Back to the 1940s

Visiting Bletchley Park clearly inspired me, for that night’s dreams were firmly set in post-war England. As such, modern values didn’t really apply…

In the first, a husband came home from work on a Friday evening, sat down on his favourite armchair in the living room and called his wife over to see him. Over his knees she went, as she did at the start of every weekend, to be reminded of her place with a hard hand spanking. Next up: the hairbrush, on the bare, for various shortcomings during the week just gone – as recorded on a notepad kept on a side table. And then, as he always did, he led her straight upstairs by the wrist; stripped her without a word and pushed her back onto the bed, before taking his pleasure as she lay still and silent beneath him. (At least, she could reflect, that was easier to take than it would be later when he returned from the pub and pushed her face down on the bed, abusing her most intimately…)

Frankly, I’m a bit shocked by the dream – the scenario of compliant housewife abused by husband not being top of my usual kinky lists. But… why am I thinking of vintage clothes shops selling period dresses?

And then there was the girl who’d been caught stealing a sweet from the local shop. The policeman marched her home, and her parents agreed with his proposal – that she be sent into the garden to cut switches from the apple tree, and soundly birched by the constable – skirt lifted and knickers removed, hands on her knees in the middle of the drawing room.

Her father ordered her to her room after her punishment, with an ominous: “I’ll be up to talk to you later.” He left her alone for two hours, to contemplate; the ‘talk’ then involved a severe thrashing with his belt, for disgracing the family. Finally, the following morning she was sent to the newsagent to apologise; he took her into the back room and – after seeing how marked her backside was – caned the backs of her thighs with the rattan he kept for newspaper girls who let him down. (There may also have been other rudeness in said storeroom, but I blush to even think of where my mind wandered).

The detail in the dream was quite wonderful – of plot, characters, locations. It’s just the somewhat un-PC nature of my subconscious that rather surprises me at times…!