(Too) tight-fitting jods

Can a good-looking bottom look any better than it does in a really nice pair of jodhpurs? Forget Spanx and all that body-shaping stuff, a really expensive pair of jods can do wonders.
Of course, it's a chicken-and-egg thing. If you own a serious pair of jods then you are almost certainly a proper horse-rider and riding is a great work-out for the seat.
Personally, I'm a not quite a "proper horse-rider". Serious riders are active all year round, but for me it's autumn and horse-riding that go together.
When the weather gets wintry I tend to lose interest and would rather stay in the warm. And in spring and summer I've got other things to do.
So, this is the time to get my  jodhpurs out and find out if I can fit into them. They should fit like a glove.

Today was the day to find out and it quickly became apparent that either they've shrunk, or I've got bigger. Tight is good, but the button and zip has to do up.
I better lose a pound or two. In the meantime I need to buy a pair in a slightly larger size.
The stats on this blog tell me that there's a strong interest in jods out there. They obviously do it for some people pretty intensely because one post is never out of this blog's top five posts.
I find that a little puzzling. Where do jods fit into sexual politics? As I've said before,for me there's a very strong link between the whole horse- riding thing and my sexual self. For a start, riding often involves a pupil-teacher relationship between novice and instructor and as I never get beyond novice I'm often being told-off.
There's also the power and control thing that happens around horses. But I think that for me most of the buzz comes from the gear.
The formality of traditional British riding gear harks back to a more disciplined time plus - of course - there's a focus on saddles, seats and bottoms. As a spanko a bit of a thrill goes through me when my instructor tells me to sit up straight and push my bum down and out!
Also, when I have jods on I feel very self-conscious about how they display my bum. I know its a bit too big, but jods feel like I'm doing a Kim Kardashian (asking the world to look, and keeping looking).
That feeling of display feels naughty and naughty = deserving of punishment, doesn't it?
Add all that together and it's no surprise that when I'm out on a ride I find it hard to think lofty thoughts about the beauty of the countryside. I'm usually day-dreaming my way into a TTWD sort of headspace.But I don't seem to find much of the way I feel about jods in the world of porn. There's the ponygirl stuff, which is a mystery to me; I have no desire to wear a tail.
And there are jodhpur-wearing dominatrices, which don't do it either. Maybe I'm in a minority of one on this one.
PS, language note: does the word ' jodhpurs' get used in US English? Or would it be 'breeches' instead?

That figures

You're given a gift and you think what's the message here, don't you? There's usually a sub-text. So, what would the giver be saying  here?
I was doing some online research today of an entirely vanilla kind and up popped this strange little china ornament that, of course, caught my attention. It was on an auction site and the vendor said it was a Victorian china fairing (the page is old and it had been sold).
He or she added: "Come home late and this is what you get...got, back in the Victorian era. A good whopping. This original antique China Fairing was made by Conta Boehme of Germany in the late 1800s. These porcelain china fairings were given away as prizes at fairs. The caption on this fairing is 'Returning at One O'clock in the Morning'...We can't tell if this is the husband or a naughty teen boy, but someone's getting a good spanking from mom and her hairbrush."
Is that Mom? To me he and she are a couple and she's teaching him that there's a cost to coming home after curfew.
Anyway, doing a bit more reading it sounds like fairings were prizes, but were also bought as gifts or souvenirs. What would you be trying to say to somebody you gave 'Returning at One O'clock in the Morning' to? 

Never alone

We're at that end of the summer when life gets to be just about unbearable. Since about the time of my last post the house has been full most of the time and for me any sort of play is way off the agenda; even thinking about TTWD is a no-go area.
Younger daughter is around all the time as her friends are away on holiday. Older daughter is back from university and has her boyfriend here - I suggest trips, but they seem to want to do nothing but lay about watching TV all day.
To make mattesr worse, me and SO had a blazing row a few days ago and it has never really been resolved. A lot of it was down to my brattiness and under normal circumstances it would be sorted out in the bedroom with The Hairbrush playing its UN Peacekeeping role.
However, doing just a little bit of darkside blog visiting last night I came across a post at A Voice in the Corner that set my nerve-endings a-flicker like the bulbs in a string of faulty Christmas lights. I'm not sure if I totally believe the story of Bristol's Victorian disciplinary B&B, but it had my imagination heading off in all sorts of directions.

At £100 a year a stay with Mrs Smith sounds like excellent value for money, and I like the sound of the ethos of her establishment. I can recognise my own failings in Mrs Smith's opinion that "some girls are idle constitutionally, this must be cured; others have a superfluous amount of energy, this needs to be well directed".

I manage to idle and to have too much energy at the same time. I'm sure Mrs Smith's birch would have straightened me out. If she were still in business I'd be tempted to book myself in - at least until term-time starts again and private time is an option once again. 

Home alone

No, I couldn't go. SO was adamant that I was not invited to the friends' camping trip, which meant that I'd be on my own all weekend.
Which made me grumpy. The kids are away on holiday together at the moment, so I had assumed the weekend was for our playtime. And having experienced weeks of spanklessness I was very, very hungry for TTWD.
But I need 'a little chat', I pleaded in a whiny kind of way. Nothing doing. It will have to wait until Tuesday, I was told.
Then the door slammed shut and I heard the sound of our old VDub camper firing up. I was mad, and bratty. I spent the weekend eating too much, drinking too much and looking into corners of the webosphere that I promise not to go to...

But SO wasn't there to see any of it, and doing it all just made me more itchy for some serious sorting out. It didn't help that I did a lot of fantasising around the idea of what campsite punishments might be like; birches, switches, my big bare bot and other campers looking on, you know the sort of thing.
SO got back late, tired and in need of a bath and sleep, and seemingly oblivious to my cat-on-a-hot-tin-roof mental state. I felt even more neglected.
However, it turned out that SO hadn't been as out of touch with my state of mind as I thought. The 'it will have to wait until Tuesday' hadn't been just talk. As I was babbling on about my rule-breaking weekend and my thoughts around campsite correction it dawned on me that my poor behind was about to suffer.
Now I always get to a point where I so much want what we call 'my discipline', but when it's actually about to happen I go really cold on the idea. Who in their right mind would want that pain and humiliation?
My pleading was all of a sudden about letting me off, but to no avail. Reader, I got the hairbrush, and then me (and my red bum) got sent outside to cut a switch. I have to say the way a length of  willow marks my thighs is quite something to see...

Sufficiently sufficient?

How often is enough?In a moment of passion recently SO promised me that my persistent brattiness and generally vile moodiness meant I should expect at least a spanking a week. "At least."
As it turned out it was a promise that was worth about as much as my New Year's resolution to stop snacking on chocolate (pauses to break off another two squares...) In reality SO reckons that once every month is about right, which leaves me feeling a bit spank-hungry most of the time. Like today.
I've even started marking my work diary when the necessary happens so that I can be 100% correct when a discussion about attitude adjustment comes up. I also like the fact that my colleagues and clients might see the black dot on the days in question!
I'm not at all happy with where we've got to. SO's vanilla-ness has learned to accept my 'strange' needs, but does now use it to win out in the power balance of our relationship.    
So, what would be the right interval. In reality I think once a week would be too often. I love cake, but don't want it for every meal; even a good thing can get dull through regularity, can't it?
PS I can't remember where I came upon this great little captioned illustration, but I like it. It seems to me that the placing of that knee might be more painful than the spanking.

Time to change

Time for a belated spring clean, I think. This blog has been looking the way it is for far too long and I think it's time to shake it all up a bit.

I don't have the time to spend a whole day on a revolutionary makeover, so it's going to have to be a tweak here and tweak there. Starting with the title.
I've just been reading  Consensual Spanking on the subject of hits (hits on your blog that is) and can see that he's right about the title choice. Oblique, vague, teasing is all wll and good, but perhaps not here - web searching is all about directness, isn't it?
I've looked back to see why I chose the old one, but can't find the post. It was all about the past being 'another country', I think.
It occurs to me that lots of kind people have links on their blogs that are tagged 'Another Country'. By changing things I'm creating a chore for them, but only a small one so hopefully they won't be too angry with me - in anticipation, thanks. 

Classic art: Without a trace

As you can probably tell from this blog, I love vintage spanking erotica. Good art makes a connection that photography very rarely can.
So, I was fascinated when I read last night about how photography and art come together in the work of the 19th Century master of spanking art Louis Malteste. It looks as though for some of his best-known images Malteste was cheating - tracing photographs rather than working from life or pure imagination.
'Cheating' is probably too loaded a word to use and the technique certainly produced some beautiful and memorable images, especially his earlier efforts. I wonder if he used a photograph tracing for all of his illustration?
Looking through Malteste stuff on the web today I came across this one, which I don't think I've seen before. I find it fascinating; what did she do to earn herself a punishment? Are they in a compartment, and are we as viewers peeping in on a private moment? Or is it an open carriage and the public nature of the process part of her humiliation?

Shopping plans

Just beyond the top of the stairs four small, circular indentions mark the carpet - their presence, an absence.They indicate where a single chair usually stands, back to the wall.

Simple, straight-backed, armless and possibly an antique, it was a junk sale find. It's style is a little at odds with our other furniture, but it serves a purpose.
It's absence can mean only one thing, that it's placed ready in our bedroom. And that I'm about to get the punishment I know I deserve.
Do you have a spanking chair? I don't, that stuff above is just my dark little daydream, but it looks like that could soon change.
Out of the blue today SO announced that we were going to have a Spanking Chair, with a cap S and a cap C. Quite an impressive reading of my domestic discipline mindset for someone so resolutely vanilla.
Clearly, the Spanking Chair is very much part of spanko iconography (spankonography?). I've just googled 'spanking chair' and it comes up with all sorts.
For example, D's is 'a big, wide wooden chair' and he adds: "Just seeing that evil Spanking Chair always makes me nervous." And Ireland's Daughter says "the spanking chair sits in the corner of our bedroom, a wooden chair without arms, used only for that purpose..."
A simple, straight-backed wooden chair is part of the before, after and during of corporal punishment role-play. How have we managed without one?
Now SO's stated intention was all wrapped up in the pillow talk that we play with when we're in bed playing, but can't actually play (because there are big-eared kids in the house). It involves lots of talk about what's going to happen to me, what should happen to me and what I NEED to happen to me.
And, of course, most of those intentions never actually get carried through. But I reckon the chair is going to be different - and think this weekend we're going to be going to a furniture store. 

Shades of consent

Sorry that there has been so little to read here lately, but I've been trying to keep my real-life, vanilla book projects on track. One went to the publisher a week or so ago, and now I feel a little bereft - life seems a little empty. 
But I know there's book no. 2 still to write and it's way behind schedule... So, now's the time to show some self-discipline and get working.
Which is why I'm messing around looking at spanko blogs and tumblrs at 11.25am. Self-discipline is difficult when the d-word sends a little tingle jingling around the nervous system, isn't it? 
While I'm here I feel I have to share yesterday's experience with you -  I've had a spanking that I didn't want. Yes, our consensual spanking relationship edged a little towards non-consent and it has left me a little confused (and a little bruised too). 
It happened like this. I'd been bratting about for a day or two, all sloppiness and pout. SO picks up on the signals and decides to make adjustments to attitude. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.
However, by the time the opportunity for a private moment arrived my SQ had plummeted to a record low.  Like everyone I know here I'm a bit under the weather at the moment and feel distinctly post-viral.
But SO wasn't going to be put off track and I figured I'd warm to the moment once my bot was getting warmed. It didn't happen and I ended up taking a belt-whipping I had little or no appetite for.  And thinking about it afterwards it occurred to me that this was the first time ever that I had had a spanking that I wasn't absolutely desperate for. It hurt, I wanted it to stop, it wasn't arousing. 
Of course, I could have used our safe word. It exists, but after 20 or so years I'm not sure SQ would have recognised it. 
I took it my medicine bravely. Then it came to me that this was as close to a proper punishment spanking that I've ever been - strange.

Marked improvement

It's a spankless task being me. Up late, our morning fun date turned out to be unilaterally cancelled; SO is working away and was more interested today in getting onto the motorway than playing with me.
It meant that I didn't get the attitude adjustment that I was utterly sure was coming my way. Not good given that my SQ is at max at the moment.
So, I'm stuck in pouty, brattiness mode now knowing that's what I'm like, knowing what would smooth it out - and unlikely to get the antidote any time soon.
Anyway, enough of my moaning. I'm thinking about marks. Why is it that I don't get marks? SO is a reluctant disciplinarian, but over time has overcome soft-heartedness to some degree and can occasionally lay the brush on with gusto.
But a few hours later there's not often much sign that I've been punished. It's disappointing, by the time me and a mirror get together it's 'move along folks, nothing to see'.
l look at pictures like these here at Reflections on Red and can't understand how they can be so thoroughly marked, while I escape with a bot that's completely blemish free. They must be utterly fearless - or very naughty. 
Then I remembered a great post I read from the insightful Secret Spanko some time back that said that for spankees a marks selfie is like one of those pix that mountaineers take when they get to a summit. It's a record of experience - and personal achievement.
I reckon he's right, but personally I don't want the selfie - I just want the marks! And if I get them I'll be the spankee exception to his rule that we all post our spanky selfies (it has to be said that my bot hasn't been in shape for public exposure any time during this century, sadly...)

Twelve ways of Christmas

Are you feeling the Christmas spirit yet? It seems in short supply around here, but I did just catch myself humming 'Jingle Bells' while I was clearing away breakfast things in the kitchen.
The problem about working on your own from home is that you miss out completely on the whole Xmas run-up thing. No party, no secret Santa, no Christmas cards from people who dislike you - but can't afford to make it too obvious.
I think maybe I should print this 12 Days out and put it on my office wall. Perhaps I should see if I could persuade SO to get involved in a re-enactment.
Not sure where it's from originally (I just saw it here while doing a little random tumblr-ing), but I do like it. The style of penpersonship seems familiar, but I can't place it.
Isn't "rulers rul'ring" clever? But I'm not sure of the pay-off: "And a switch from a hickory tree..." Does it need an extra beat to scan, or do you just stretch hickory to fit?

Literary pursuits

Expect to hear a lot about the wordy Welsh wizard Dylan Thomas next year because it's the centenary of his birth and it's going to be all over the media. That's my prediction, anyway.

Dylan and Caitlin

In the last few weeks I've been working on commission from a magazine that has involved going to see the home of Dylan and Caitlin Thomas at Laugharne in Carmarthenshire. And it has resulted in a couple of discoveries that I won't share with the magazine's readers - but thought you might like..
In case you don't know it the 1940s radio play has become a classic of Welsh writing in English. It's at its best on the version voiced beautifully by Richard Burton and was also a film with Elizabeth Taylor and Burton.
Have a look at the trailer here. The topless girl in the pink pants is at Fishguard Old Town, Pembrokeshire, and I think she's the lovely Angharad Rees (who went on to star in the BBC's Poldark series).
 Anyway, startles.The first is a line or two from 'Under Milk Wood' that I can really relate to. It comes in a section that describes the sleeping townspeople's dreams; this is it:

SECOND VOICE: Willy Nilly, postman, asleep up street, walks fourteen miles to deliver the post as he does every day of the night, and rat-a-tats hard and sharp on Mrs Willy Nilly. 

MRS WILLY NILLY: Don't spank me, please, teacher,

SECOND VOICE: whimpers his wife at his side, but every night of her married life she has been late for school.

Every night... such commitment. Then when I was reading up about Laugharne I spotted this article. It's in section two about the corporation.
I'd heard about the tradition of beating the bounds before - it happens in lots of other British villages. But I particularly like the detail that the owner of the bottom that gets beaten at Laugharne is 'usually a young lady'.
There was a whole spanko world out there back then, but you're usually only aware of it through the odd nudge or wink. 

Take that

What happened next? I reckon the Woman in Black cornered her adversary, threw down the riding switch and then wrestled her over her knee. Under a barrage of spanks guilt was admitted - and only then were a dozen good stripes with the switch applied.
Maybe not, but I do like the way spanking art lubricates the imagination. I came across this one at The Spanking Art Blog and it caught my eye.

I've done some searching for pages about Sarah Bernhardt and there's plenty to read. She does sound like a bit of a brat, but I can't find any mention of Marie Solombe - wonder what the real story was?

Good old days?

This gives my age away, but anyway... A long time ago little me arrived in London from the country and discovered all sorts of strange things. 
Certainly, the strangest - and most wonderful - was that I wasn't alone. It seemed that other people were getting a sexual frisson from corporal punishment, giving and/or receiving. Or a bit of both.
I have to say that it made me feel a lot less uncomfortable about some of the thoughts that crossed my mind. I decided that getting all hot and bothered about getting my bottom all hot and bothered made no sense and I vowed to stop giving myself a hard time about it.
How old was I when this revelatory moment happened? Well, I was somewhere between 22 and 23, would you believe. 
But I'm taking you back to a pre-internet age. Today, a young person with even a hint of spanko spirit can Google and discover all there is to know about TTWD, but in 1989 the red-bottomed facts of life were far harder to discover.
What my hometown didn't have were the sort of newspaper shops that sold porn magazines. In London, the top shelf in my ordinary street's newsagent was full of naughty mags and in among them were copies of Janus, Roue, and the like.

I didn't do more than look out of the corner of my eye at that self (which I couldn't have reached even if I'd been brave enough to try). But it was pretty clear from the slightly ambiguous cover images that some of the magazines there were about spanking. 
Janus covers were the ones that really caught my eye. I'm sure that the guy who owned the shop noticed my blushes when I was taking a peep at Janus (or a furtive look at a copy of Blushes) and had me sussed.
Dana Kane touched on the idea of a spanko good old days recently and questioned when that might have been - pre-interent, or post-internet. Personally, I say it's defintiely now. It was only after the internet that the content of that top shelf became available to me because I never had the confidence to buy one of those magazines.
The other London discovery that took me by surprise was that all of the city's phone boxes were full of cards selling sexual services - and it was pretty clear from the pictures that red bottoms were a significant part of the exchange. Ever the social historian, Richard Windsor had the good sense to collect some and save at least a few for posterity.
The phone people would turn up and rip down the cards and almost straight away someone would arrive and new cards would go up to replace them. As a cub reporter I had to use public phones just about every day and found those cards very distracting.

'New' Benson

What a treat, an undiscovered Benson. Or undiscovered for me anyway,  because you may have seen it before - I hadn't.
And that's a bit of a surprise as I'm a bit of a Benson obsessive.  I really thought I'd seen everything there was to see of his work that's published on the Net.

So, it's nice to have come across it on a new-to-me photoblog. Though I have to say that, unfortunately, it's not going to make it onto my personal Roger Benson all-time Top 10 for a couple of reasons.
Firstly,  there's the fact that her hands are tied. For me bondage and spanking don't mix,  the spankee should accept her (or his) need for punishment. I need to be there by my own choice, however reluctantly.
And then there's the teddy. By the looks of things something pretty unpleasant is about to happen with that switch and I don't think that's something a Teddy should have to see.
Anymore than teddy bears should have to be on stage with a twerking Miley Cyrus. It's a messy old world and I think we have a duty to see that Teddy bears don't get to know that.

Smash, bang, wallop

Whack! The noise was so unexpected that I nearly jumped out of my skin, but a quick glance in the direction that it had come from suggested that the damage was minimal.
The road had been narrow and I'd been intimidated by a man in a van coming the other way, but impact was definitely my fault. But it look like I'd got away with it - the passenger door mirror was upside down, not off.
A few miles down the road I stopped and went round to straighten the mirror out and was horrified to discover that the plastic housing was gone, shattered to smithereens. Bad, but what made it worse is that this was my first solo outing in our lovely new (to us) VW Camper.
SO had waved me away the day before with the words "now don't bring my van back crunched..." I have to say I felt terrible and spent the rest of the journey home trying to work out how and when to break the news.

What happens next? In the wonderful world of spanko imagination I'd be driving home to a woodshed whipping that I'd never forget, wouldn't I? Of course, that didn't happen.
It turned out that SO was very understanding - accidents do happen. But I have had to pay. As it happens the day I messed up that mirror was the last day of the long school holidays and the next morning was the first time in more than a month that the house was kid-free.
By mutual agreement yours truly was heading for a long overdue attitude adjustment that I just couldn't wait to collect. Lots of little black marks had been noted over the weeks and the time had come to straighten things out.
When I heard the school bus heading off down the hill I went back to bed to talk things over. I feel awful about the van, I said, and SO said I should.
I feel like a deserve a REAL punishment. "Yes, you do." Something that I won't forget... And that's what I got.
I never understand how DD couples untangle TTWD from the stick and carrot stuff. In our house I pay my dues to society by NOT being spanked. SO got breakfast in bed and I've resolved to drive much more carefully in the future.

Perfect hairbrush

Certainly not the perfect picture I know,  but I was in a bit of a hurry. Anyway, away on a work trip, SO emails to say I have a gift coming my way. There's some hints and some guessing and, to cut a long story short, I work out that it's a hairbrush.
A nice wooden hairbrush, just what I've been looking for. Perhaps even something from a little antique shop, I thought,  and my imagination began to run away with me. Maybe this will be THE one...
So you can imagine how ticked off I was when my gift turned out to be "just a little joke". That is, both little and a joke - a hairbrush no longer than my index finger.
Now you know how important hairbrushes are to us,  you understand their centrality in the spanko-iconography.  The estimable Pandora Blake touched on the subject recently on her blog,  saying: "Wooden hairbrushes are a huge part of my kink, and I fantasise about them all the time, quite possibly because they are so evil and difficult to take in reality. Being my own worst sadist, this is more than enough reason for me write myself lots of wooden hairbrush spankings."
Exactly, and after all these years SO still doesn't get that. Is that depressing, or what?

Crash, bang...

...wallop. Is it just me, or is noise a vital part of the spanking experience? Quiet corporal punishment is like orchestral performance without the percussion section.
If you've spent time on this blog you'll know that volume is an issue in our house. SO is so terrified about being unmasked as a semi-willing participant in TTWD that a sound spanking for me often lacks sound.
So, yesterday we were blessed with one of those surprise no-kids days. Our girls decided to go shopping together, which is unusual. It's been a while since the opportunity has come along and I've been very bratty, so the normally reluctant SO was nearly itching to get switching.
And today's marks on my bot are testament to the fact that I got what I had coming. That whippy, green stick used was especially punishing when it found the tops of my legs, so no short shorts for a day or two.

The switch was chosen with noise-reduction in mind. It's so hot here at the moment that everyone has their windows open and that convinced SO that someone would hear us (even though our window was tightly shut).
Now to moan about the detail of what was a very satisfying afternoon encounter would appear to be ungrateful, I know. The sort of gracelessness that calls for a bit of old-fashioned correction, in fact.
But hey, SO doesn't come here so who cares. That switch stung like a dozen hornets, but it wasn't as all-round satisfying from a spanko pov as something really noisy would have been - a nice percussive paddle, hairbrush or rubber-soled sandal.
The blog Learning DD is a good source on the practicalities of everyday spanko life and has things to say about implements and noise here. Clint at Learning DD says "As a general rule, the less surface area of the buttocks the implement impacts, the quieter the spanking will be."
Btw, reading the post's comments I was green with envy with one from Jack's Jill who said: "We’re lucky that the kids have moved and my HoH can use whatever pleases him without worrying about children in the house or others hearing. This gives him a great sense of freedom and me too. He can discipline me anywhere he pleases in the house and with what ever implement he wants." Sounds heavenly.
Anyway, for me the surface area thing is the seat of the issue (if you'll pardon the pun). I have lots of butt surface area and I want lots of it to get attention with each and every spank.
And the noise that the implement makes, and that I make as it does its work, is very much part of the exercise too. The thwick, thwick, thwick of a switch, a can, a Loopy Johnny or a tilt wand (?) isn't nearly as satisfying as the gunshot whack of slipper or paddle.
Personally, I'd prefer it if we look out the paddle and then threw open the windows and let the neighbourhood hear what a truly punishing spanking sounds like. But I think SO would die on the spot, so I suppose I'll just have to be happy with the quiet life.
   

Brand new?

Or brand spanking new? You get so used to a phrase that you don't question it, but then today I did. My first search engine question was to ask is it only us Brits that say it?
But it certainly seems to have currency beyond the UK otherwise why would this South African marketing company have decided that it's brand would benefit from being a little bit spanky?
But what's it all about? I heard someone say the phrase today and when I gave it some thought the best explanation I could come up with was that it had something to do with the old tradition of the midwife slapping a newborn baby to get it to breathe.
But a bit of Googling suggests that that's way off the mark.This definition makes a connection between the s-word, strutting Scandinavians and horses.
While here there's a link made between the sort of branding that cowboys do to cows. Off topic, personally, I don't really understand the whole fiction niche that sees big, rough cowboy heroes spanking the living daylights out of bratty girls in gingham; maybe you have to be American to get it.

But anyway, so far 'brand new' makes some sort of sense. But why the spanking? Apparently it's about our favourite word having two meanings. 
Yes, there's the noun and verb one that involves the reddening of naughty bottoms, but there's more. Meaning number two is adj. 'exceptionally large or fine'.
Interesting. It turns out then that we've forgotten what it means, but we still like to use it. Personally, I think that just may be about the fact that all adult human beings have at least a little bit of spanko hidden deep inside and just like to have an excuse to say the word. 
And then there's all the people like you and me who don't hide TTWD too deeply and just love any opportunity to say 'spanking' in vanilla situations. Anyway, from now on I intend to make full use of both of my favourite word's two definitions.
I'm planning to let SO know that from today I want my spankings to be spanking - that is 'exceptionally large or fine'. Or preferably, exceptionally large and fine...   
 

Learning point

You really do learn something everyday, don't you? And today's step towards enlightenment provides a scientific explanation for why a good hairbrush punches above its weight in the disciplinary sphere.
Physics was a real problem for me at school. Or put it another way, I was a real problem for my physics teacher (sorry Mr Hindmarch).
But since I discovered The Big Bang Theory I have been trying to understand what makes the universe tick, so today's insight was especially pleasurable. I stumbled across it while wasting a little work time in Tumblr-land at a blog called Who's Sorry Now, where Spanked2Tears appears to be mostly concerned with the interface between male bottoms and hairbrushes (in female hands) - but I guess the physics is much the same.
A blog visitor asks: "Why a hairbrush, does it have anything to do with it just being available? Doesn't look like its going to hurt actually."
And Spanked2Tears answers: "My personal take on it, is that the bristles act as delayed mass. In other words they continue to decelerate after the wood has stopped."

I was a bit puzzled at this point. Delayed mass? If only Mr Hindmarch had held my attention (or been more persuasive in demanding it). But S2T goes on to add: "Extending the duration of the impact. If you have ever seen a shot hammer it’s the same theory. The hollow head of the hammer contains small, loose lead balls. They land a moment after the head of the hammer does and cause the blow to generate far more energy than a regular hammer of the same weight..."
So, it's as simple as that - bristles extend duration of impact. I feel I now need to buy two identical hairbrushes, take the bristles off one and then get SO involved in some citizen science. 
How would it work? A dozen with one brush on one butt cheek and a dozen on the other with the other brush, then rate redness?
Spanked2Tears does end on a point that's more about psychology than physics, saying: "I think that the allure of the hairbrush is that it is such a common domestic item." And all that delaying of mass aside, that for me is what makes a good old-fashioned hairbrush THE number one implement for TTWD.
It's an object that is so fearfully stingy, but at the same time is so sweetly innocent. It can sit around the house, or the handbag, and mean nothing to the majority, but everything to those of us in the know.