Handle with care

A bit of domestic discord here, sadly. It doesn't make for a very cheery Easter. Significant Other and I had a big falling out this morning and so we're now not talking.

And I know from bitter experience how things will pan out. When we're actually arguing I get really angry, but I cool down very quickly. SO is more even-tempered, but once upset stays that way for ages.

Of course, 'marital relations' go on hold for the duration of the feud - which I find really difficult to live with. I find that after the initial flash of fury I quickly feel remorse and guilt, which feeds into confusing spanko feelings.

So, I'm now feeling as though I deserve a very sound and prolonged spanking and cornertime (before a tearful making-up), but that is the last thing that's going to happen anytime soon. SO's attitude to my 'kink' is more along the lines that it is a treat to be given when I'm in good books - which turns the logic of it all on its head, doesn't it?

It all means that I'm feeling down, guilty and in need of firm handling just when there's no prospect of handling of any kind. Firm or otherwise.

Horsey type

It's Good Friday, so everyone gets a day off here in the UK (is it the same elsewhere?) and I'm going o spend the rest of mine horse-riding. Which means I'm going to fail to deliver a 'Friday Fiction' post, I'm afraid.

In its absence take a look at this interesting picture and make something up for yourself. I'm going to give it a try while me and my horse are out doing our thing - if the story comes together well I might post it here sometime soon.
PS Are those very tight jods or is she putting the bare into bare-backed riding?

Correctly corrected

What does the phrase "stand corrected" mean to you? For me it's always had a distinctly spanko ring to it and when I hear it used I always picture some poor penitent doing post-punishment cornertime.

A post on classic spanko magazines over at All Things Spanking prompted a comment from someone who remembered the magazine 'Stand Corrected', which I've heard about but never seen. Presumably whoever picked that as the mag's title also detected some spanking-related root for this particular idiom.

It seems obvious to me. It's used now to mean something like 'I admit that I was wrong', but it has to be all about standing having been corrected - as it spanked, caned or whatever - hasn't it?

I'm thinking about those period novels like 'Frank & I' in which disobedient young people are summoned to the study or schoolroom for correction. As in: "You've erred, now it's time for your correction."

But if you do a bit of surfing about the phrase's origin nobody else seems to see it that way. For example, the blog entitled 'Citizen Tom' doesn't seem to have thought about the sort of correction I have in mind. Although Tom does quote Plato as saying that accepting correction is highly important.

Then I spent some time looking around a blog about the correct use of language called 'I Stand Corrected', but couldn't find any reference to the phrase in question. Finally, I came upon an online dictionary that quotes the poet John Dryden's 'The Maiden Queen', from 1668, saying: “I stand corrected, and myself reprove.” Probably not corrected as in a quick OTK.

So, maybe I should stand corrected myself. I'm very sorry that I tend to spot spankoness everywhere I go. It's wrong, I know that now. I will happily accept due correction and, if necessary, the required cornertime to follow.  

Work, guilt ...and carrots

The sense of guilt is with me all the time at the moment. And it is at its worst when I look at my 'to do' list, which has more unticked boxes than ticked ones.

I'm failing to live up to standards that, as a freelancer, I have to set for myself. And it's a bit confusing because, as a spanko, the guilty feelings are all tangled up with my own particular sexual make-up.

It's mostly a work thing. The bad thing about being a freelance writer is that clients never come along in an orderly fashion (silly them), no they come along in fits and starts - and they all want their project completed straight away, or sooner.

So, you end up spinning plates to keep half a dozen jobs going at the same time. It means that you disappoint editor A to please editor B. And you keep editor C on hold while prevaricating to keep editor D... and so and so on.

Can't be helped, but it makes me feel that I'm letting everybody down. On top of that I'm all written-out by the end of the day and have no mental energy for my part-written spanko novel.

My 'to do' list is lacking lots of ticks at the end of each day, but Significant Other offers no sympathy whatsoever. I've suggested some sort of incentive scheme to improve productivity, based on a carrot and stick kind of approach, but the suggestion has fallen on stony ground.

I see it as a fairly simple arrangement - a 'to do' item without a tick earns a lick with that stick. Or four or five licks.

But SO is being very unhelpful and points out that for me stick is carrot and vice versa, and argues that it would work better if I had to eat a carrot (preferably raw) for every unticked box. Not very supportive.

Maid duties II

Not sure how practical this position would be, but it's an interesting one. Thanks to the fabulous Olivier for finding it for me, or more precisely for pointing me in the direction of its creator - an artist called Chéri Hérouard.

I've seen lots of Hérouard's work here and there (often the kinkier stuff was under the pseudonym Herric), but not taken time to really look. When I posted Maid duties the other day Olivier commented, and that set me off hunting for Hérouard and Herric.

First stop, Olivier's own posts on the subject. Then on to Wiki and to Spanking Art Wiki, which has a brief entry about Hérouard. He was apparently born in 1881 and illustrated lots of erotic novels during the first half of the 20th Century.

He mainly did FF and MF spanking situations, but also seems to have had a bit of a thing about enemas. A bit of bondage too.

They're beautiful images and very evocative of period. The girls have the slim elegance that was a la mode in the 1920s and 1930s and the costumes (especially the lingerie) and settings are very pretty.

There's a lightness to it all; spankers smile as chastisement is dealt out, sometimes spankees too. But the drawings are also informed by the attitudes of the strict Victorian age - I suppose Hérouard would have been nearly 20 when the centuries turned. In Hérouard's world a misbehaving young lady is corrected in no uncertain terms...

My theory of relativity

Aunt, aunty

Noun: The sister of one's father or mother.

Well, yes. Strictly speaking that's correct, but the a-word packs more of a punch in spanking fiction, doesn't it? Enter an aunt, or aunty, and you know that some naughty girl or boy is going to get a well-deserved lesson sometime soon.

Mr Tawse has posted a great photo set today, which has had me mulling over the myths and magic of aunts and aunt-ship. In my experience, in real life aunts/aunties are a mild, good-natured lot - more likely to be handing out treats than laying down the law. But through the distorting lens of a spanko imagination they are transformed into CP super heroines... 

I have nephews and nieces and am, I think, as sweet as sugar to them (although I'm well aware of their shortcomings). I have more than my fair share too; my mother was one of six children and so was dad, so my extended family was very extended. 

Family events involved a mob of uncles and lots of aunts too, both by marriage and by blood. I have to say one of my mother's sisters could have been the model for a spanko-fiction aunt. Aunty J - who is sadly no longer with us - was my mum's younger sister and was, when we were kids, particularly no-nonsense.

She never laid a finger on me, but just being around her made me feel nervous - it was as though she had x-ray eyes that could see into my soul. As a proto-spanko I felt that if anyone was going to bare my bum and give me the roasting I deserved then Aunty J was the one who was equipped to do it.

But why does the strict aunt myth have such traction? Go back the best part of a century and the stories of the comic writer PG Wodehouse are bristling with scary aunts. 

The best (or worst) of them was Bertie Wooster's Aunt Agatha. Bertie says of her: "When Aunt Agatha wants you to do a thing you do it, or else you find yourself wondering why those fellows in the olden days made such a fuss when they had trouble with the Spanish Inquisition."

Bertie's a grown man - although an idiot - and as far as I know Agatha never threatens physical punishment. However, you get the distinct impression that wasn't the case when Bertie was a boy. Agatha is the epitome of the disciplinarian aunt.

A last thought, as I've gone on a bit. Aunts seem to come in two distinct forms in spanko imagination. They're either like Wodehouse's Agatha - an old dragon - or they're really rather attractive, think the marvellous Clare Fonda or Veronica Bound of Punished Brats.

I suppose the thing is that a good-looking aunt (or uncle for that matter) is the adult who could put the imagined young person over a knee, but who it's also OK to be attracted to. Sexual attraction and spanking - a heady mix for a young mind.

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...