The Spanking Writers

To a rather posh spa with Cath this morning. It featured a number of different pools each filled with hot spring water rich in minerals – think the Dead Sea, only in miniature and indoors. One spends around fifteen minutes in each, the aim being that one’s skin is perfectly cleansed by the end of a couple of hours.

The brochure failed to mention that the origins of the pool ceremony are rooted deep in history. See, it’s an ancient Greek ritual. When a girl was to be punished before the gods, it was important to purify her first. The high priests would therefore take her to the holy pools and make her bathe, to cleanse her. Only then would they take her into the temple, tie her up before the altar and whip her.

You’ll be pleased to know that I did uphold the old traditions, even if the spa staff seemed quite ignorant of them. I’m not sure that they had acrylic canes in the days of the ancient Greeks; a hotel room had to do for the temple, and the fax machine’s cable replaced the more traditional rope to hold her in place, but it worked pretty well

I came across a long-forgotten book during our packing, entitled “Your First Headship”. We picked it up years ago in a second-hand bookshop, wondering what it said about disciplinary matters.

Sadly, it was rather lacking in useful advice. But I did find myself mentally re-writing along it the following lines the other day during a long drive:

Corporal Punishment

It is imperative that, in your early days as a Headmaster, you make it plain to the girls in the school that you will resort to corporal punishment to punish those committing more serious misdemeanours.

We recommend that you make an example of one of the girls within the first two weeks of your Headship. Ideally, you will find a ‘good girl’, not one typically badly-behaved, who has overstepped the mark.

Announce your displeasure at her offence in school assembly, and tell her to report to your office at morning break. By making the fact of her punishment public, you will send out a clear and important message.

Keep her waiting for a few minutes, then scold her severely and express your disappointment. Administer the caning hard – six of your very best with the senior cane, on the bare, with her touching her toes. Have no doubt that news of the procedure that you follow will be disseminated across the school within a matter of hours, just as her stripes will be inspected in the changing room showers in days to come for signs of your effectiveness as a disciplinarian.

By being strict in these early days, you will be kinder to the girls in the longer-term, making it clear that misbehaviour will be soundly punished, and thus reducing the incidence of rule-breaking and the need to administer future canings.

Sometimes, story plots work themselves out perfectly; sometimes, no matter how much I think about them, the ideas never quite gel. Take a scenario which sprung into my mind early one recent morning, as I walked through Green Park in central London, en route to work.

The Headmaster was clearly annoyed: a group of girls had been caned for some serious breach of a school rule. What made it worse was that their crime was a quite calculated gesture: they’d broken a rule widely agreed by the girls in the school to be unfair, and their act had been committed in the full knowledge that it would provoke and annoy the school authorities.

He’d called them in, one by one; each had received a lecture; each had been caned soundly across her skirt and sent on her way.

The grapevine quickly spread word of their punishment around the school, and the girls concerned – far from being ashamed of their punishment – seemed to revel in the attention. That, in their eyes, their canings had been as unfair as the rule they had broken, merely added to their sense of camaraderie, and before long they had styled themselves “The Martyrs’ Club.”  

Posters appeared on noticeboards; slogans scrawled on blackboards; T-shirts were printed and worn under school colours during hockey matches. Their names were whispered by others as a gesture of solidarity and shared defiance: “I support The Martyrs’ Club…”

The Headmaster had no choice but to act. His lecture at the morning assembly was stern: “I will not stand by and watch a group of girls seek to undermine my authority. Whilst I see no particular need to justify myself to the school, I feel I should point out why the rule in question exists, and why I felt it necessary to administer corporal punishment to the girls in question.” His explanation appeared more than reasonable; the tide of schoolgirl opinion started to turn; he made it clear that their ongoing disobedience could not be tolerated, and would be dealt with severely: “Miss Smith, Miss Matthews, Miss Harris, Miss Fry and Miss King will report to my office immediately following this assembly to be caned.”

He saw the five girls together this time; called them forward in turn, each to receive six of the very best stripes on the bare. And no more was heard of the Martyrs.

Only, that’s where I start to struggle – because I cannot, for the life of me, work out the nature of their original offence. What rule could they have broken, that would seem so manifestly unfair – yet be to eminently reasonable once the rationale for its existence was understood. Any ideas would be most welcome: I’d so love to write the story once that final, key part of the jigsaw falls into place.

A quite remarkable story in yesterday’s Independent*:

A woman has been convicted under a 137-year-old law of riding a horse while drunk. Georgina Whitelin, 31, admitted a charge under the 1872 Licensing Act of being drunk in charge of a carriage horse, cattle or steam engine…

Newcastle magistrates’ court was told officers found Whitelin slurring her words and she was unsteady on her feet on 29 October last year. For the prosecution, David Thompson said: “It is not a charge you see every day. The concerns were that she was in control of a large animal where there were other road users [and] it is clear that she was drunk.”

Mark Humble, for the defence, said: “It is a very unusual case nowadays. She accepts she had been drunk on the afternoon in question…”

Under the terms of the 1872 Act, Whitelin was sentenced to be “soundly whipped” by the magistrate. The punishment was administered in the cells beneath the courthouse, at the close of the day’s proceedings. The Official Notice published that evening on the court noticeboard confirmed that the whipping had taken place. Whilst details of the flogging were kept private – and Whitelin was unavailable for comment yesterday – the Act sets out a sentence of “no fewer than twelve, and no more than thirty, strokes of the riding crop to be administered across the bare buttocks.”

* I may have changed one or two details just a tad. (It was a gentleman who was found guilty, and he was fined – but surely an 1872 Act could have some more creative remedies for convicted young ladies?)

He’s coming tonight… Are you ready for your birching?

A night of reformatory floggings; I became a Governor in my dreams last night.

First, I found myself showing some distinguished visitor around our facilities. We had stopped outside a door, and were peering through the glass window, watching the scene inside.

A young, uniformed, female officer – in her late twenties? – was circling around the punishment frame. Holding a birch. A pale girl was tied to a frame, quite naked. The upturned U of the frame presented her body to us from the side, perfectly symmetrical; her wrists and ankles were tied tight. It appeared that her flogging was just about to begin.

I turned to my guest, and explained that the officer concerned was one of our best. “You see, she was an inmate here herself when she was younger. I think we helped her to see the error of her ways. I had to whip her when she was here, you know: I’m sure she’s more effective at giving out punishments now having been on the receiving end herself.”

Sadly, the dream faded. But later, another young prison officer was seen waiting in a different punishment room. She was a trainee: the regulations demanded that she must ‘demonstrate her competence in the administration of corporal punishment’ as part of attaining her qualifications. Our system was simple: as the young officers drew near to their graduation, they would therefore be asked to act as the Punishment Officer for a random girl who’d broken the regulations. Under supervision, of course: the examiner stood to the side of the room, with his clipboard.

A prisoner was marched in. The door was bolted shut; her handcuffs unlocked. And a look of panic crossed the young officer’s face. For this was no random prisoner: this was a girl who she knew, who she liked, who she’d comforted and cuddled and helped through her sentence.

The examiner looked at the officer: “Read out the charge sheet.” (Refusing to return to her cell when instructed; lashing out at the guards who had come to take her away).

“And what punishment do the statutes lay down for those offences?”

“Eight to twelve strokes for refusing to return to her cell, sir. Twelve to eighteen for striking an officer, sir.”

“And what is your assessment in this case?”

“It states on the form that it is her first offence, sir. So I would see no reason to administer more than the minimum in each case. Twenty strokes in total, sir.”

“Very good. And what implement should be used?”

The officer looked down at the charge sheet, but knew already. “She’s nineteen, sir. So the senior prison cane.”

“Indeed.” The young officer walked to the corner of the room, unlocked the cupboard, took out the cane. And then looked at the prisoner, whose eyes pleaded for mercy, and ordered her to strip…

(Sadly, this dream too then faded before the administration of the punishment. But I’m sure we can imagine the rest…)

At lunch last week with a couple of former colleagues – all “it’s been way too long, how are you” masquerading for “I wonder if you’re doing anything interesting which might help me make money”.

One asked: “So what are you up to in your spare time these days?”

“Oh, I write spanking stories and keep a blog. I guess you’d call it fetish erotica. It’s doing really well: we’ve had millions of hits. I spank girls, and my much-younger wife Haron and I are poly. And we just love role-playing: have you ever been to a school day?”

Only the other member of our group answered first, and I made a sharp exit to the loo, and they were onto another topic by the time I returned. But his question did make me gulp, momentarily.

The denizens of countless vanilla discussion boards pass the time swapping anecdotes, opinions, advice. But sooner or later, one of the residents posts the inevitable – sparked by some passing comment, a particular date on the calendar, the sight in the shopping mall of a certain of her former teachers: “Did you get whacked at school?”

One such debate recently brought forth an outpouring of recollections, as the (largely female) community confessed their shameful secrets: yes, they had been called before their principals to be punished.

One young lady from Carolina clearly winced at the memory. Towards the end of her school career, she’d been required to get a parental signature on some form or other. Although she was a good and bright girl, she forgot, being rather absent-minded. So too did some of her friends, so their teacher gave them a second chance – but warned that anyone forgetting this time would be paddled. And when she arrived empty-handed the following morning, the teacher was as good as his word, and despatched her to see the principal to be punished – and this in a school in which the paddling of girls was almost unknown.

The real-life me feels sorry for her, of course. Kinky me can’t help but be fascinated by the example of a good girl in trouble.

There was a fascinating report in the Daily Telegraph (free in my hotel at the weekend, before you accuse me of buying such filth!) entitled:

“TV of childhood decides colour of your dreams.”

It discussed research at Dundee University, which suggests that “almost all under-25s dream in colour”, whilst those who “were brought up with black and white sets often dream in monochrome”.

Now, I know I’m making myself a hostage to fortune here; I can sense Smudge and others gleefully exploiting the opportunity to make me feel old. But the first TV I watched as a kid was black and white; it was my Grandad who saved up to buy my parents a new set so that I could watch in colour, by which time I must have been six or seven.

I’ve always been conscious that my sub-conscious works in black and white: if I’m trying to picture a place I’ve not visited, the images I form are always monochrome. Even the most colourful of memories rarely are in colour as I recall scenes in my mind’s eye.

But what of spanking dreams? I have a suspicion that they too are black and white. I wonder… Next time I give a girl a bright grey bottom from a dreamland spanking, I’ll let you know.

We’re going on holiday to Austria in a few weeks’ time. I can’t wait. But we have one slight problem: we’re travelling in a small group – with the “would overhear any activity in the neighbouring room in the suite” type of fellow travellers. So I can tell now that Haron’s not going to get spanked all week.

It’s made me daydream. Some grand old Viennese house: tall, imposing, high ceilings, ornate.Very Habsburg.

Haron, despatched on her own at the agreed time, “to meet one of her distant relatives who lives in the city”. (“No, it’s OK. I won’t go with her. I don’t speak the language.” Excuses, excuses, to cover the real reason for her trip).

She’s smartly dressed. She checks the address carefully, knocks on the door. A young woman opens, all blonde and neat, in a crisp uniform. “Miss Haron? You are expected.”

She is shown along a corridor, to a closed door. The maid leaves her: “You should knock at the door, and wait until Herr Professor calls you.”

She knocks.

He makes her wait.

Minutes later, a strongly-accented voice. “You may enter.”

He makes Haron stand before his desk. Looks at her, over his glasses, studying her intently as if trying to read her mind. Peers down, picks up a letter from his desk, reads it carefully. “Your husband informs me that your behaviour here in our city has been most disappointing. He has sent you to me to be punished. You understand that?”

A quiet confirmation.

“I can’t hear you, young lady.”

“Yes, sir.” Louder, voice still trembling.

The gentleman stands, reaches up to the bookcase. The implement he takes down comprises three long, straight, thick switches, tied together at one end. “I had my maid make this freshly this morning. Now undress.”

As Haron strips, shyly, for punishment, he rings a bell; the maid re-appears, almost instantaneously. (Later, he will question her; will find that she was listening at the door; will birch her).

“Miss Haron, please bend over the end of my desk. Liesel, please go to the opposite side of the desk, and hold Miss Haron’s hands, firmly. She is not to move during her punishment.”

And so the gentleman whips my wife, her cries quite lost between the thick walls of the mansion, as Liesel pins her tightly in position.

Haron dresses afterwards. Thanks the gentleman through her tears. And then the maid shows her out into the bright Viennese sunshine.