The Spanking Writers

A series of letters in the Guardian last month discussed collective nouns. There’s a “charm of goldfinches”, a “shrewdness of apes” and a “zeal of zebras”.

And guess what a group of teachers is known as? Why, a “torture”, of course..

2 Comments »

Checking into our London hotel, we saw this notice on the bedside table:

OK, hands up who read that line as ‘Caning for the world we live in’? ‘Cause both of use, independently, saw just that.

Actually, I think it would be a much better note to put in a hotel room.

Cane the world! Canings all ’round! Let’s start with Abel!

29 Comments »

To some in our party, our inclusion of the Criminal Museum on our recent Viennese itinerary seemed a little odd. “But it sounds gruesome.” “But it’s in the middle of nowhere.” “But there are so many other places to visit.”

We pleaded that Haron needed to visit, to help her legal studies. After all, there could be some fascinating stuff that might help her research. So we won the day.

The real reason’s below (and yes, Haron did get a few odd looks as she snapped the photo):

Yes, dear readers, in the midst of some exceptionally unpleasant displays of murder weapons, skulls of executed villains “and the very cords used to hang them” - there, in the basement, was what our guidebook had enticed us with: a collection of “pieces of equipment from a 19th-century sado-masochist salon”.

Sadly, the display case was firmly locked - but do feel free to email the curators and point out that many museums these days offer historical re-enactments to boost visitor numbers. Only, I suppose, those re-enactments typically involve participants putting on authentic costumes, rather than taking them off…

(Hey, do you think the contents of my study might end up in a museum one day?)

8 Comments »

From the New Yorker’s list of gigs this week;

“Aug 26: The Asylum Street Spankers, a long-standing free-wheeling music group from Austin, Texas”

Now, how did *they* get their name?!

Intriguingly, the listings either side of this are for an all-girl band, Rasputina, who present their “cheekily maudlin chamber rock while dressed in Victorian finery” - and for a gig featuring Belinda Carlisle (an idol in my University years). I could rather enjoy the prospect of the Asylum Street mob being invited backstage to put their name into practice at both gigs

3 Comments »

Thanks to our friend Martha for texting us in great glee yesterday to point out the name of the German competitor who was up for the high jump in Beijing yesterday… a certain Herr Spank.

Honestly. He even has a collection of videos on YouTube - but they’re probably not the most interesting you’d ever see if you searched for clips related to our kink!

4 Comments »

The comedian Sanjeev Bhaskar had this to say in this week’s Observer:

I have an OBE, so I can order Meera [Syal, his wife, also a comedian] about, because she’s only got an MBE. She’s a peasant. In fact I believe I’m entitled to beat her with a stick.

Note to self: earn an OBE or a damehood before Abel does.

2 Comments »

Schönbrunn Palace, the summer residence of Austrian emperors, doesn’t lose its ability to amaze. The vast gardens, the baroque interiors, the punishment implements of old…

There was no explanation card for this display, but we concluded that it was the implement for dealing with errant housemaids. It was shown next to maid’s uniform, so what else could it have been?

The museum continued to impress as we walked on to the schoolroom of the Hapsburg princes:

Alas, there were no facilities to try out the implements or recreate the scenes. It was OK, though; we’ll make sure to do that at home.

8 Comments »

Recently we happened to stroll along the bank of the Thames from Tate Modern to the London Eye. There are usually lots of street performers doing their thing along that walk - mainly, live statues painted in silver, but also all sorts of musicians, acrobats and other people with random skills.

One act gathered a crowd so big that I couldn’t see what the attration actually was. I could hear the performer talk to the volunteer he’d just summoned from the audience.

“So, have you tied anyone up with rope before? No? Oh good, I’ll be your first, then.”

…He was an escape artist, in case you were wondering.

On my part, I spent a pleasant five minutes picturing an experienced domme showing up to demonstrate some of her best knots.

1 Comment »

Last weekend we were very amused by two news stories that ran side-by-side.

In the first one, one of the deputies of the Conservative mayor of London had to resign from his post for such a big bundle of reasons that I’m not sure why they actually recruited him in the first place. Queue lots of blushes from the Tories. “But we didn’t know he ate babies for breakfast!” Oh, dear, what a nasty surprise for them.

In the second story, a Tory guy accidentally let slip his party’s secret plan of dealing with any future embarrassments of this kind. “The Conservative Party believes in bottom-up solutions”. Oh, good. Flogged politicians all ’round.

P.S. Did you know there was a Tory MEP called Den Dover? I must admit, I misheard his name at first. I suspect, that’s not unusual.

1 Comment »

Most of you probably know that Haron and I write for the Lowewood blog, set in a fictional school. My darling wife’s a regular contributor, whereas “Unstable Abel” (as the school chaplain was so ungallantly christened earlier in the year) joins in on a rather more infrequent basis.Amidst an array of fine writing on the site, I particularly enjoyed Claudia’s entry yesterday. The paragraph that especially caught my eye was as follows, in the aftermath of a poor test result:

Wearily I made my way to the front and bent over to take the pain for coming bottom. Across my bottom, naturally. Six proper cracks with the strap whilst I clung grimly to the bench, distracting myself as best I could by pondering what would happen if I actually wrenched off one of the gas taps in my efforts to stay down. Would we all have to be evacuated? Could we avoid prep that evening?

Whilst the young lady in the blog entry resisted the lure of the gas tap, I foresaw an alternative ending, in which she did indeed manage to tamper with the equipment. An alarm would ring; her punishment would have to be suspended as the whole school filed out into the playground. No doubt, on their return, the remainder of her punishment would be doubled… at the very least.

My mind wandered still further along similar lines. A girl had been called to her Headmaster’s study to be caned. Her best friend, worried about her fate, would set off a fire alarm; an evacuation of the buildings would ensue. The two girls would find one another in the melee - but it would seem that the distraction had come too late, for the first two strokes had already been administered. There’d be hugs before the pupils were let back in - and the rule-breaker would trek tearfully back to face her Housemaster to receive the remaining four strokes.

Only… their cuddles would have been noticed, and the instigator of the false alarm would find herself called before the Headmaster. Confronted with the allegation, she would break down and confess, and her dozen strokes in assembly the following morning would teach her the most painful of lessons.

5 Comments »