his breakfast plate, complaining that (say) his eggs had been overcooked – and demanding that the maid concerned be dealt with?

On the stairs was a rather striking statue of a naked woman in chains. A notice explained that it was the owner’s way of protesting against slavery. Yeah, right. And how did he explain the nude, erotic, unchained statue opposite? Objecting to the high cost of clothes?

Moving on up, we reached the main bedroom. Adjacent to it was a small room with a single bed and a mannequin displaying a maid’s costume. I was immediately entranced by the idea of a “double room with en suite maid”; I think hotels should introduce this immediately. And the dusty bedcover suggested that she should be bent over for a caning immediately.

There was a uniform room. Yes, really. Enough said.

Next, to the picture gallery, built to mark a visit by the then Prince of Wales. I pictured him brushing against a sculpture, and finding a trace of dust dirtying his crisp white gloves. I pictured too the maid responsible, being soundly thrashed the following day after the royal party had departed.

And then into the gardens – with their “Talking Tree” scheme. The thought of the birch and hazel trees telling tales from days gone by filled me with eager anticipation – but sadly none of us could work out how the concept worked.

What do vanilla folks do when they’re visiting these places? For, surely, simply reading about the family history and looking earnestly at the paintings and furniture must be so boring…

It’s ten thirty at night; Easter Saturday, 1824. A bell rings; girls in their long nightdresses stand next to their beds; the masters enter the dormitories. The room inspection is thorough; the pupils too are inspected. Spankings are administered as some girls fail to find favour, and one speaks without permission. Leaving behind the threat of dire consequences should the young ladies be caught talking or out of bed before morning, we retire for the evening.

It’s seven in the morning. The bell rings; we gentlemen enter the first dormitory once more. We find the girls still in bed; they’re ordered to their feet and then swiftly made to bend over: the punishment for failing to stand when masters enter a room is short and sharp. They make their bed; it’s not done to a satisfactory standard: further retribution follows. They’re left to wait whilst the next room is similarly inspected: it proves equally disappointing.

The girls are lined up, taken in turn into the washrooms to shower. For some, the supervision is especially thorough: one girl is whipped, quite naked, for failing to dry herself properly. Another’s attitude is deemed insolent: she too feels the cut of the riding crop.

Breakfast is prepared and served by the girls: gruel and water for them, bacon and eggs with juice for the masters. We have been generous, though, permitting them honey with their cereal to celebrate Easter. We are less tolerant of shortcomings, however: one girl is chastised after the table has been cleared for having forgotten to set a jug of milk on the table; another suffers for providing the senior master with a dirty plate.

The first part of the morning is spent on embroidery, allowing the masters to relax and sip their coffee. The girls toil diligently, yet one of their number produces work that is unacceptably poor. She is beaten, as are the others, who appear to derive humour from the paucity of her efforts.

By this point, it is apparent that the standards of conduct at the school are unacceptable. A bundle of rods is brought into the schoolroom; the girls are instructed to make birch rods, for later use, with the girl who has been at the school the longest appointed as monitor to instruct the others. One girl proves allergic to the pollen; she is ordered to stand outside and face the wall, but is caught minutes later looking away: she is brought inside and turned over a master’s lap for punishment.

Reading aloud follows: passages from learned books. Girls stand in front of Mr Jenkins, holding aloft a first edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. He makes them read a page – from “punishment” and “pupil”, through “pure” to “purgatory”. Each time they stumble over the words, he makes them start again. When they’ve finished, he tests them. Spankings inevitably follow, for careless reading and poor concentration.

Mr Simpson follows a similar approach with a biology textbook, yet he also checks the results of a handwriting exercise that the girls are given to complete with pen and ink. Where their transcription is untidy or inaccurate, punishment follows. Mr Jenkins, sending one girl upstairs to his colleague, notices the poor quality of her work; it does not surprise him that, when he next sees her, her face is tear-stained and she is holding her hands in agony.

It is late morning now, and we call the girls together. Before bed the previous evening, they had been given a poem to learn. Poignantly, though they were not told this, the work was by Lord Byron, who had sadly passed away just five days previously. They were called forward in turn to recite it from memory. The first girl made two errors; the second was still less accurate; the third merely burst into tears.

It was clear from their faces that they knew how disappointed we were in them. Indeed, their performance in the recitation reflected our overall impression of their attitude and efforts. Each, we told them, was to be punished in turn. The first received eight hard strokes from each master on her hands with the tawse; the second, a dozen from each on the bare with a rattan flogger. The senior girl was called forward last, and made an example of: two dozen in total with the birch, her bloomers parted to bare her buttocks.

And then they were dismissed… for tight hugs, to recover, and to share their impressions and glee at what had happened.

Later that evening…

Two girls awaited their fate. Jessamine had been sent to us recently by her outraged parents after appearing on the stage. She’d been caught outside the school, in the company of a member of the theatrical troupe. Victoria, the senior girl, held a key to the back door, and had aided her escape. They were brought to the Punishment Room, an occasional and dreaded experience reserved only for very worst offences.

Mr Simpson lectured Jessamine first: on the dangers of meeting her friend; on how we owed a duty to her parents to deter her; on how her actions had led to the other girl being in trouble too. She was ordered to lie face down on the punishment horse; her skirt was lifted, and the leather ties fastened to hold her in place. The whipping from Mr Jenkins, with a heavy, harsh tawse, brought her to tears: he continued on, applying yet more strokes as hard he could. Never before had he strapped a girl so hard.

Victoria’s turn was next. Why, Mr Jenkins wondered, had a senior girl been so foolish as to let the younger pupil out? She’d landed them both in trouble; he would birch her with particular severity. She too was strapped into position face down; her bloomers were untied. No count was kept of the number of fast, furious, full-strength strokes of the spray that she received: Mr Jenkins lost track of the tally at around sixty. And then he walked around her; she was permitted a cold towel to cool her face. It was clear that she thought the flogging was over, until he raised the rod high and administered a repetition of the strokes from the opposite side to their predecessors. Never before had he birched a girl so hard.

It was Mr Simpson who would really ensure their future good conduct, however. Jessamine was called forward and made to lie on her back on the top of the horse. Her skirt was lifted, and she cried aloud as she was birched on the front of her thighs. Victoria followed, sobbing her way through a similar ordeal. Even Mr Jenkins found their ordeals hard to watch; his concern for them was tempered, however, by knowing that the punishments were utterly deserved.

Before it was over… and the two amazing girls were hugged tightly and close.

With such thanks to Mr Simpson (HH) for hosting the event, and for proposing the idea of basing our planned school scene on the historic “Yorkshire Schools” – the strict, austere establishments mad notorious by Dickens’ Dotheboys Hall. Thanks too to Marlowe and Lily, who contributed to the design of the roleplay but were unfortunately unable to join us on the day – we missed you…

And the biggest thanks of all to Louisa (Eliane), Jessamine (Cath) and Victoria (Emma Jane – who’s also posted her account of the school). The three of you were so wonderful – so convincingly as the girls concerned that I was able to inhabit the character of the rather nasty Mr Jenkins completely for the duration. It’s rare for me to be able to stay entirely in role throughout such an extended scene: that I did so – and derived so much from it – is a tribute to your roleplaying abilities and bravery.

Quite often, when I write about roleplaying, it’s because I need to analyse and process the scene. And then there are times when I simply want to record the fun, so that I can look back in years to come and remember it with pleasure. This Easter weekend, up at HH‘s lovely home, fell decidedly into the latter category, and I can’t resist blogging about it straight away.

Even the shortest, least intense scene was wonderful to play. Shortly after I arrived, young Gwendolyn Andrews (our lovely Emma Jane) found herself reporting to her housemaster in my study. She’d been sent my way by Mr Ashton, the English master, for cheating – submitting a paper that she’d copied from her sister, who’d left the school the year before. A lecture on integrity followed; the junior cane was taken down from the top of the bookshelf, and she was instructed to bend over the arm of the leather sofa to receive six strokes. A sixth-former now, she’d been caned by me back in her first year; she was clearly nervous as a result and pleaded – to no avail – for leniency.

Only… and here’s where the real fun begins. See, the idea of a girl having placed padding in her knickers to minimise the impact of a caning is one of my longest-standing fantasies. I can remember day-dreaming about it as a teenager, and it featured prominently in a couple of my earlier stories (“24 Of The Best” and “The First Time”). Yet isn’t a scene I’ve ever actually played. So we’d spent the few minutes before starting the scene with EJ cutting up squares of bubble-wrap to insert strategically in her clothing.

I feigned surprise when the first two strokes made the oddest noise on impact; looked in amusement as the third – below the padded area – provoked a more genuine response, and the ordered Gwendolyn to her feet. Her dastardly plan was exposed; I marched her off to see Mr Higgins, the headmaster, in his office. Gwendolyn was sent to stand facing the wall as I explained what had happened; the headmaster was duly concerned, and she was soon stretched out over the table with her skirt lifted.

Yet that wasn’t enough, in the circumstances: in a school where bare-bottomed canings were almost unprecedented, her knickers were lowered, and the mortified girl received first six from me – with the headmaster’s senior cane – then six more from him for the deceit.

Hugs followed after she’d been dismissed – and then we set out to experiment scientifically whether a caning over bubble wrap could, in fact, hurt. The answer, it seems, is only after enough strokes to burst the bubbles…!

It was a great, fun scene to start the weekend. But the main event was still to come… as I’ll relate first thing tomorrow morning!

They sit in two rows, in silence, looking on. A girl walks forward between them, towards the wooden chair at the front of the room. On instruction, she lifts her skirt and bends over. He walks behind her and lowers her knickers, taking them right down to her ankles. And then he canes her, hard. Each of the twelve cuts stripe her clearly. And then she is dismissed from their presence.

–

But who are they, these anonymous witnesses to a girl’s punishment? What’s brought her here? Why the formality?

The senior members of the school common room, perhaps – housemasters, the deputy head, looking on as the headmaster inflicts the caning? Some particularly grave offence – or a weekly rite, the girl who’s let herself down most badly in the previous week being called before them? The most serious form of corporal punishment in the school – or the only time it’s used?

Or is it perhaps the prefects, calling in a girl who’s displeased them? The head boy – or would it be the head girl – wielding the rattan? In the hallowed sanctuary of the prefects’ room itself – or in some cold, dark basement? Would it be official, recorded in a punishment book, or merely officially-tolerated?

I think we should be told. Funny how some little reveries leave out such important details – and how much fun one can have filling in the gaps the following morning!

As those of you who follow us on Twitter will know, Haron and I recently toured the most remarkable National Trust property – a Victorian workhouse, on the outskirts of the lovely Nottinghamshire town of Southwell:

A place such as this was bound to be evocative, and so it proved from the outset with a sign next to the ticket desk for a board game: “Dare you play “Master’s Punishment”?” (Sadly, there were no copies on sale).

The introductory video explained how conditions were strict – “to discourage others”. A girl being admitted would be lectured – “you have wilfully chosen the path of profligacy” – before she would be “stripped and washed and handed her workhouse uniform”.

With an introduction like that, we found ourselves deep in a kinky headspace. There was no mention of corporal punishment on the tour – although it would presumably have featured in the schoolroom, particularly for the older girls who’d missed out on an education and were now learning to read and write.

As a result, I had to devise my own hierarchy of discipline. All of the staff would have carried a leather strap, used on a regular basis to correct bad behaviour. Once a week – perhaps on a Sunday morning – the women would be gathered together in the courtyard. A list of those who were deemed to have slacked in their work would be read out; they’d be escorted to the Master’s office, where a sound caning would await.

And then, for the most serious offences – say violence, theft, sexual misdemeanours or repeated misconduct – a girl would be taken to the punishment cell. There, she’d be left to wait until the govenors were ready for her. She’d then be washed thoroughly and dressed in a clean uniform, before being led into the committee room. Details of her offence would be read out; she’d be stripped and bent over the end of the long oak table, held down; and then she’d be birched until she was deemed to be suitably sorry.

I was browsing Fetlife recently, and wondered how people in the spankosphere choose their screen names. For every “naughty_sub” there’s a “John Smith” or a “macrame_girl”. I must admit to a certain bias against people who use their nicknames as personal ads, like “bottom4spanking” etc, but there must something that compels people to choose those names.

I wonder, how did you arrive at your spankosphere nickname?

I’ll start: Haron is a version of Charon, the ferryman on the Styx, which was my nickname at school. How about you?

I was party to an interesting debate on Twitter at the start of this week, discussing different methods of communication between kinky friends. I thought it worthy of a brief follow-up here, as I’m curious to hear the perspectives of those who were, at the time, either (a) asleep or (b) concentrating diligently on their work!

I’m of an age where the telephone and (usually hand-written) letters were the only practical communication options as I matured into adulthood. Email first entered my life at work in ’86, and was around when I went to University later that year – but it really was pretty primitive. It wasn’t until the mid-90s that the soc.sexuality.spanking newsgroup introduced me to the concept of more ‘social’ interaction – where one could engage with a much wider group.

These days, we’re faced with a plethora of options. Here’s what works – and what doesn’t – for me personally when I need to communicate in writing over a distance:

• Email: still my communication method of choice – especially for anything involving planning, longer exploration of ideas / scene issues, or anything less urgent – as well as for chatting to folks whom I may not (yet?) know that well.
• Text or Twitter DM: for more immediate 1:1 thoughts, hugs, ideas, questions. I use the two mechanisms pretty much interchangeably, doubtless sometimes to the confusion of those on the receiving end, based purely on phone tariffs wherever I may be!
• Twitter (@AbelJenkins): for immediate stuff I want to share – things that have caught my eye or that might raise a smile; kinky thoughts which might appeal to a wider group; generally keeping in touch with my real-life and closer online friends. It’s like a friendly local pub: one can call in whenever one likes and chat with lovely people, but propping up the bar permanently isn’t actually necessary!
• Blogging: well, if you’re reading this, you probably already know… Longer musings on spanking-related topics that interest me and which might interest others.

You’ll notice the absence of some media from the above. Facebook? I’m listed (as much to stop anyone else grabbing my name as anything), but don’t use it. I’d not want to connect using “Abel” with friends’ vanilla FB accounts, and don’t need to stalk their ‘real’ lives anyway; few of my close friends have kinky FB accounts; I don’t (by design) have enough non-kinky friends to merit my own vanilla FB page. And more to the point, I don’t, frankly, need another form of communication to keep in touch and to update.

Fetlife? Informed Consent? Again, I’m listed – but pretty much inactive. I guess I would use them more were I actively hunting for new play partners – but I’m more than happy with the friends I have and the others I’m lucky enough to make from time-to-time via the methods above (and through meeting friends of various friends in person).

I sense from the recent debate on Twitter that this may all be reflective of my age, however, and also of my relative lack of non-kinky friends or family. Younger folks, I’m told, have migrated from email almost entirely towards Facebook; I’ve also debated in the past how there’s much less interaction between members of our friendship circle via blog comments here than there was pre-Twitter.

But I’m curious to understand the wider picture: what works best for others, why, and how do you see this evolving over time? Despite never being at the bleeding edge of technology, I tend not to lag *too* far behind, and it’s fascinating to see how the world’s evolving. Who knows: I may just be missing a trick!