The Spanking Writers

To Germany – having conveniently scheduled a business trip there for the day prior to the Easter holiday weekend, giving me the excuse to stay over with a similarly-minded friend for a few days.

We returned to the hotel one afternoon to find my brand new wooden spoon ever-so-neatly placed on the bedside table: so thoughtful of the hotel to leave it in easy reach! I do wonder what our room maid thought when she saw it – whether it was “I wonder what they were eating” or “I wonder whether it hurt”?

No wonder the hotel staff were being so polite to us for the remainder of our stay.

Thank you, Your Majesty.

Really. I mean, I know I’m not the biggest fan of the monarchy. But us mere ‘subjects’ can now tour your Royal Yacht, Britannia, moored in Edinburgh. Below decks is an old handwritten notice regulating the sailors’ lives.

Item ten inevitably caught our eyes: “Any transgression of these rules will be punished severely.” How nice. Not ‘all’, presuming that transgressions would occur. But ‘any’: in the very unlikely event…

Then the audio-commentary in the dining room described how the place settings had to be just so. Everything laid out precisely. To the centimetre. And how the settings would be measured with a ruler before dinner. Guess what Haron’s going to have to do the next time we have pervy friends for dinner? Guess what’s gonna happen to her with the ruler for any inaccuracies???

And then there was Your Majesty’s souvenir shop. Resisting the temptation to purchase the pseudo-naval memorabilia (there being a distinct absence of cat o’nine tails), we found ourselves in front of a leather fly swat. A very nice leather fly swat indeed.

My mum arrived: “Oh, they come in really handy in the summer. Do you need one?” I assented, as Haron shook her head frantically. What a kind mother: the implement was whisked out of my hands into her shopping basket.

I’m pretty confident (despite some suspicions about my father’s probably-unfulfilled kinky inclinations, of which more anon) that her definition of ‘handiness’ is different to mine….Three hours later, Haron was bent tightly over the armchair back in our hotel to appreciate her mother-in-law’s generosity. Most enjoyable. And at least any Buddhists readers can rest assured that no flies will be harmed with our new swatter.

Later in the evening, over dinner, my father asked Haron how girls were punished at school in Ukraine. He seemed quite disappointed that they were merely made to stand in the corner. I was quite disappointed that she didn’t invent birchings in front of the school, or solitary canings in Headmasters’ offices.

Couldn’t help but giggle at the description of a tawse on eBay, from one of my favourite sellers there. He’s describing a school tawse which came from a London school, and which dates from the 1930s. It’s ’17″ long x 1 1/4 x 1/8″ thick’ and he bought it from someone who thought it came from Highgate School.

The section that made me laugh: “on the reverse someone has written “bastard” in ink”.

Cue stern, outraged, booming voice: “Who was responsible for this?”

Silence amongst the assembled masses, pupils staring down at their desks. The author sitting still as a statue, maintaining an air of innocence. Some glancing around, seeking out the guilty party. Some blushing despite their lack of involvement.

“I shall thrash each of you unless the culprit owns up.”

Silence. But furious glances now being thrown around the room.

I wonder what would have happened. A mass thrashing?

Or a sheepish student owning up? My goodness, what a whacking that would have been…

The usual batch of spanking-influenced newspaper clippings, starting with the ‘men’ section in ‘times2′. (I quote literally, the lower case and the lack of a space before the ’2′ presumably being a ridiculously inept attempt on the part of the distinguished paper to appeal to younger readers).

The heading: “Six of the best.” (Clichéd, I know, but still pings onto my kinky radar every time). The sub-heading: “Men’s belts.” (How appropriate, I thought. “Six of the best school canes” would be preferable, but beggars can’t….). Amongst their selection: a “Distressed leather belt” from a company called Reiss. (How sweet. The poor belt is upset at the thought of inflicting pain….)

I have to say that my collection of belts far surpasses any of their recommendations. There’s one made from harness leather by a Scottish company that used make tawses; there’s the horse-hobbling belt I picked up in Australia recently. But The Times feature still amused me. I’ll post some photos in due course.

And then there was a predictable batch of notes about this evening’s new TV series “That’ll Teach ‘Em.” For those of you unfamiliar with the concept (equals anyone from outside the UK, all kinky Brits having been glued to their screens during the two previous series), the programme makers take a group of modern-day students and put them into an old-fashioned school environment for a few weeks.

This series is going to work especially well for me, as the youngsters are separated into single-sex classes and not allowed to come within six inches (!) of the opposite gender. No boys to worry about in my fantasies about the girls’ classes, then. (Not that that stopped me writing a story inspired by the first series, which you’ll find on our stories site).

The Standard advises that “misbehaviour attracts 1950s-style punishments”, and The Independent pictures a mortar-board-clad teacher flexing a stick. Sadly, I fear the programme itself can only be a let-down….

Wandering round Greenwich this afternoon, being silly at the Royal Observatory. Jumping back and forth across the prime meridian line (“now I’m in the east, now I’m in the west, now I’m straddling the whole world”); ogling John Harrison’s original timepieces (if you’ve read “Longitude”, then you’ll realise just how awe-inspiring these marvels really are).

And we wandered into their wonderful souvenir store. Now if only I had £1,800 to buy their top-of-the-range orrery…. I always adore unusual shops like this – and they usually throw up something that can be misused for fetish purposes!

This time, I focused in on a display of egg-timers and hour glasses. Now three minutes may be long enough to soft-boil an egg, but one can hardly make an impression on a girl in three minutes. And an hour might be deemed excessive.

But they had a device called a sermon timer – the grains slide through in exactly fifteen minutes. I had to buy one, of course: a visual tormentor to support “you may wait for fifteen minutes to think about your misbehaviour before I administer your whipping”, or a quarter-hour with hands on head to “reflect on what you’ve just learnt”.

Or, of course, to time a fifteen-minute punishment: an unusual form of ‘sermon’ to correct a girl’s misguided approach. Haron was horrified at the thought, of course.

And what a nice image of a demure maid in some Victorian rectory being called before the parson for a carefully-timed punishment, using his sermon timer….