Maid for trouble

So much to do, so little time - and the master of the house is in a less than forgiving mood at the moment... SO's back, and sense of humour, are still a bit creaky.
It means that I have lots to do this week, lots of real work and plenty of household stuff to handle too. And not much time for life's little pleasures, like keeping this blog fresh.
As I trotted about cleaning and cooking this afternoon I enjoyed making up little maidservant fantasies that I won't bother you with now. I'm sure you can guess how my imaginary maid is encouraged to go about her duties?
PS I'll give you a clue. It was was one of the following: a) carrot or b) stick.


 

Please sir...

What a face? If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. My philosophy is that when a girl's done wrong she needs to take what's coming as cheerfully as possible.
Or maybe there's some play acting going on and it's more of a Oliver Twist 'please, sir , I want more' situation.

Maid duties

A well-run household requires discipline, doesn't it? A disobedient servant might well need chastisement, but what's going on here? Why a maid spanking - it just seems so wrong...

A little 'help' from our friends

Sunday morning and the whole house needs cleaning from top to toe. I've just been reading yesterday's paper and eating breakfast in bed (don't those pesky crumbs get everywhere) and discovered that Mr Cameron wants to make it easier for me to employ domestic staff.

Great, the country's going down the pan and the Government think the answer to our problems is to re-invent 'Downton Abbey'. We're to get tax breaks it seems for employing maids, nannies and the like.

Great news for all those millionaires in the Cabinet who are already getting their household stuff down by somebody else, but more 'help' doesn't help the rest of us. I'm a bit worried about how we're going to pay the next electricity bill, so a between-stairs maid will probably have to wait until after my Lottery win.

I suppose all those unemployed young graduates could go into domestic service. I rather like the idea that when Flossie comes to turn down the masters bed she can also discuss endogenous growth theory with him while she's at it. 

Not that I don't like the idea of living an 'Upstairs Downstairs' life. They could get on with the dirty work, while I concentrated on the important stuff - like staff discipline.

Anyway, enough of all this. I'm off to vacuum the stairs.

Maid to measure

Is that a saucepan?

Maids in fiction get a raw deal. Or in the world of spanko reality, a raw ass. Often hot, red, stripey.
She's there to get something for somebody, do something for (or to) somebody or have something done to her by somebody.
That's how it is for Robert Coover's character in 'Spanking the Maid', or how I remember it anyway. It must be more than 15 years since I read the book. StheM was first published in 1982, I had a first edition at one time and for a spanko it was a buzz.
Somewhere along the way I threw the book out, which turns out to be a mistake as I could get £50 for it at the moment on eBay. But now it turns out that the novella has been re-issued with another of Coover's short stories as a Penguin Modern Classic, so I think I'll have to re-read it.
The Guardian's review sums up how the story works: "A maid and her master are each committed to their own hard service: she, attempting to perform her simple duties without error; he, supplying punishment by rod, belt, hairbrush, whip, cane and slipper when she inevitably fails."
Coover didn't mean it to be titillating, but for a nascent spanko it was thrilling stuff. How I wanted to be that poor maid facing spanking day after day with no end in sight.
Sometimes revisiting a book or movie that you once loved is a disappointment, isn't it? StheM certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea. One Amazon reviewer asks: "How much do I want to read about the naughty maid who can't do her work properly and needs to be spanked in a variety of different ways."
How much? In my case, quite a bit.