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.