“I do believe…”

A degree of writer’s block has afflicted me lately when it comes to documenting real-life play. So I’ve not had chance to write about the most marvellous 1940s scene, preceded by a day in clothes of the era on steam trains. Four gentlemen contributing to the war effort by interrogating four brave and delightful young ladies… Professor Jenkins of Bletchley ‎Park is a character who will most definitely re-appear! Nor have I written about several fabulous other scenes: a schoolgirl in her pyjamas being caned by her housemaster being the most recent.

But Singapore, where I was working this week, has reinvigorated my kinky writing senses to the full – even if, as yet, in a theoretical not practical way. I blame the local newspaper. See, a story about parents monitoring their 17-year-old daughter’s clot‎hes to ensure they had ‘longer hemlines’ and were ‘quite appropriate’ was bound to spark fantasies about what might happen were photos to show up on Facebook revealing that she had changed into a more daring outfit *after* leaving home for a party.

And that was before I turned to the very next page to find an article entitled “Mum’s strict about grades”. “You have to be authoritative,” she commented outlining the strict regime of study time and homework-checking that had governed the lives of her three daughters (now in their early 20s). And that was before the article posed the memorable question:

“Do you believe in caning?”