Never too old?

'It's not fair. Not bloody fair. I AM too old, I AM. Nobody else in the entire world would think of doing something so utterly, completely wrong and stupid and crappy to a grown-up like me. I have a job, I smoke, I pay taxes for God's sake... but still she thinks she has the right to take my knickers down and smack my bum.'
Not that she said any of it out lound. Of course not. She knew what the answer would be: "As long as you're living under this roof, young lady..." And for arguing she'd get slippered twice as hard - for twice as long. Better to keep quiet and just take what she had coming...

So, when are you too old? Much of the time in my head I'm the naughty teen of my darker imaginings - mischevious, libidinous, nervous, rebellious and always in need of firm discipline. Then I look in the mirror and I'm surprised and horrified to see grey hairs.
When I really was that teenager I assumed sex ended at around 30 and always hap[pened with the lights out after those involved were over 25. I remember coming across a condom packet (opened, empty) in my mum and dad's bedroom when I was 15 - and being absolutely and totally horrified. The thought of old people doing that made me gag.

Now I'm about the age my parents were then and can see that a healthy sex life (especially one with a good SQ) is not something that you necessarily close the door on as you turn 40. For me it's still about the most important part of what makes for happiness.

But what about spanko activities? We're a niche group for whom that 'too old' phrase has special significance, but it needs asking. Are you ever too old?

When should the spanker hang up his or her cane? And, when does it become just too absurd for the spankee to make like a naughty schoolgirl or boy?

I'd got to about here on this post the other day and then left it unwritten. It seemed a bit depressing. But then today inspiration - I came across a 'never too old' post at JPColourgallery.

It's in French, so I'm not sure that I totally follow what he's trying to say but he does say: "I feel that it's pretty rare these situations in stories, illustrations, videos ... That's a shame."
And it is a shame, isn't it? No matter how grown up a 'girl' is, if she needs a spanking she has a right to one, doesn't she? And the same goes for naughty 'boys'.

That said, I can see that in my own small way I'm part of the anti-mature prejudice. When I'm in spanko fiction mode my default is to make my central characters (and spankees) young women because that's where my own head is at.

The older women are there, but they tend to do the spanking. So, I suppose I should be putting my money where my mouth is and doing my bit to redress the balance. Last thought: “You are never too old to become younger!” Mae West
 


 

Stairs again

No special reason, just because I like this picture really. SO and I had a bit of a argument yesterday. I think I was in the right, but the way I behaved was... wrong.

Tantrum is probably the best way to describe it. This morning over breakfast I apologised and was told that yes, my behaviour had been unacceptably brattish.

What happened next was this. I was ordered to pull down my jeans to bare my naughty bot and told to go straight up the stairs for a damned good hiding...

No, sadly the sexual politics in this place don't work that way, they're all topsy-turvy. Bad behaviour makes it less likely that a punishment will happen - in our house stick is carrot.

Mind you, real misbehaviour tends to get filed away for future reference. Then when we are playing it can be trotted out and I do, finally, get to pay my due.

Shades of play

French rose?

"That's it young lady, I'm going to teach you a lesson you won't forget in a hurry. I'm going to spank your bare bottom until it's..." (consults colour chart) "...Bengal red. No, hang on, make that English fire... or scarlet letter..."

What's in a name? We're having a new bathroom just now and can't decide what colour to paint the walls when it's all done. SO  wants some sort of blue, but I'm not keen. I want something a bit brighter, bolder.

So we've got some of those colour charts that paint manufacturers give away. I find myself drawn, for some reason, to the reds and pinks and play with the idea of punishments gauged by colour shade rather than number of smacks.

Blazer, maybe.

Sandersons goes from a gentle French rose to fearsome Bengal red. Dulux is a bit pedestrian - just sweet pink, pretty pink and sexy pink.

Posh Farrow & Ball has a bit of a limited range, but I like one or two of the names. How about blazer (something of a suggestion of school uniform at a super-strict boarding school) and rectory red is good too (upstairs in the master bedroom someone's been given an extra-hard session with the clothesbrush).

Crown is more promising with its red carpet, sticky finger, English fire and cheeky wink. There's certainly a sense of humour involved. But the most practical is probably Wickes.

Its names are straightforward, but the chart is more useful as a spank-standard. There's candyfloss (hand smacking over jeans), candy (brisk, pants down OTK), raspberry (very through hairbrush, bare bot) and, last but not least, scarlet letter (very, very disobedient - long, hard paddling).

English fire?

So, I've got the chart. Now, how can I get SO to play the game without coming over as a bossy little Bottom?

Friday fiction: Go slow

I think I've figured out what the old guy was on about. The one with the mad hair What's his name? Moustache like a walrus and hair all over the place.

Anyway. Oh, Einstein, that's it. Alfred Einstein. Wasn't he married to Marilyn Monroe? Weird. So, he had that thing about relativeness, didn't he? And time.

I've figured it out. Time goes faster and time goes slower - and how fast it goes is kind of relative. Relative to whether you're having fun or not. And whether you're waiting, and if you are, what you're waiting for.

So, if I'm waiting for the last class of the day to finish on the last day of term time then Alfred's right - time goes very, very slow. So slow that you can hardly stand it and you want to get up out of your chair and scream.

When does it go fast? How about when it's my birthday party. Everything is so right and I’m so the centre of attention.

Right now it has frozen solid. What is the opposite of melting...? 
Wait, what was that. I think I heard something. Like a door shutting down there somewhere. This is it. Has to be... No, all quiet again.

How long have I been up here? I wish I had my phone. It has to have been more than an hour. Or maybe even two. Like it's 'upstairs, get ready and ‘wait for me there’. How it always is. 
Wait, and figure out an excuse that might just turn save my butt from its worst-ever roasting... But then who can say what is the ‘worst ever’? Isn't everything relative.

Something missing

Out of sorts. Under the weather. Off colour. Whatever you call it, I don't feel so good this week. Last week's trip has left me a bit wrung out and the worst of it is I have a record low SQ. 

And that worries me. We're in a double dip recession here in the UK apparently - the recession is just going on and on. And that looks to be happening with my SQ too, though I've tried to jumpstart it with a hit of Eros Unbound and Crimson and Black.

What if it never comes back. Life without that spanko frisson and thrill is pancake flat. What can I do? If there was a pill to take I'd get a jar and start popping (Vitamin S maybe).

No SQ is a dreary place to be. I may as well take up knitting!

Feeling glad

With apologies to the great Julie Andrews. Here's today's reason to be cheerful...

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

These are a few of my favorite things!

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels

Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles

Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings

These are a few of my favorite things!

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eye lashes

Silver white winters that melt into spring

These are a few of my favorite things!

When the dog bites, when the bee stings

When I'm feeling sad,

I simply remember

my favorite things

and then I don't feel so bad!

Or, how about?

When the tawse bites, 
when the cane stings
when I'm feeling bad,
I simply remember 
my favourite things
and then I feel really quite glad!

Wood, a spanking good fuel?

What is the big deal about woodsheds? We burn wood and we keep it in a shed, but that shed has no greater significance to us than the one we keep the lawnmower in.
But then there's a lot to North America that I don't understand, starting with why I say 'tomarrto' and they say 'tomayto'. So I can see that the woodshed is some sort of spanko symbol without really understanding much about it.

I’m fascinated by the iconography around kinkiness in general, and our area of interest in particular. Until the advent of the internet it wasn’t apparent to me that what I found to be potent erotic symbols could actually have the same power over others too.

But the net gives you access to such a volume of spank-related material that the themes are easy to see. Symbols that are presumably working for other people in exactly the same way as they work for you.

What am I warbling on about? Good question. How about the hairbrush?Put a naked model, of either gender, face down on a bed and you have the makings of an erotic image.
Add a hairbrush somewhere in your shot and you’ve turned that image into something that speaks directly to the spanko psyche.The hairbrush could be way off to the edge of your image, perhaps it’s up on a chest of drawers or something - a vanilla viewer of the image might not even notice it, or would assume it’s there to brush hair.

But for us it completely changes what the picture is about. A bedroom, a bare bottom and a hairbrush can mean only one thing to us, can’t it?

So, I’m trying to think of some other innocent icons of spankoness. Clearly, the woodshed works for anyone with a US background and is quite an innocent thing as far as the vanilla world is concerned.
But what else? How about stairs?

Being ordered upstairs always sets my heart off pitter-patter.I’m not sure why. I think maybe it goes back to childhood; we were often sent to bed early for acts of disobedience andit came with the fear that some sort of chastisement might follow.

It didn’t, but there was the feeling that it might. As an adult being ordered into the bedroom is rather more ambiguous. Something’s going to happen, hopefully, but I'm not entirely sure what it might turn out to be.

Am I the only one to see symbolism in something as neutral as a flight of stairs? Probably, but I don’t think so because they do tend to appear quite regularly in spanko images.

In some penitent girls trudge up them, either to face a spanking or to bed having received one. In others a no-nonsense lady or gent is heading upstairs in a purposeful way, spanking implement in hand.

Anyway, can anyone suggest any other bits of spanko symbolism that I can add to this list? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

PS While surfing on the subject of woodsheds I learned a new word, which is always a treat. It's 'woodshedding' - apparently it means 'to practice or hone skills, particularly musical skills. the origin is from the fact that for purposes of privacy people would go to their woodshed to practice without being overheard'. So a woodshed would also be the perfect place to hone your woodshed disciplinary skills, wouldn't it? Just the place to whack away without being overheard...

Back home

A little weary from a very full-on trip that was part business, part pleasure. I've got so much to catch up on, and this blog has to be fairly far down the priority list.

But, I couldn't resist having a quick look at what's been going on in Spankoland while I've been away. And I have to say you're all very, very naughty - and if it doesn't stop somebody is going to get their legs slapped...

One thought I will quickly share is this - French teachers, surprisingly strict. I found myself spending the night in accommodation that I was sharing with a French school trip; both me and them were away from our home country, by the way.

My room was at one end of the building and, thankfully, the 60+ 12-year-olds were at the other. During the evening I went outside to send a email (mobile coverage a bit lacking) and found I was sharing the car park with one of the French group's teachers and a pupil.

She was in the process of giving the boy a scolding that would have stripped paint if applied to an appropriate surface. It was something of a surprise as I'd seen her earlier and thought her petite and rather pretty, but in disciplinarian mode she was a woman transformed.

Go girl, I thought to myself. In the morning the school group left and hour before I rolled up for my breakfast. The guy who served me asked if I'd been woken up by the kids, but I told him I hadn't.

He wasn't surprised, he said, because those lady teachers were something else. Really, I said to keep the theme going. Yes, he said, a couple of boys had stepped out of line a little and had been hauled out of the breakfast room for a major telling-off from one of the women.

Not that relevant, but very French

He seemed as impressed with the standard of French scholastic discipline as I was. Plainly, while the rest of Europe may have gone soggily liberal about pupil behaviour, in France 'non' still means 'non'. Vive la France! 

PS The French martinet-in-action image is a borrow from the excellent Desseins Coquins, a personal favourite.

An authorised absence

Unauthorised absence is a serious business. Definitely worthy of an entry in the Punishment Book - and a sore bottom to go with it. But I think I'm OK as I have authorisation, so I can pack my bags this morning with a light heart.

But I'll miss my 'classmates' while I'm away. I've got a work-related trip to take this week, leaving tonight and returning home on Friday and during that time I'm going to have to leave this blog to its own devices. And it's going to be really odd being away from it as over the last few month it has become very much part of my life.

As an undercover spanko I have no other chance to share 'special' thoughts and observations. Significant Other is very understanding but is, at heart, a fine upstanding vanilla - so doesn't really understand what our thing is all about.

So, being able to air thoughts here and enter into a conversation about them has been a bit of a revelation. Going cold turkey is going to be difficult, but I'm sure I'll come back from my journey with plenty more to say.

In the meantime I hope you have a fun week. I'll be back and I hope you will too.

Get them down

DIY or ordered? Do you prefer to bare your bum yourself or is it better to be ordered to do it? Or is it maybe just to dispense with knickers and go into action commando?

I know what I prefer, but I wanted to know how the 'Another Country' community (because that's how I regard you all) felt about this thorny question. So I put up a poll to find out.

And then I realised that I'd made a bit of a mistake. What about spankers? What do the heavy-handed ones like best? I can see that I've erred and deserve to peel down my panties and bare my...

But I'm running ahead. Sorry, spankers' preferences will have to be covered by a future poll. Back to today's question.

Firstly, like me you don't go for the no knicks option. Of course you don't. Lingerie is one of life's joys and doing without is like giving the perfect gift but not bothering to wrap it.

On the DIY or not point it seems that having you undies eased down, or tugged down, or ripped off or whatever, is the favourite by around two votes for every one. It is, presumably, an expression of powerlessness to have it done by other hands.

Personally, I'm in the other camp. I like to be told that I'm going to get it on the bare and to be told to prepare myself for my punishment.

So I lose and the you, dear majority, come out on top. I reward you with this lovely image - lightly smacked, but about to get blistered, enjoy.

Mind your Ps and Qs

What a pleasant surprise - I'm delighted to say that I sit here in front of my computer with a smile on my face and a deliciously well-warmed seat. Mine that is, not the chair's.

Our children got a surprise invitation for an overnight with friends and Significant Other isn't working today, so we had the house to ourselves this morning. Over breakfast in bed we got talking about the AtoZ game.

Does anybody else do this? You can't sleep so you make a list in your head of something, anything - the more boring the subject the better if you're hoping to get back to sleep.

Last night it was coastal towns of Britain, from A for Aberystwyth and onwards. At about 3am I got stuck on V* and that's when I drifted off back to sleep. Over breakfast we decided to do another AtoZ, this time of spankable offences at our imagined strict boarding school.

There are lots of gaps, but it's a work in progress. If you can suggest new offences or fill gaps I'd be very grateful.

Anyway, after a while SO picked a handful of my recent offences from the list (A, B, C, E, F, G, I, L and plenty of S) and I got my due.

a is for argumentativeness
b is for bad language
c is for cheekiness
d is for disobedience
e is for eating between meals
f is for fiddling (in your knickers)
g is for getting above yourself
h is for haughtiness
i is for insubordination
j is for jumping on the bed
k is for kicking your heels
l is for lewdness
m is for masturbation
n is for naughtiness
o is for obstreperousness
p is for prevarication
q is for querying an instruction
r is for running with scissors
s is for slacking
t is for truancy
u is for unladylike behaviour
v is for voicing dissent
w is forwalking in an inappropriate fashion
x is for xtremely poor spelling
y is for yawning while being told off
z is for ?

*PS V is Ventnor. It's on the Isle of Wight, which is very nice when the weather's good.

I'm busy, OK...

There are times when you REALLY don't want to be disturbed, aren't there? But as Hermoine's excellent post spells out a spanking can be interrupted for any number of reasons.

She lists some, like barking dogs, wailing smoke alarms and howling orgasms along with the call that tells you that you're a lottery winner. Sadly I haven't had a lottery calling me as a spankus interruptus, but her observation did remind me of one experience that takes some beating (or ruins one anyway.

A few years ago we had a pony that was kept in a rented field over the hedge at the bottom of our garden.

She was in-foal and we were quite excited about it So was our elderly neighbour - his windows also looked out over the pony paddock.

One spring morning we got the kids off to school and then headed back to bed, or at least to the bedroom. Drawing the curtains, Significant Other reminded me that it was time to discuss my recent behaviour and get my attitude into a better state of adjustment.

It had, of course, been very much out of adjustment. Fast-forward through a serious-sounding lecture and a brisk OTK spanking and I'm bent over the end of the bed on a pile of pillows.

I am four or five strokes into two dozen with SO's well-worn leather belt when the front door bell rings. We ignore it, though the dog goes crazy. SO presses on, I squirm and wriggle - but the moment's really been lost.

Then somebody starts hammering on the back door, driving the dog to new levels of fury. We freeze for a moment, but SO is insistent that we ignore whoever it is and that I get my due.

We put things on hold for a minute or two again, but after one more hearty whack we hear a voice below our bedroom window. It is calling my name in a plaintive kind of way. 

SO goes to the back door. I don't know what's said, but the news is then shouted to me up the stairs that the foal is being born.

A couple of minutes later me, SO and our neighbour are standing in the field admiring the new-born, who is trying to find its feet.

I'm in PJs and a dressing and have a butt that's deliciously hot, half-thrashed and very much in need of more. What, I wonder, did our neighbour hear of what had been going on... 

Then he says: "A moving experience, isn't it?" I can feel myself go into full beacon-blush, face pinking that bottom. Exactly which experience is he talking about?

That was five or six years ago. Mother and foal did well, we tried less noisy CP implements for a time - and I was quite pleased when the neighbour moved last summer.     

Feeling that spanko 'itch'

Here's my conundrum. Lots of work to do, but I just can't knuckle down to do it. There's a 'do not disturb' notice on my home office door, but though I'm sitting at my desk I'm achieving very little.

I can only concentrate on what I should be doing for a moment or two and then my attention drifts off. Where does it go? Yes, you've got it...

I've no excuse, but I have to say my SQ is sky high today and I've absolutely no prospect of adressing the issue properly. Or any time soon as we've got school holidays this week, I've got a work trip away next week and there's zero privacy in the meantime.

So, I can only daydream about getting my itch thoroughly attended to while cruising around my favourite image blogs.

I have image blog crushes. Silly schoolgirl obsessions that sweep me off my feet - and then last a week or two before I find a new one.

At the moment my crush is a blog called Eros Unbound, which manages to be all misty-eyed and romantic at the same time as doing quite a lot of spanking.

It manages to make spankoness seem soft, fluffy and rather sweet. Sort of CP in soft focus.

Of course, none of it helps. Scratching an itch always makes it worse. I'd really be better off getting the work done, wouldn't I?

Very cross country

A crisp winter's morning, girls running, bare legs muddy and cheeks ruddy red... As I was reading Penny's great post at the excellent 'Naught Little Writer' I found all sorts of schoolday's memories coming to the surface.

I wasn't a sporty kid and mostly hated school PE (Physical Education). It was all a bit military, with an emphasis on suffering rather than on fun. And cross country running certainly brought our games teachers' sadistic tendencies to the surface.

I went to bed with Penny's words in my head and would have shared it all with Significant Other but it was a nightshift night. So, instead I sat up for an hour or two with the laptop making my own cross country memories into this story.

Not this one...

There's a gem of fact in what follows, but not much of it. The true bits are that mid-winter runs were a weekly event at my school and that there were stories about a shortcut, although I think it was a bit of an urban myth. Nobody knew who it was who took that shortcut, if they got caught or - if they did - what happened to them.

I've looked for the right image to go with it, but couldn't find one. The best bet is to get the original St Trinian's movies on your minds eye. My 1970s British comp had something of the same feel, a mix of anarchy, lunacy and iron-hard repression...

'Five girls didn’t shower with the rest of us. Every week all the year we go on the cross country run and afterwards we all get into the communal showers. It’s good after the cold and the wet to get all soapy and hot and to look at other girls with no clothes on.

But today five girls were taken into Miss Killigrew’s office and only came out to shower after the rest had been sent off to last lesson. The five were Kingstone, Ellis, Ireland, Kemp and Katy Morris. Katy’s twin Jenny showered with us.

Everybody talked about it and wanted to know why, but nobody really knew what was going on. Except me, worse luck.

I knew that if you could have been there to watch the five come into the empty changing room you’d have seen them sullen and quiet, not their usual cocky, confident selves. Kingstone, Ellis, Ireland, Kemp and Katy Morris are the wild girls in our year, the gang to be in, but today all had red eyes and runny noses.

You would also have seen angry purple weals on the backs of bare legs down where their gym knickers cut in under their bumcheeks. Weals on Karen Kingstone’s skinny legs and on Sarah’s Ireland’s chubby ones, too.

How it happened was like this. The five of them had worked it out three weeks earlier, their shortcut. After the end of the playing field they cut through a garden into Clydesdale Avenue, down through Suffolk Punch Lane and out onto the main road.

They could then find a way through the woods and back to the cross-country course just before it went onto school grounds. It saved them 25 minutes, which meant they could have a ciggie then get back into the field close to the front and finish with good times.

...this one

It worked for two weeks and today Kim Ellis let me in on it and I went too. It worked like clockwork until we got to where the ciggies and the lighter were stashed under a tree stump in the woods.

We came round the corner and Miss Killigrew was sitting on the tree stump and Miss Marsh was there too. Kingstone, Ellis, Ireland, Kemp and Katy Morris were laughing and talking, but went quiet.

I was at the back and I’m small, so I kind of blended into the bushes. No-one saw me and I couldn’t see them. I lay down on the ground with my face in dirt and leaves and stuff and didn’t dare breathe. I could hear it all as Miss Killigrew shouted and shouted at Kingstone, Ellis, Ireland, Kemp and Katy Morris.

She shouted a lot. The usual stuff, about letting the school down and letting themselves down. Then she told Sarah Ireland that she was going to be first and I had to take a peep at what was happening.

I couldn’t see it all, but I could see Sarah laying over that tree stump with her bum in the air. Sarah’s bum is big and her gym knickers are a bit too small for her, which made it look that bit bigger. Miss Killigrew had a bit of tree branch in her hand that was straight and thin and looked really bendy.

When she whipped it through the air a time or two it made a blur and there was a whooshing noise. Sarah’s bumcheeks squeezed hard together like she was trying to make them disappear.

Miss Killigrew told Sarah she was a very wicked girl who deserved the dozen she was going to get and she ignored Sarah when she begged to be given a second chance. The first stroke landed right across the seat of Sarah’s knickers and she kicked and shook like she was being electrocuted by 10 gazillion volts.

She took her dozen well though; stayed in place and kept her hands away. All the others took it differently. Kingstone screamed after the first stroke and said Miss Killigrew was cutting her bum off and Katy Morris twice covered her bottom with her hands and got a couple of strokes across each palm for it.

When it was over they were all crying and Miss Killigrew stood them in a line with their backs too her. Miss Marsh then went along the line and pulled each girls knicks inside out and down to her knees.

I gasped so loud I thought I’d given myself away. Their bums looked like meat in a butcher’s shop because that wicked, whippy stick had left lines that were more purple, blue and black than red. They’d had the worst whacking I’ve ever seen.

While they stood there Miss Killigrew went along the line giving each one a last telling-off and making her point with hard slaps to their bare bottoms and thighs. They howled with every smack.

Then she got them to pull their knickers back up and Kingstone, Ellis, Ireland, Kemp and Katy Morris were marched back to the start and had to run the race from the start again. Which is why we’d all pretty much showered and dressed by the time Kingstone, Ellis, Ireland, Kemp and Katy Morris got back and were marched into the office.

I found out later that she stood them all facing the wall and told them Miss Marsh had found their stash of ciggies. She also told them that they’d be explaining the cigarettes to the Head after assembly the next day.

It’s all left me with a big, big problem. I’ve been watching Kingstone, Ellis, Ireland, Kemp and Katy Morris fidget about in their chairs all last lesson. Sitting down can’t have been easy. And I’ve been thinking about my bum, about the whacking they’ve had and about what I’ve got to do after the bell goes.

I have to find Miss Killigrew and then make my sacrifice. I’ll tell her what I did and that way I’ll get just the same as Kingstone, Ellis, Ireland, Kemp and Katy Morris. If I don’t I’ll never, ever be one of the gang.'

Until you can't sit down...

Has that ever happened to you? Have you been spanked so hard that you're forced to stand at the breakfast bar the next morning.

I have to say that it hasn't to me. On the spanko Richter Scale (Stricter Scale?) I've stayed pretty much in mid-scale, rarely straying into the really punishing end of the spanko spectrum.

I'm mostly happy with that. But I've still had experience of weals that last for days and impressive bruises that hang around for a week or more.

What I haven't had is the feeling that I'd rather not - or can't - sit down. A bit of a wince as I put my weight on a chair, but no more. So, how hard a spanking, caning or whatever do you have to take before you really can say you've been punished "until you can't sit down..."?

The Sizzling Seventies

Great flares, aren't they? I'm not sure this is going to work out though. I think there's a good chance she'll end up whacking a hand rather than a buttock.

She needs to get that girl to bend over properly, get the and to get those hands well out of the way. A caning is a serious business, not something to rush into.

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...