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.

Word play

Scolded, read the riot act, given a dressing down, whatever you call it. I think of it as being 'told off', which I know sounds rather mild.

During my very polite, middle class, English Home Counties upbringing we lived in fear of a good telling off. No raised voices, just a very stern talking to that nearly always did the trick. Which is maybe why what's said is so important for me now as part of the whole sexy discipline experience. A spanking without a 'telling off' is like ham without mustard.
Lack of verbal reprimand is criminal as far as I'm concerned. Bit of a tangent here, but why is it that you come across so many spanko movies where there's plenty of action during spanking scenes, attention to plot and costume but no decent dialogue?  What a waste.
Anyway, I've spent some time this morning working on what will hopefully be a new novel and have arrived at a scene thatis crying out for a good 'telling off'. It maybe be because it's a wet Sunday morning, cold and dark, but I can't get the dialogue to roll.
Writer's block, but of a particulalry spanko kind. The scolding is misfiring, the 'telling off' won't flow and the bit of dressing down I've got down on paper seems a too mechancial.
What I need is something new. What word or phrase does it for you? Is there something that, combined with a bit of finger-wagging, has the hairs standing up on the back of your neck? Any suggestions that you can pop into a comment here will be gratefully received... 
Alternatively, I could just find a mirror, tell myself I need to 'pull my socks up' and give my legs a sound smack or two (although self-spanking just doesn't really work, does it?)