The Spanking Writers

This morning as I waited for a very slow, very temperamental toaster to do its job, I couldn’t help imagining that I was making breakfast for a prefect: a girl I had an enormous crush on, but who is very demanding and quite strict.

She liked her toast done in a particular way. Browned, but not too dry. Buttered hot, as soon is it’s out of the toaster. Dripping with jam to the point of being perilous to clothing. It had taken me a long time to learn to make her toast exactly right.

As I waited by the toaster, I knew that it wouldn’t come out right this time; I just knew it. I also knew what would follow: a cool head-shake, and an order to wait in the corner. She would finish her food anyway, even though it was substandard, while I stared at the thin cobweb at the meeting of two walls of her study. Then, a curt “Come here.”

I would turn, to find her already holding a cane. “You know what to do,” she would say coolly.

I would approach tentatively, and extend my hands, one cradled in the other. I would watch the cane rise, and swish sharply down onto my upturned palm. The pain would be stark and immediate, though not unbearable. My eyes would water anyway; I would be barely able to stand the disappointment in her face.

Swap hands, and another stroke. Swap hands, and another. Six in total, in accordance with tradition. Afterwards she would have me put the cane away on its hook on the wall – though the ritual wouldn’t be over until I’ve returned to shake her hand.

After this, I would be free to return to my own school life – but I would be promising to myself that next time the toast would be perfect.

Regular readers here will know that, for the past three years, I’ve enjoyed a close and loving relationship with Cath. But some good things are always destined to come to an end, and she told me on Friday that the time’s now come for her to concentrate on trying to build a long-term relationship.

We’ve always known this would happen at some point, that moving on would be inevitable. No-one would be more delighted than me to see her with her “Mr Right”, and that was never going to be me (even were I single).

We’re still incredibly fond of each other: loving, even. And I would hate to stand in the way of her long-term happiness. I’m trying to focus on so many wonderful memories   and on making a successful transition to our new status as the fondest of friends. But hard as I try – and the weekend’s been full of caring cuddles and kind words between us, as well as a few tears – I can’t help feeling like I’ve lost a part of me.

So here’s to Cath, a most wonderful person, with such thanks for three very special years, and my loving best wishes for all of the happy times ahead.

Regular readers will know that one of our golden rules here at Spanking Writers is that we never write about sex. I’m not sure entirely why – coy embarrassment? – but it’s served us well. That doesn’t mean, however, that rudeness doesn’t play a part in some of our fantasies, and that we can’t dance around the issue with stories that come close to our self-imposed line.

For example: it’s currently lunchtime on a course I’m running on a client’s site. I have twenty minutes to spare, no internet connection and no particular motivation to think about work. I’ve just disconnected the laptop from the projector before starting to type up the little fantasy that’s been floating through my mind for the past couple of hours whilst the participants worked on a case study.

Our front room. Night-time. Blinds drawn. Candlelight. A group of gentlemen sit around, immaculate in black tie, comfortable on sofas and chaise longues. One pretty girl stands before us, nicely dressed – at least, that is, to start with, before we order her to disrobe. We inspect her, pass her from one to the other; stroking, fondling, probing, squeezing, smacking lightly.

A good, obedient, submissive girl, she knows the rules, even as she squirms and blushes delightfully: that provided we don’t break her limits, she is duty bound to do what we ask. But when she reaches the final gentleman, she rebels – refuses to sit on his knee, to be cuddled, running instead to the door.

I move after her swiftly, for it appears that I am the convenor of our little gathering and the girl in question is mine. I catch her, slap her face hard, pull her back by the wrists before the group. “It appears that our young lady needs to be taught a lesson in obedience,” I explain.

I take her upstairs, and tie her face down over the end of our bed – and then leave her. Soon, the first gentleman arrives and takes up the whip, lashing her hard – before taking full advantage of her. On to the next gentleman, and the next, until all of the company other than me have inflicted their share of her punishment, and have had their pleasure.

My turn. I walk in, to find her sobbing. Inspect her marks, the red stripes left by far-from-gentle floggings. Unbind her. Hold her close. Ask what they did to her: she explains, hesitantly, ashamed. I tell her that of all of the gentlemen, I am the one to whom she owes the greatest apology. She is crying now, even before I reach for the cane and bid her to touch her toes. She takes her punishment bravely – and then I force her face down onto the bed to take her from behind, in the one way she’d been spared thus far.

There’s always this moment of hope, as you rummage around a knick-knack shop of finding something deliciously pervertible. Imagine our delight yesterday as we found this interesting heart-shaped, um, paddle? Carpet beater? Whippy toy?

Unfortunately, it was actually too brittle to use. It would have probably snapped at the first stroke. But I was pleased to have found it nonetheless. I guess, toy-hunting can be a bit like clay pigeon shooting: the thrill of hitting your mark is enough, whether you get to enjoy the spoils.

Covering up, where necessary, for another’s offence must be par for the course for most girls: finding excuses, feigning innocence, trying to put their interrogator of the scent. “Do you know who broke the dormitory window?” “Well, Mr Jenkins, I did see some boys outside throwing stones” – even if that was entirely untrue.

So what would a housemaster do if a girl was caught in such a cover-up? Would he punish her for lying – or accept that she’d acted in line with the girls’ code of honour and thus let her off with a sound scolding? Some, I suspect, would opt for the former – with the young lady receiving just as many strokes of the cane as the original offender. Others might impose a lesser punishment – a Saturday detention, maybe. But, in some ways, I suspect the latter option – the final warning – might actually be the most appropriate.

Transpose the situation, though, to a country house, where a maid has been caught telling  falsehoods to protect the daughter of the house. Same decision – to let her off with a warning? No, for some reason, I’d imagine that the soundest of birchings would come the young servant’s way; the only debate would be whether the flogging was inflicted by the master of the house or by the butler…

So, I was walking along this morning, and suddenly saw a poster ad for a book, with a big ol’ riding crop in the middle of it. The tag line enticingly challenged me to “try keeping this one secret”.

I got all excited about a novel about a scandal involving riding crops, when I noticed that on the book cover the two characters were wearing riding outfits.

Hmm, I guess that would be the other use of a riding crop they had in mind. You know, riding. How disappointing.

According to a poster I spied on the tube, 21 May 2011 is Judgement Day, when messianic forces will visit Earth and (presumably) shut the place down in a hail of fire and brimstone.

Now, it strikes me that it would be foolhardy for a girl to face judgement in a state of sin. So, young ladies, what are you up to on the evening of 20th May? For it seems like a good idea to require you to provide full confessions of any wrong-doing – and then whip you in a sound ‘cleansing of sin’ kind of way. [I wonder - would your marks then last for eternity?!]

I think I should mark the date in our diary – sounds like a fun excuse for a party. On the other hand, it’s actually slightly scary when you consider that the deranged folks making these claims probably *will* be running ceremonies along these lines!

There’s so much daylight all of a sudden – it makes such a difference to wake up when it’s already light, and to not finish my working day in the darkness.

It’s great for everyone – except this girl, a student, who gets so deceived by daylight that she keeps going to bed later and later every day, because it feels so early. She finds it ever more problematic to wake up for her morning lectures, even with the lovely sun shining in her window.

In the end the poor girl has missed so many morning lectures that she gets a letter inviting her to see her tutor. She trembles, because she knows what’s in store for her according to their arrangement at the start of term.

She stands in front of him, mortified, in only her shirt and knickers as he flexes the cane.

“How many morning lectures have you missed?” he asks.

“I don’t know… Eight?”

“Eleven, young lady. It’s eleven strokes for you, and one extra for not even keeping count of your misdemeanors. Please bend over the desk.”

Tears moisten the dark desktop as the cane bites in. The girl thinks longingly of winter, and its safe, dark early nights.

As Haron mentioned in her last post, our weekend took in a visit to Canons Ashby, a National Trust house deep in the Northamptonshire countryside.

Aside from the rather fine wooden paddle in the kitchen, a couple of other aspects of the property caught my imagination.

First was a monument to a former lady of the house, the adorably-named Frances Isabella. She was, it seems, the daughter of a rector in Cumberland. I pictured the tantrums she’d thrown when her father had announced that the young woman was to be wed – to a much older Baronet. (A debt being repaid, perhaps?).

On the day she was to be taken south, even as the coach and horses waited outside the rectory, young Frances was to be found over her father’s knee, bottom bared, being spanked with all his might to punish her for her insolent non-cooperation. She was marrying well, he advised her; she should be grateful and curb her tongue.

She squirmed her way through a remarkably uncomfortable journey as a result. On arrival at her new home, she flounced past her husband-to-be, only becoming more compliant after he’d had her brought to his study that evening, to be whipped – firmly but lovingly – with his riding crop. She cried in his arms afterwards: the first tender moment in their long, happy partnership.

As if that wasn’t enough, the house contained a lovely ‘reading room’. Not a ‘library’, note – a place from which one borrows books – but a bookcase-lined hideaway in which the owner could sit and enjoy his collection. I pictured him there, the fire blazing, as a maid knocked on the door. He called her in; asked after her well-being, for he was a kindly and thoughtful employer.

Shame-faced, she confessed the reason for her visit: that she had been caught skipping her duties, off walking in the meadows when she should have been preparing dinner. As it was not the first such incident, the housekeeper had sent her to the Baronet.

“And what happened to you last time,” he asked. Blushingly, she explained that she had been spanked.

“Then we had better see if a second spanking does the trick, hadn’t we?” he’d told her. Being made to bare herself before *him* was so much more embarrassing; the spanking lasted so much longer; each smack landed with so much more force.

She was crying within seconds; sobbing within moments. And her tears didn’t subside til he’d hugged her after and told her that he knew her to be a good girl at heart.

Yes, I think our new annual membership of the National Trust is going to prove an extremely good purchase…

Yesterday we explored a lovely Elizabethan country house called Canons Ashby. It’s not big, but it’s full of atmosphere and, I’m sure, ghosts of its inhabitants from the centuries past.

The ghosts of the maids can often be seen rubbing their bottoms with a look of wistfulness on their faces. Because the kitchen holds this wooden item:

I believe the kitchen maids in this house were the best behaved young women for miles around.