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.

Recently punished...

"Just this morning, wasn't it?" She didn't answer. The nod of the downturned head was close to imperceptible. "I asked you a question. When did you last receive a punishment?"

"Today, miss," she said, her voice low, sulky, resentful.

"Don't take that tone with me, Wood."

"Sorry, miss."

Miss Birch lifted Wood's pleated, grey skirt and tugged the girl's navy knickers out and down. Her buttocks were a cheerful pink and blotched by the darker markings of the hairbrush spanking she had been given just after breakfast.

"Did it hurt?"

"Yes, miss"

"But not enough, clearly. You're punished for bad behaviour and then just four hours later I come across you running in the corridors. What should I deduce from that?"

Wood wasn't sure what 'deduce' meant. "I don't know miss."

"I do know, 'miss'. That you're a girl who's developed resistance to this particular form of medicine," Miss Birch said, letting the skirt fall back into place. She took a step across the room to a cupboard, opened its door and took out a cane, before turning back to face the girl.

"Stronger medicine is called for, don't you think?" Miss Birch said. Wood's answer was to whisper a "yes" that Miss Birch didn't quite hear, but that she wasn't that worried one way or another.

Scotland's gift to the world?

Who wouldn't feel the need to lift a naughty little tartan skirt and apply at least one firm spank? I suspect even the vanilla-erest vanilla would derive some pleasure from doing so.

Someone arrived at this blog a day or two ago via the admirably straightforward search 'tartan + spank'. And why not? There's definitley some natural linkage between the two.

But I think there's a bit of a attitudinal split between how North America thinks about tartan in this context and how us Brits do. I'm no expert on US culture (never been farther west than Donegal as it happens), but from what I've seen the short tartan skirt is an essential part of the schoolgirl uniform in the US of A. Or at least of the popular school uniform fantasy.

Britney Spears added fuel to the fire, of course. So, for example, if you go looking for a schoolie outfit at UK online store Ann Summers you find something that's at lot more to do with hitting Britney one more time than St Trinian's. The Spanking Art Wiki article on the subject says tartan has been fetishised just about everywhere. Proximity to Scotland isn't an issue, this is a connection that works as well in Japan as it does in the US. Tartan's links with strict school discipline mean that it switches on a naughty little lightbulb thought in the minds of those who are receptive to those thoughts. But it doesn't quite work for me. Yes, a tartan mini is cute but here school uniform skirts should austere, plain and grey.

To my way of thinking tartan is more about men's kilts and the British army, which has a long traditions of fighting men in what really amounts to a skirt. And there's the question of what they wear underneath.

If you can believe what you're told (and I have no first-hand experience here) it's supposed to be nothing. Bottoms and the rest are supposed to go bare under a kilt.

Which I've always thought left the wearer at a disadvantage. For a start, it's never that warm in Scotland and often breezy.

But also, isn't a young man wearing a kilt and nothing else is in a very vulnerable situation when around a tawse and someone strict?. Scotland seems to have a very sound tradition of no-nonsense discipline and perhaps that's what the no underwear rule was about - making sure the disciplinarian always had easy access when there was punishment to dish out.

The Joy of Sox

Saturday morning chores to catch up on. The worst of which is doing the washing. When I was done I had, as ever, loads of odd socks. How does that happen? In a house of four adults (or three adults and a teen) how can we lose so many socks?

As I was messing around trying to match up stray socks I found myself thinking about the phrase "pull your socks up". When I was young I heard it all the time - it was used at home and at school, to me and to others, with tedious repetition. 

Usually it was delivered as an ultimatum. "You'd better pull your socks up or..." Or what? Or you'd get detention, lines, extra homework, whatever. From time to time at home it was: "You'd better pull your socks up or you'll feel my hand. Do you want that to happen?" I didn't at the time and the threat was never carried through. Ironically, since adulthood my answer to the question would be an emphatic "yes".

Somewhere over the years I'm sure I've been told that the origin of this once-popular British idiom had a spanko element. That bending over to pull up socks was an expected precursor to corporal punishment.

But I've just had a bit of a Google around and haven't been able to find anything that backs that story up. Perhaps it was just a bit of spanko wishful thinking.

The school uniform question

Got up early and did a bit of writing this morning. I've decided to add in a flashback scene to when my main character (Beryl) was on her last day at school because it helps establish her relationship with her best friend.
But I'm not sure. I'm a bit uncomfortable about school uniform in a work of spanko fiction. My characters are over 18 and consenting adults, but... That said, where would porn be without the adult schoolgirl?

Wrong?

I hated what I had to wear at school, but now uniform makes me feel all tingly. And if that's odd then I'm a member of a very big minority, aren't I?  The "naughty schoolgirl" is now a fancy dress standard, so the uniform thing has resonance with lots of (presumably) well-adjusted adults.
Zille at Fetish Fantasies was talking school uniform yesterday and exploring some of the issues around authenticity. She says: "It’s just one of those weird things: I feel emotionally nakeder in the longer skirt, with big ol regulation knickers under that!)."
Is an adult in a near-real school uniform more of an affront to all things decent and true than one in a cartoonishly tarty, fancy dress shop one? Do grown up women in shirt and tie encourage wrongun's to view real schoolgirls in an inappropriate way?
Last thought, should I start out on Beryl's story long after she's left school and joined the adult world? Is it wrong to put the classroom into a work of spanko fiction (a school scene that will, of course, have to include a little corporal punishment - it is spanko fiction after all). Or should I just go for it?
PS Someone emailed me to draw my attention to this. The marvellous Poppy apparently had to where a uniform hat - a boater no less. Unbelieveable, and she says it was only 20 years ago!

Some confusion, surely?

From personal expereince I can say that the birch is a CP implement that has its problems, but I'm pretty sure something is wrong here. Madam, I think you're in danger of missing the point. Another little gem discovered at my current pash, Wickedknickers. At some time in the future I'm planning a 'Week in the Country II' to give my favourite heroine Flick new life and I think this pic could be the inspiration for a scene.

Those were the days...

Or were they? It's interesting how long it takes for a decade to begin to go all hazy with nostalgia.  The 1990s are in sharp detail - we were there, weren't we, so we know. But the 1890s are all fuzzy and soft focus and just right for all sorts of imaginings.
At the moment I'd say that the 1950s were going through the process. They are certainly being re-invented and especially by spankos, who see the decade as a sort of domestic discipline nirvana. And why not?
The fashions turn up in shoots and there are any number of stories featuring no-nonsense dads, scarily strict mothers and 18-plus daughters (and sometimes sons) who accept corporal punishment when they do wrong.
And it sort of works for me as a child of the 1970s. Growing up in the 70s corporal punishment was part of our lives, but a rarity (where I lived anyway). But adults were more than happy to tell us about how we had it good and how the tough the rules - and punishments - were when they were kids.
As a spanko-in-the-making it gave me a thrill - it was scary and exciting all at the same time. I'd love to know your favourite decade for spanko fantasy - please vote in the poll over on the right of this page.