My dream self was baffled by the contrast between being expected to behave like a responsible adult and yet to be treated like a child in many respects, including very possibly being caned. The uniform was particularly constricting: I thought I should be allowed to choose my own clothing.

The dream ended with me about to be caned by the deputy headmistress for initiating some sort of uniform protest in the corridors. I woke up incredibly upset about it.

How strange that something that I’m so fond of in real life would prove to be the subject of so much angst in a dream.

Humanity in England, like liberty in France, has now become an export article for the traders in politics.

We recollect the time when Tsar Nicholas had Polish ladies flogged by soldiers and when Lord Palmerston found the moral indignation of some parliamentarians over the event “impolitic”.

We recollect that about a decade ago a revolt took place on the Ionian Islands… which gave the English governor there occasion to have a fairly considerable number of Grecian women flogged. Probatum est, said Palmerston and his Whig colleagues who at that time were in office.

Flogging Polish girls is clearly a good thing. (Hi, Kami!). As for the women in Greece: I’m curious as to how many constitute “a fairly considerable number”. Are we talking four rabble-rousers brought to the governor’s office and held down over a table for a birching, or a hundred stripped and whipped in the market place? Typical Marx: fascinating writing, but so deeply flawed.

I imagined that she was the family’s au-pair. What she didn’t realise was that one of her employers’ neighbours was also in the shop, and saw the children running wild. The neighbour phoned their father that evening, just a friendly call to let him know that the au-pair might not be doing her job as well as she might.

The father called the girl into an empty living room for a talk. He realised, he said, that his children could be difficult, but she couldn’t just ignore bad behaviour and hope it would go away.
The girl said contritely that she understood, and that she would do better.

This promise wasn’t enough. In a bid to demonstrate that bad behaviour shouldn’t be ignored, the father instructed her to lower her jeans and bend over the sofa cushions. Knowing the procedure, she meekly leaned forward as he unbuckled his belt and slid it out of the loops.

The whipping that followed was not unduly harsh, but firm enough that the girl was tearful and sore by the end. Her promises of better work were far more sincere and convincing. The father allowed her to stand, then gave her a warm hug, reassuring her that he wasn’t angry, and was merely doing what was necessary.

The girl sniffled into his shirt and took mental notes.

The issue: their complaint that they spend too much time on internal bureaucracy, and (as a result) not enough looking after their customers.

My contribution: “has anyone heard of Janus?”

They looked blank, so I carefully wrote the word up on the flipchart: JANUS. In block capitals. Where it remained, to my great delight, for the remainder or the workshop.

(Clearly, I was talking about the Roman god, whose two faces look in opposite directions – rather like said managers, forever trying to focus both internally and externally. Any suggestion that I might have been referring to the famous Soho spanking shop or the magazine of the same name would be entirely misplaced. But I was a little disappointed that none of the ladies in the discussion blushed and squirmed uncomfortably in their seats).

How about this: two Swedish schoolgirls bought bugging equipment in a gadget shop and installed it in the teachers’ common room.

Seriously. They did. They got caught when one of them bragged about it on Facebook, thus failing Spying 101 in a rather spectacular manner. The real-life result of this was a court case, a guilty verdict and a hefty fine.

I picture a different outcome. There would be an after-school staff meeting which the pair of girls would be ordered to attend. A chair would be placed in the middle of the room, and the girls would have to bend over its back one after the other, skirts up and knickers lowered to their ankles. The Headmaster would administer a full dozen of cane strokes to each upturned bottom, with the whole teaching staff looking on.

Afterwards, the minutes of the staff meeting, including the two canings, would be posted on the school’s Facebook page, with links to the girls’ profiles.

That’s only fair, no?

Any of you know what an ‘odalisque’ is? I confess that I had to look it up when I encountered a blog entitled ‘Not an Odalisque’ recently – drawn to it by a post in which the author took in inspiration from a meeting with our dear friend HH (himself author of the excellent “The Art of Corporal Punishment”). It’s the final feature in our week of our favourite posts from other blogs:

It got me wondering why I don’t blog about kink… Kinksters aren’t a poor, oppressed group, but they aren’t exactly accepted, either. I don’t just mean the tabloid treatment of Max Mosley or the “dungeon” owners in Devon. I mean the scare-mongering about causal links between violent pornography and rape. I mean the idea that a woman doesn’t have the agency to choose to be submissive. I mean the worry I feel that I may lose credibility if I tell you too much about myself.

That’s one reason I haven’t gone into detail about my kink, but it’s also a reason why I should. The problem is that I don’t have a final answer on what my kink is. Sexuality is infinitely malleable, and finding a vocabulary to write about it may change it. The fetish community displays a striking uniformity of bizarre tastes….

Does it sound like I’m making excuses? I suspect that I am. I don’t want to tell you about my kink because I’m haunted by everyone who ever disapproved. The ex-boyfriend who dug for evidence of buried childhood trauma. The ex-boyfriend who thought it was an all-access pass. The confused vanilla friends. They combine into an angel on my shoulder telling me that if only I were to stop wanting kinky things, I could be good and pure and loveable, citizen of a lemon-scented world and creator of incredibly fluffy cakes.

That angel is nothing, however, in comparison to the fear that feminists inspire. You see, I know that when the things I fantasise about happen, they really aren’t fun… Every time I see a kinkster talk about his “natural dominance” or “a woman’s place” I feel as if I’ve committed an act of violence against feminism.

One final worry: I secretly snigger at other people’s kinks. Sometimes they make me feel vaguely ill. You might, too.

Were those good enough reasons? No, I didn’t think so. So I’m going to try to tell you about my kink…

I like to be in somebody’s power. I like to feel that there’s no way out, no way to re-establish my own will, and my only option is to do as I’m told. That’s not enough, though, otherwise I would enjoy getting stuck in traffic jams. I like to be valued. I rather like being rewarded when I’m good: instant justice from an immediate authority. Even being disapproved of, or punished, is proof that somebody cares. And—oh!—I like to be punished. I like it even when it’s not fair. Maybe especially when it’s not fair. And when, unfairly, my protestations that it’s not fair have been silenced on pain of even more punishment…

I want more than a beating, of course. It’s all the parts. It’s when I can’t meet someone’s eye in case he sees what I’m thinking. It’s his slow, deliberate movements, when I’m almost trembling but he’s in no rush. It’s wondering what he’s going to do with his belt as he takes it off. Blushing. Squirming. Being held down by someone’s weight. It’s gasping for air. It’s clinging on to him for dear life afterwards. It’s thumbprints around my wrists in the morning and bruises I didn’t know I had…

So, there you have it, as coherent an account of my kink as I am able to give. You’d better tell me whether or not you want to hear more. I’ll try my very best to do as I’m told.

For any of you wondering, BTW, an odalisque “was a female slave in an Ottoman seraglio”. And IMHO any blog as well-written as this is well worth following.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this little annual selection of other authors’ and illustrators’ work. Hopefully it’s introduced a few readers to a few sites they may not have known before – and, at the least, it’s recognised some of the folks whose work we enjoy.

‘I first visited Brighton as a teenager in the late 1980s to take part in a national schools quiz competition. Our team didn’t win but I barely noticed as I gawped at the exotic sight of men holding hands – men who weren’t blind and didn’t need help crossing the road. These men looked unafraid. Happy, even.

Our consolation prizes were book tokens, which I immediately spent buying all the Tales of the City books in the local Waterstone’s. I then went gome and announced to my mother… that I was gay. She politely pretended to be shocked.”

I loved ‘politely pretended’, with its implication that she’d known all along. It made me wonder how my parents would react if I explained my somewhat alternative lifestyle – poly and a spanko. Do they already sense that there must be so much more to my relationship with the ‘best friends’ I mention so regularly? Would, given my suspicions about at least my dad’s kinky inclinations, they be at all surprised to know about my interests in spanking?

I rather suspect not. But much as I’d like to ‘come clean’, there’s still a reluctance to be fully open. Poly equals there must be something wrong with their once-divorced son’s second marriage; spanko equals abusive towards women – neither being in the least part true, but I can well imagine them speculating and worrying.

Much as I’d like to be open and honest, if one assesses these things on a ‘need to know’ basis, do they really, given the risks that’d they could end up shocked and stressed? I’m curious to know whether have others crossed this particular bridge – especially if they’ve done so not as a youngster but after years of keeping their true self hidden.

And then what about this, at “Beauty and the Birch”, entitled “The Birching Tower” (a rather different version to the one that Cath gave me last Christmas):

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And then Celine wrote this gorgeous little item on her blog, Red Bottomed Girl:

This is off topic.  Sorry, but if I’m going to die of embarrassment, I’m not going to die alone…

This morning my dentist casually commented that I have a sensitive gag reflex.  Without thinking at ALL, I immediately responded, “I know, right!  It’s such a pain!  It drives my boyfriend nuts!”  

There was an uncomfortably looooooooong silence.  I was totally oblivious (it was early, I wasn’t completely awake) until the dentist got the pervy giggles, like a thirteen year old boy.  “No, I mean..” I trailed off, turning a deep shade of scarlet.  I meant that sometimes my gag reflex acts up when I’m brushing my teeth or eating something with a spoon, but it happens randomly and it’s unpredictability drives [my partner] bonkers.  That’s all…

I hate boys.  They’re all perverts, the lot of them. *pout*