Not dead yet

Since it's been over 2 months since my last post, I just want to reassure everyone (yes, both of you!) that I'm still alive.

I've been feeling a little stretched: happy to spend time with friends, but without the energy to push myself out into the wider world and engage with people I don't know yet. I think I've been running on emotional overdrive since Niki left, and now the engine is running out of steam. So I've been pulling in my horns a bit until my batteries are recharged. [There's nothing like a mixed metaphor!]

I'm not short of kinky thoughts, just the energy to craft and hone them. But I'll be back!

But in the mean time, let me tell you about one of my longer-term projects. I have always been an admirer of Alan Bell, the photographer behind the early days of Blushes magazine (who also appeared in a few videos, such as the iconic Room 2D from Roue). His particular mastery was to extract expressions of shame and embarrassment from his models, to catch them in pensive moments of anticipation.

I don't have that skill yet, but I'd love to acquire it. So my project is to pick a few of his most evocative photos and try to reproduce them: not exactly, but enough to capture the expression and emotions of the model. I plan to post a few of my favourites here, and ask for comments on just what it is that they convey: what was the girl thinking, what was she feeling?

Niki and I made a start on this a few years ago, with a set of photos of a reformatory caning in wet punishment shorts.




The top one one is the original Blushes photo, and the bottom one is our recreation. I didn't manage to catch Niki's face in that particular shot, but I love the way the rivulets of water cascade down her legs, pouring into and through the tight shorts.

What thoughts are going through her mind as the cold water soaks her shorts, held tight between her legs by a doubled cord? Soon the cane will be gliding over her cheeks, probing and tapping. Soon it will lift up. What will come next? Will the tapping resume, keeping her in suspense? Or will the cane cleave the air with its characteristic swish and cut hard into her waiting bottom?

Of course I don't really know which shoots were Alan Bell's. I fancy I know his style, but it's always possible that someone else was responsible for a particular shoot or set. If one of my readers knows better than me, please tell me!

A footnote: Blushes had a habit of reusing photo shoots, often with a slightly different set of photos and quite different stories attached. The original of this particular shoot was in Blushes Supplement 2, which I think was published in about March 1985. But the particular photo reproduced above is not in that issue. Some time I must make a compilation of which photosets were repeated in which issues, so that I can collect all the different photos into a coherent set. Yes, I'm that OCD.

San Francisco Spanking Party

Who's going to the San Francisco Spanking Party that Zille is organising this weekend?

I'm very much looking forward to it and would love to hear from people who'll be there. I'm never very good at introducing myself to complete strangers, so it would be good to exchange a message or an email beforehand. If you don't want to comment here, send email to the address in my profile.

I'm aiming for the prize for "furthest traveller" :-)

And just for good measure, here are a couple of gratuitous photos of a very appealing girl-pile taken at Shadow Lane a few years ago. Or should that be a pile of very appealing girls?

Spanking in dreams

EmmaJane has just made a fascinating post in which she describes dreams about being spanked.

It raises a serious question that I'd love to know the answer to:

Do you ever have dreams in which you are actually spanked and feel pain?

EmmaJane describes two dreams in her post: in the first, she is prepared for punishment but wakes up before the spanking starts. From what I've heard, this is the most common experience: the dream is about the situation, the anticipation, the emotions.

Even in the second dream that EJ describes, where the spanking does actually start, what makes an impression is the emotional impact, not the physical one. Is this everyone's (every bottom's) experience? I don't think anyone has ever told me about a dream-spanking in which they felt actual pain - and certainly not catharsis.

Let's extend this a bit further: if you're a bottom who's interested in things beyond the CP realm, do you experience them in dreams as physically as you would in real life? Or is the dream experience focussed on different aspects?

There could be a Ph. D. thesis here. Are any psychologists reading this?

Fantasizing about reality

One thing I love to do in role-play is to add authentic touches to a scene. Because of that, I spend (waste?) a lot of time reading historical accounts of situations that might provide scene-fodder. I love sites like corpun.com that document the history of corporal punishment, and (as you've seen) I do a lot of my own digging in the archives. I also scour Ebay and the like, looking for authentic uniforms, accessories, insignia. And of course authentic implements.

I know that not everyone approves of this. Some people feel it's too close to the bone, perhaps even that it trivialises real suffering. I can see that argument, but I don't agree with it. The scenes I do in role-play may borrow some elements from reality, but I use the parts I find appealing and discard the parts I don't. The resulting scenes aren't the real thing and in playing with them I don't condone the real thing. Even a school caning was pretty unpleasant in reality.

Well, that's the principle. But just occasionally there's a news item that's just too perfect, and I came across one today. It's about a police officer in Fort Worth, Texas, who caught an 18-year-old girl doing naughty things with her boyfriend in a parked car:

A six-member Tarrant County jury convicted Craig Arlen Murrah of official oppression because he mistreated the 18-year-old after ordering her out of her car in Oakhurst Park shortly after 1 a.m. on June 22, 2007.

The woman, now 20, testified during the two-day trial that she and her boyfriend were having sex in the car when they saw the lights of a patrol car as it pulled into the parking lot.

She tried to get dressed but was still nude from the waist down when Murrah made her get out of the car and put her hands behind her back. That caused her to drop the shirt covering her lower body. Murrah forced her to bend over and spanked her on her naked bottom, she said.

Official oppression? I didn't know that was an offence!

But I don't need to add much to turn this into a fantasy. In my version, of course, I am that cop. I recognise the girl as the spoilt daughter of a local politician, who knows just how displeased Daddy will be if she's brought home in a police car. There'll be no way to keep it out of the local paper: her father's "family values" campaign will be in tatters, and her longed-for Caribbean cruise will evaporate in an instant. How much easier to accept the spanking she knows she deserves, right there in the parking lot...

Hmm. I may have to photograph this.

Japanese schoolgirl switched in the snow

Kami Robertson was here for a few days around New Year. The snow just kept falling, and we thought that a Japanese schoolgirl in the snow might be quite appealing. So we came up with a little photostory...


Young Haruka is a lucky girl. Her uncle gave her two ponies for her birthday last summer, and she has been having a lot of fun taking care of them, feeding them, making much of them, and occasionally riding them.

But now it's winter, and it's not so much fun going out to feed them in the dark evenings. last night she stopped off at a friend's house after school, and she was tired when she got home. She decided they could manage for once.

But overnight there was a big snow storm, and in the morning her ponies did not look happy at all. Haruka's uncle was not pleased when he realised she had left them to fend for themselves. What had she been thinking of? Her poor ponies had had no shelter, no blankets. Their drinking water had been frozen solid, and in the deep snow there was no grass that they could reach to eat.

Haruka was horrified by her own thoughtlessness and didn't protest when her uncle insisted that she go out to feed them in only her summer school uniform. If the ponies had spent the night in the cold, without their blankets, she could suffer a little cold while she fed them.

But that was not all her uncle had in mind. Once the ponies had been fed and watered, he handed her a knife and sent her to cut a switch from the ash-tree at the edge of the paddock. She knew what that meant, and though her heart sank she knew she deserved it. So she fetched the switch and presented it to him obediently. And obediently she bent over the fence and let him lift her skirt, the winter air chill on her bare skin.



He took his time, gliding the switch up and down. Haruka shivered as she waited. At last he began, flicking the switch down time and time again until Haruka's bottom and thighs were criss-crossed with thin red lines.



He wasn't brutal with her, but the thin switch bit sharply on her cold flesh. Haruka yelped and squirmed, the fire in her bottom displacing any thought of the chill winter air.

It was a very chastened Haruka who was eventually allowed to climb off the fence, rub her bottom, and run inside to warm herself in front of the big log fire.


Haruka has posted her own account, with some more pictures.

A smacked bottom on display in the snow

What do you do when a little brat throws snowballs at you in a public park? And then, despite all your warnings, takes hold of a tree and shakes it so that snow cascades all over you? Well, if the brat is EmmaJane, you take her by the ear and lead her to the nearest bench, and there you take down her pants and smack her soundly on the bare bottom.

And then, to make sure she understands how cold and unpleasant snow can be, you make her sit bare-bottomed in it until she pleads prettily.



Finally, you let her up, her red bottom still glowing from the spanking...


...and put her on display over a convenient gate to reflect on her misbehaviour while you admire the imprint in the snow.





More details of how this happened EmmaJane's blog...

A Victorian School

I do love book catalogues. Here's a description I just found:

Regulations for the Catholic Girls' School at Ugbrook

Chudleigh: printed by J.E. Searle. 1841. 8vo., (2) + 8 + (2) pp., original pale green card covers. A fine copy. First (and only?) edition: very rare. OCLC, COPAC & NSTC together locate copies only at British Library and Emory University, Atlanta (Pitts Theological Library). There is also a copy at Georgetown University.

A nice example of a prospectus for a private girls' school in early Victorian Devon. The school was established by Lord Clifford of Chudleigh for the education of the female children of the tenants, servants, or labourers on his estate, or tradesmen in the employ of his family at Ugbrook.

The Regulations include rules for corporal punishment (children must 'submit willingly'). Of the 16 Regulations, no fewer than 7 are to do with punishments for faults, the emphasis being on 'disgrace', 'obstinacy', 'penance', 'correction', and so forth. Orphan girls were each to be allocated to 'a respectable married woman of known mild character in the neighbourhood', who would act in loco parentis.

At £200 or so for 8 pages, it seems a bit steep. But still.