Brainwashed Back Into Nappies (2)

 

Brainwashed Back Into Nappies (1)

 A little bit of photo mapiulation went in to this one to repair somethings which had gone a bit amiss in the raw AI image...but not much, to be honest.

I've always been interested in the idea of sitting a girl in a nappy on a toilet as a way of overcoming reluctance to use nappies....Dunno why...It's just interesting

This one is raw AI...Just as it poured out of the tin!

This one too is a raw AI image

...as is this....Starting get some pooy nappies now!

Some interesting bondage ideas, once again, raw AI and straight ot of the tin. I love the way the body brace forces the girls to keep their backs straight, shoulders pulled back but forces the bottom to stick out...pefectly presented for the nurse's switch

Under Dr Swanley's 'Care'

 various control harneses for use in mental regression experiments. All of these designs force the subject to shuffle around on her knees but personaly I think the type which involve the hans being fastened behind the back would have the greatest psychological imapact as I think it would make the ever-present fear of toppling over all the greater. Of course both types of design would result in the wearer relying on one of carers to get her upright again. These are raw AI images by the way, other than the text on the first image of course, so there are some problems. The pointer is supposed to be a cane of course - and on some of my other images it does appear as a cane pretty well - but if you ask the AI for 'a cane' it drives the thing bonkers and it starts making all manner of threats about being chucked off the platform

I'd be interested in peoples opinions

More On Those Three Kidnapped Young Women

 SO...I'm still playing with AI image generation although this particular image is largely photomanipulation and only the heads arms and hands are AI generated...The arms, hands and heads are from an AI image sent me by a friend while the faces were generated by the AI platform I am using... The glass block widow I put in because the possibilities are so interesting...If it is really thick it is going to be just as secure as a barred window while not allowing any kind of meaningful view of the outside world and quite soundproof while still allowing some natuaral light in, but probaly not so much that the light can be turned off...BUT... It might be that the glass block wall is actualy just that - a wall. This could be anywhere in a house or other building, perhaps a loft or even a large basement split up into a series of rooms...The glass block walls, illuminated from behind and with that illumination periodicaly faded and brightend - and the room lights kept on 24 hours a day - would quickly destroy any real sense of the passage of time 

Sexual Reorientation?

 No time for words. I need to get down the pub. Last night's beer is wearing off!!!!

Institutional and Domestic Discipline: An Illustrated Collaboration 3 – Further Evolution

I have to rush out today – I am off to Eastbourne on the sunny Sussex coast where my mother is enjoying a few days in a guest house. I am going to be there later today and will probably (hopefully) spend the afternoon outside a bar at the end of Eastbourne pier writing in the sun - and it is blazingly sunny here in London at the moment, so I’m quite optimistic. This evening, I hope, will find me ensconced in the Eastbourne Wetherspoons pub; come and say hello if you are an Eastbourne type, appreciate a good ale and happen to be in the vicinity. Tomorrow I may visit Brighton or Hastings. I am taking my trusty bike and hope to tour around a bit up and down the south coast, visiting Wetherspoons branches and of course writing if and when inspired – I am taking my netbook computer with me. I next expect to be back home at my desk on Tuesday 8th June (next Tuesday) but WiFi internet connections willing, I may update the blog while on the move and hopefully I will still be able to view my emails – so don’t be shy, write today.

Talking off inspiration: if you remember the piece I posted recently regarding my collaboration with the Stateside computer artist, ‘Snooze’ and the evolution of a particular illustration I demonstrated as an example of the sort of thing we have been developing you will probably be interested with this, the latest incarnation of that art work - compare and contrast with the earlier renditions posted elsewhere. There are many more scenes we are working on – some far more complex and detailed - but it would spoil the fun to give any further inkling of these – you’ll just have to wait until the new book gets finished, or more specifically, the illustrated version of it.

In the present illustration the girl has just failed a written imposition set by the section psychiatrist – a most formidable, yet exceedingly clever - woman and has had her institutional pyjama bottoms taken of her in preparation for correction. The view through the door tells the viewer that this private little prison is in fact a tiny secure anteroom leading directly off of a more conventionally furnished consultation room - the regulation hospital bed provided for the inmate with its integral restraints is behind the view and so not in evidence. The white outer door beyond the bars both provides the psychiatrist’s office with the appearance one might expect, when closed, while also increasing the hapless girl’s isolation by removing from her the stimulation of the external view and providing for a high degree of soundproofing. The thick but supple leather belt carried, doubled-over, in the hospital sister’s hand, has a special relevance to the poor girl – it is something destined to make the up-coming correction all the more intolerable for the girl once the realisation sinks in! As always - all comments, ideas and what have you, will be gratefully received - bye for now!

A Bit of News - I'm Working for a Week - and a Lot of Reader Comments

Hi folks, sorry you have not heard from me for a while but I have been away for a while, although I was back in London on Saturday for the last night of the Kenwood House (Hampsted, London) open air concerts on Saturday night with the Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and Alfie Boe singing - a very pleasant if slightly chilly evening. Meanwhile there have been quite a few interesting comments posted in various sections of the blog such as on the last posting I made, back last Tuesday but also on 'An Anonymous Contribution and A Couple More Links' (click to read - look at bottom of posting) that I posted way back in February I think and on 'Aussie School Uniform Summer Dresses, Soap Operas and Inspiration' (again, click to read) that I posted back in July of this year.

Now some other news: I have finally at long last picked up some real work - around one week or so of desk research work, internet based! For that reason the likelihood is that there will be no more posts for around that period as the work looks quite complex and challenging. However; I have some rather interesting stuff lined up to celebrate my return upon completion. Meanwhile thanks for your comments and contributions - please keep them coming in, along with your ideas and inspirations for the upcoming volume and for volume 3 of INSTITUTIONALISED, when I finally get around to working on it again.

A Strict Nurse in Uniform and a Girl in Medical Restraints

.....

I just came across this little gem of a pic of a strict nurse in uniform (left) on a YahooGroup that I will tell you about at a later date as I have to rush out soon _ I am off touring around the more far-flung reaches of Essex tomorrow for a few days and have to get a few pints in first! I have also noted how many of you have been checking out the medical bondage pic I posted a while back so thought I'd include a few more - again from a yahoo group. I particularly like the mitts pictured top right - just perfect for keeping interfering fingers out of the way should masturbation be a problem...and of course for heightening that all-important sense of helplessness and dependency, so crucial if one is striving to create the perfect model of the docile mental patient!

A New and Intriguing Story to Check Out

A very short posting today, no pics I'm afraid - not enough time to source 'em. I'm hard at work - chained to my desk (not literally - I'm the master here. That's why my significant other has her nice new white satin pinny to wear)....and no drinkies!. I just wanted to take this opportunity (I've awarded myself a tea break) to point you in the direction of an interesting straitjacket / asylum story presently unfolding and developing on http://greggerbits.tripod.com/stories.html (click to read chapter 1 ) the basic premise being that a young college woman who fails a psychiatric exam [is then] committed to a mental hospital for further testing. I love this idea and the avenues it opens up - especially if in truth there is little wrong with the subject to start with! I have always enjoyed mulling over the possibilities for exploitation of vulnerable young things inherent in the asylum / mental health system - particularly as pertains to those often less-than-entirely-ethical days of old when wives, awkward stepdaughters and heiresses could find they had stepped out of society based on little more than the word of a disgruntled stepmother or guardian or even a slighted suitor (And a greasing of a palm or two by silver). Anyway, why not explore the entire site while you are there - a lot of interesting links (very straitjacket / asylum orientated) and a lot of material regarding straitjackets in various media (films, TV etc). Incidentally, yours truly has been kindly thanked by the writer (thanks, for the mention) for having helped but in all honesty I can claim only to have read through, made one or two comments and offered-up a couple of ideas for the story's future development and direction.

While we are on the subject - inspired by the story mentioned above, I did a little searching around and came up with a couple of other little gems: A nice selection of free straitjacket photographs on http://www.straitjacketed.com/freepics.html (click site name - highlighted in blue - to view or see sidebar resource list) and a continuing story that I am sure you (and the writer I have just mentioned above) will just love. Entitled; The Job j and posted on the same site's free section, just click on the title to read the first chapter, then just follow the links to the subsequent sections...enjoy!

As for me? Its back to proofreading / editing INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 / 3 (At this point, I'm still uncertain whether to split it into two volumes or not).

A New Art Link (Bondage) by Coco & a Little Bit of Stranger than Fiction Inspiration

Hi folks; Its a so called 'Bank Holiday' here in the UK which basically means a few folk get Monday off of work (those lucky enough to still have jobs that is - unlike yours truly). It used to mean practically every one got the day off but nowadays a lot of folk still have to work - just as they now do on Sundays and every other day of the week (and year, before long, I'd wager!). Mind you; if that means the pubs are kept open, then I'm all for it! (but pubs are going down like flies too - crushed beneath the heel of the credit crunch). I was hoping to go to an antiques fair at Alexandra Palace today, but got dragged instead to help run a stool at a car-boot sale in Hertfordshire - a sort of casually arranged bric-a-brac sale usually held in a field wherein folk sell their old junk brought in their car's boot (automobile trunk - for all you State-side people). Now I'm back to the final stages of proofreading, while still considering whether to split volume 2 into two books - and if so - how much extra work, and thus time, that would entail. If I can do so, sensibly, inside one week, then I may still do so - as long as the split ends the first and begins the second part in a sensible way; and a way that makes the story enjoyable to follow on without confusion.

Meanwhile; I have just been sent a new link (for which, much gratitude) to the excelent bondage art of Coco (click on artwork above or on the title highlighted in blue to link - or check out the sidebar resource list over on the right). And on the subject of 'truth stranger than fiction' (and something that should come as a source of inspiration for 'Judith's Aunt' - a contributor from a while ago now and from whom we have heard little of late...hint, hint... as regards the disciplining of her niece) no sooner did I add a little descriptive work to a section of volume 2 dealing with a form of shame-dress discipline (you will see what I mean if and when you read it) then I came across the following text...And I thought I was being so imaginative!

"We sometimes wore itchy woollen combinations, which were really uncomfortable, with sleeves down to the wrist, and our Liberty bodices were fastened with buttons to our knickers, so that meant unfastening them every time we went to the lavatory! On top of the petticoats we wore cotton frocks in summer, or kilts in winter, and sometimes these long shapeless jersey dresses. I had a navy coloured reefer coat and we had to wear laced ankle boots because my mother believed they helped to strengthen the ankle. But my older sister made such a fuss about them, we stopped wearing them in the end. I had a straw hat for summer and a velour winter hat." "Many young teenage girls were still [kept in] corsets [then]: "[That] was before roll-ons and corselets became popular, and [teenage girls had corsets that hooked up at the side. We wore two pairs of knickers, with navy blue bloomers on the outside and a white cotton 'liner' on the inside and at school we wore a black alpaca tabard pinafore over our uniform dress. We had house shoes for indoors, and lace-up shoes outdoors and on Sunday we wore patent leather house shoes. {A tabard seems an interesting idea - lots of possibilities there! But I'm not sure about alpaca, though - Garth}

"At home we wore these ghastly knitted dresses, they were absolute horrors with a belt threaded through round the hips, just where we were fattest, at a time when we were at our least shapely anyway. These dresses were knitted for us by somebody, and they had absolutely no shape whatsoever, and we hated them." Quoted and adapted from http://www.aohg.org.uk/twww/clothes1.html).

Labels and Tags and Botox Bondage (I'm Back Folks: Happy New Year)

Botox as a Bondage and Humiliation Tool?

If you have seen my blog recently you’ll know about the computer problems I have had recently. I’ve also had something of a crisis of enthusiasm and confidence as regarding the work on volume 2 of my book and the continuation of my blog and so whereas I should have been fixing my computer over Christmas I have in fact done absolutely nothing about it (other than drunk too much in the hope of somehow magically gaining inspiration). However I did get around to reading my email on my lapto -: and boy, I’m glad that I did!

There were quite a few messages of encouragement - and then there was a very interesting little thing from a contributor that featured some interesting ideas as regards the imaginative use of Botox - yes Botox, you heard right - as a bondage and humiliation tool. It is an insight of shear genius and together with a stimulating exchange of ideas, regarding institutionalised humiliation, has once again reignited my enthusiasm. Anyway, refreshed by the Xmas layoff and this wonderfully stimulating flood of ideas I have taken my life in my hands and, ignoring its bleating and repeated bleeps of protest, I have once more somehow forced my main machine into action.

I couldn't resist sharing this with you in its entirety; I don’t think I have ever felt so invigorated let alone inspired:

"... As for ideas for volume III, have you considered the many possibilities of botox in controlling the subjects? I can see many applications. The subject need not know that they have been injected, this could be done while they are in a drug induced deep sleep. Botox could be injected on one side of the lower lip to create a mild or more pronounced speech impediment. It could also be injected in the thong for a more dramatic effect before appearing in front of a judge to decide on one’s sanity… It could also be injected in the muscles that control the fingers, the thumb in particular. Of course there are few things worse for self confidence than loosing bladder control, various amounts of botox in the bladder sphincter could produce night incontinence, or night incontinence coupled with dribble incontinence during the day or all out full incontinence. The possibilities are endless; inject muscles in the back to force the wearing of orthopedic corsets or collars or both. Botox lasts about six months so the procedures would have to be repeated..."

Wow! Yes, Yes, Yes!

As you may have noticed; throughout INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 both of our favorite subjects have been developing a rather debilitating stammer. As you probably realize; this and their other supposed 'problems' are as much a result of subtle psychological pressure, both before their arrival in the clinic and ongoing since (of which more in volume 2). But wouldn't Botox be a great way of initiating an impediment or perhaps exacerbating one where a girl does not respond quite so well to the power of suggestion.

I generally dislike over-reliance on drugs and technology in story lines but I do like this usage as it can be quite subtle and used to reinforce or initiate the psychological means that I prefer to see used. I particularly liked the idea of applying it to the muscle at the base of the thumbs - perhaps very tiny doses, barely noticeable at first and just inducing a gradually worsening weakness there. At the same time she would be given post-hypnotic suggestions under the guise of therapy that she is 'all thumbs these days' that she is finding the buttons on her dress 'fiddly'.

As per this contributor's induced incontinence ideas; well at the moment Botox injections are used to reduce muscle contractions that cause the sudden, undeniable need to urinate, but I dare say that placed else where the opposite effect could be induced and again paired with post-hypnotic suggestion and/or psychological conditioning to make the effect more permanent. The idea of the use of Botox to enforce the wearing of orthopedic corsets or collars is a master stroke and would fit well with one of the scenarios developing in volume 2. Most of the latter volume is finished and thus it is probably too late for its inclusion there - but I may try to write something along those lines into volume 3 (which is also under construction as we speak).

Plausibility in Setting Choice and The Appropriation of Status Through Label Imposition

The same contributor has also sent me a link to an interesting article based on the real story of a young girl trapped in the insane asylum of 1950’s Quebec (Click here). Basically, a church-run orphanage, for economic reasons, changed its status, almost overnight it seems, to that of an asylum for the mentally infirm and in so doing the original residents found their status virtually instantly changed to suit, quite legally and officially it would seem, despite being normal in every way. Other than the age of the principle characters at the time - a disappointment I also ran into when reading about the research that was done with the deliberate induction of stammering in the 1930s (mentioned in an earlier blog entry) - there is much of potential interest here.

In common with the aforementioned stammering study, wherein one participant was 15, there is mention of the involvement of teenagers and thus of young adults, allowing some latitude to the imagination. I am very keen to avoid any connection with paedophilia and also the characters I invoke, both in my private fantasies and more recently in my writing, are of necessity young adults. Sexual maturity is a must if the scenario is to be of any interest to me at all; devoid of any sexual element all one is left with is a disturbingly cold depiction of various forms of torture, both mental and physical. This could be said of all forms of S/M fantasy / writing wherein participation is not necessarily consensual - but in your mind's eye place in either of these situations a deliciously curvaceous and well developed young lady, perhaps a spoiled pouting and pampered princess of a girl, once the apple of her late father's eye and wanting for nothing but now left with the prospect of facing-off against an avaricious jealous young stepmother for every penny...a very clever, very inventive young stepmother.

What really most caught my attention in the article was, firstly, how easily the status of an institution could be changed overnight, from what could easily have been a shelter for young runaways (or - in an earlier era perhaps - a church-run home for young women likely to fall into moral danger) to a mental institution - and solely for financial reasons it seems. Secondly, the way in which, automatically, the way in which the status of an inmate could change along with the institution by default, despite her being perfectly normal in every way, to that of a mental defective or retard and her new status be recorded quite legally - with all the implications that encompasses. And, thirdly, the way an inmate's treatment might change commensurate with that new status, despite her normal disposition and good behavior, as the staff come to view her in a different light (there are possible parallels with the well known Stanford experiment here as regards the effect on the staff's behavior towards their charges). Finally: there is the implied long term psychological effects of the barred windows, sedation, straitjackets, humiliation and punishment; the possibility that an inmate could be changed so as to come to match the status imposed on her - so much easier to control a nice, quite, tamed mental patient.

The latter point echoes the aforementioned stammering study wherein, in addition to the provision of so-called negative therapy, the staff overseeing the subjects unwittingly reinforced the treatment by changing the way they were treating their charges in their day-to-day life once their status had been reassigned and they had been given the label; stutterer. Partly this was the way the staff had been instructed to behave, but partly it was also a subconscious response to the attached label.

I remember reading years ago about the shooting of the film of The Pride of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Many of the cast and extras played school girls and had to stay in costume (a gymslip, blouse and tie ensemble) wandering around all day despite only being required on set from time to time. Shooting went on for many weeks and the cast began to notice more and more as time went on how studio staff, canteen staff for example, would treat them as children, despite their being in their late teens or even early twenties in some cases. What is more; they found that rather than complain about such off-handish and sometimes patronizing treatment, as they might ordinarily have done, they found themselves tending to adopt a rather sheepish stance of acceptance, thus reinforcing the staff members viewpoint, and treatment of them, still further, perpetuating the situation.

Admission Proceedings (Postponed) and Some More Useful Bondage/Spanking Artwork Links

Today's posting was going to be on 'admission procedures' and it will probably still develop that way eventually, when I add more, later today. But first of all there are more urgent issues to deal with: the spanking and bondage artwork section of the resource link list in the sidebar has become sadly denuded, as I have mentioned at the last couple of posts. Today I spotted that the link to the artwork of Thorn no longer works and so I have now removed it also. This is a real shame because I've noted several folks coming here searching for his work and in addition he is one of my favourite artists of the genre - it's all to do with the implied innocence of his victim's and the way that he manages to capture the humiliation and suffering in their expressions; all very exciting and most inspiring, he really manages to bring out all those darkest cruellest fantasies that lurk in the dark corners of the subconscious. Unfortunately, although I've had a little search around on the web (I'm a little short of time as I'm trying to complete volume 2 and get well into volume 3, so I can't afford to spend too long on this) I have yet to locate a satisfactorily complete grouping of his work on any one site. Because I'm so time-impoverished at the moment I have decided that the easiest and quickest thing for me to do is to upload the collection I have obvious work into one of my online albums. This I expect to be doing roughly mid-evening today, after I return from the gym (its legs-night tonight), and the link will then become available in the sidebar under the section labelled Spanking Artwork Album Links.

Meanwhile as an emergency stopgap, here is a list of links to the work of various artists available on that Russian website I spoke about in an earlier post. It's pretty difficult website to negotiate unless you really are we all going or understand Cyrillic script and the links to various artist’s work that appear at the tops of the pages tend to do so randomly and without any discernible pattern. I think I've pretty much trawled all I can from that particular site at the moment and one great thing that I did come across was that Paula Meadows (Lynn Paula Russell) illustration that I talked about in the last posting - it's at the top of this entry, click on it to go to a couple of pages of her work. Have a read through my previous posting about it and see if you share my sentiment - I think it is the presence of the nurse that ultimately cements it altogether and tells the story.

When I have a little more time I will be putting all of these links, properly labelled and categorised, into the sidebar resource list - probably later today - and when I do I shall remove those links from this posting. It will free up a little for me to have a bit of a ramble about admission procedures later on this evening. Meanwhile I've got me some careful detailing and styling work to do on Lavinia's home uniform (figuratively speaking of course; it's a piece of quite difficult descriptive writing). It's a bittersweet confection of her aunt's own devising - and that woman is a stickler for all those tiny little details.

http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_pichard1.htm
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_coco.htm
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_sardax.htm
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_stanton.htm
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_jito1.htm
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_tarsis1.htm
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_paula.htm
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_loic1.htm
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_voge.htm (Art by Remy)
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_3d1.htm (3 D rendered bondage)
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_serajat.htm
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_willie1.htm
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_bish1.htm (Robert Bishop)
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_alaz1.htm (Paul Alazar)
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_bilbrew.htm
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_steel.htm (Ferdinand Vogel Steel)
http://www.bdsmonline.ru/g_sorayama1.htm

See you all later,

Garth

Inspiring Illustrations; I Search for a Paula Meadows Pic and Find a Source of Fine Bondage

Hi folks

I've at last again been visited by my muse, after an extended period of lacklustre drive during which my writing pretty much stagnated for while INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 is coming along apace. I have to transcribe onto the computer the stuff I wrote while out yesterday but I have so many new ideas buzzing around inside my head at the moment that I can't wait to again put pen to paper. What this all means is that I am fairly loath to interrupt the creative process while all is going so well so as far the blog is concerned, for while I'm going to restrict myself to updating links to various picture resources. Although this does mean of course that I will have to take time out to search the net I can do so in very short bursts, particularly as I've yet to fully trawl through the Russian website I reported earlier. But having said all that, part of what has reinvigorated my writing is having revisited the work of some of those great artists out there many of which were responsible in one way or another for inspiring to write in the first place; you know the sort of thing, you see a picture or a series of pictures and wonder…what is going on there, really? What is really been said?

In terms of the crystallisation of the ideas that eventually became INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1, at least in so far as the institutional scenarios depicted, one of the most informative works for me was an illustration by the great Paula Meadows, as was, that I had in my collection as a scan but have somehow mislaid. Basically it involve a young girl being punished in a very sparsely furnished, spot-lit and very institutional looking chamber - one just knew by looking at it that even after the miscreant is finally removed from that very secure-looking room she will be no less under lock and key. There is no ‘outside’ here for her, just layers of security nested matryoshka*-like. Unseen, but written into the atmosphere of the picture, as least as far as I was concerned, the feeling that here was a secure chamber residing within a high security area, itself residing within some high walled secure institution… it's all in that feeling of hopelessness again.

Anyway, thinking back to that image has got the creative juices working again and since I feel I have to dredge up some artwork links any way, I am hoping to rediscover the aforementioned illustration on one of my, necessarily short, exploratory expeditions… be assured that you will see it here just as soon as I can get my hands on it.

Meanwhile I've come across in a source of bondage images should bondage be your thing as it is mine, albeit not as an end in itself. I'm not really a bondage fetishist per se, you see; all those complicated arrangements of ropes, chains and things, taken in isolation, do little for me.

.....

For me there has to be some story to it, there has to be some purpose; it might be that it has become necessary to secure a young lady for her caning. Then again perhaps she is in diapers; there is a first time for everything and what better way can there be to get a young lady over this personal barrier. None of this is to deny, of course, that there is a place for bondage as a punishment in itself… perhaps the miscreant, detained in a secure ward in any case, has earned herself a few days restricted to her hospital bed, lying in silence in nice comfortable padded medical restraints, the heavy white curtain kept drawn around 24 hours a day.

.....

You see, to me bondage is something I equate more with an institutional environment; it seems more plausible there and to me plausibility is everything. It rarely works for me if depicted in a domestic situation, although under certain circumstances it might be plausible for a set of medical (humane) restraints to be seen fitted to a bed - but even then I would imagine it to be a hospital style bed brought in for the purpose and kept in a room suitably adapted and decorated, perhaps then the miscreant, if money is no object, even benefiting from having her own live-in nurse to minister to her care. Anyway, I've chosen an image that works for me from the aforementioned site... as usual just click on the picture to link to it and check out what they've got (and it is quite a lot - around 120 pages I think; blimey O'Reilly!!!).

An INSTITUTIONALISED 2 Update, Some Problems with My Spanking Artwork Links and a Solution

Hi again, folks:

Most of yesterday (Tuesday) was spent chopping backwards and forwards between the final two chapters of volume 2 - provisionally entitled Police Camera Action and An Imposition Of Uniform - working simultaneously on both as the ideas came. They're not the final two chapters as will appear in the book, you must understand - those are both virtually completed and have been for some time, although they don't even have provisional titles at the moment. An Imposition of Uniform, in actuality, comes somewhere in the centre of the work, while Police Camera Action fits in between that chapter and the last two chapters. An Imposition Of Uniform is not really a full, standalone chapter as such but rather is the centrepiece of a chapter and it is told in flashback, relating the life of one of my characters, Lavinia Vitesse, before she got talked (coerced would perhaps be more accurate) into volunteering to reside in a private hospital’s secure psychiatric wing as clinical research subject.

Moving on, I have been back in the gym and an beginning the process of fighting back to full fitness and also put aside a little time to search around the Internet for things to inspire me. Talking of the latter, I came across a nice little site that appeared to be Russian but was chock-full of all sorts of corporal punishment, discipline and bondage artworks and drawings by such as John Willie, Bishop, Paula Meadows, Ashley et al. I will be posting links to each artist's work in the resource list in the sidebar in the very near future and I may add a couple of pictures to this posting later in the day with links to the relevant pages.

All of which turns out to be very timely because when I went to check my list of art resources in said sidebar - to compare the content (I try not to duplicate resources and content) - I found that many of the links that connected via a common site no longer worked as that site appears to be down or no longer exists. I have just this minute removed all the broken links from the resource list and I shall endeavour to find sources for any artist whose work I cannot find on the aforementioned Russian language site. For starters and to get you into the site here is a typically cruel Ashley illustration - there are three pages of 'em there (a lot of his stuff used to appear in the old Justice Magazine in the 1970s/80s, incidentally). Simply click on the drawing on the left to view Ashley's work or the one on the right to view Cato's drawings and then you can find your way around the rest of the site when you get there, although I will be posting up individual links to each artist's work that is featured there because quite a lot of it has inspired my ideas in the past and undoubtedly will continue to do so in future. Keep your eye on the sidebar. Incidentally, the site is called bdsm on line and has a Russian URL (the home page address is http://www.bdsmonline.ru) but I can't help wondering if there is an English-language version out there somewhere hidden away. But who cares anyway - pictures paint a thousand words whatever language and there is a wealth of art work there...free, gratis and for nothing - grab 'em while they're hot!

A Bit About Face Slapping & A Very Short Extract from Susan's Cell - A chapter from the upcoming Institutionalised vol 2: Confined in the Workhouse

This weekend has been both hectic and traumatic: first revolves on Saturday I spent pretty much the whole day at The Wedding show at Earls Court accompanying my fashion-journalist partner and long-term fiancee (it's part of one way that I earn my daily crust - not being engaged to fashion journalists - doing a bit of freelance retail analysis and research). Then a friend phoned me to tell me that Bradford & Bingley (a dodgy, it turns out, British bank and once building society) was going tits-up (as we say here in Blighty when things go badly wrong). Needless to say a big chunk of my savings is tied up in said bank and I spent the rest of the day - and the whole of the next - in a state of high anxiety and near blind panic (not to mention drunk of course - how else would you expect me to handle it?). Anyway, very little writing got done of any sort - but the wedding show did inspire me to look through some old vintage pics - of which more in a later post .

.....

For now, though, I thought it was about time to offer up another little taste of INSTITUTIONALISED vol 2: Confined in the Workhouse, just to give some idea of how things are coming along. None of the work has been properly proof read as yet and so there may well be typos and odd irritating bits of dodgy grammar. I'm currently finishing off two of the chapters and at the same time struggling with the preface. This latter part I'm finding particularly difficult; it needs to be fairly concise, so as not to go over too much well trodden ground and so risk becoming repetitive and boring to those who have previously read volume 1 while, at the same time, providing enough outlining of the characters and storyline so as to make volume 2 accessible to some extent as a stand-alone novel in its own right. It is something that is probably not entirely achievable in a completely satisfying manner - and yet the non-linear time-flow of the storytelling does allow for a fair bit to be sketched in as flashbacks: even to the extent of filling in some of the holes and loose threads left in volume 1. Incidentally, I would be very interested to know reader's reactions to, an interests in, alternative forms of corporal punishment, for example face slapping - you will see why as you read on. By the way: if you click on the matron-with-cane pic on the right you can read another extract taken from elsewhere in the book (but you'll have to work your way back to the first part - I have yet to properly work out the navigation).

Susan's Cell - A small Fragment for your Delectation and Delight

They had come to a halt, the trio of staff and their wheelchair- immobilised subject. There were the two nurse-wardresses in the flare-skirted polyester-cotton ‘hospital-blue’ dresses, their trim waists smartly and sharply belted and each with her breast pocket proudly embroidered with the hospital badge, name and those damning words picked out in the gold thread; psychiatric wing. There was the Senior Wardress, the woman dressed so smartly yet sinisterly in the deepest navy blue. And then there was their charge; a wide-eyed teenage girl seated quietly in a wheelchair with the complacency that comes of learnt-helplessness, herself uniformed and seeming younger than her years in her short black braided pigtails and plastic-bib covered green and white striped dress. To their right lay a continuum of softly glowing, white plastic gloss.

To their left, a narrow alcove, of no more than two meters in breadth at most, was delineated from the corridor by an array of white glossy floor-to-ceiling bars and extended back somewhat less than that. Indeed, the space - the term room being something of an exaggeration - was only of sufficient depth as to allow for the length of an average bed; the latter being the only obvious function of the raised platform area that ran at approximately waist height for the entire length of the right-hand side. This latter elevated area appeared to emerge seamlessly from both wall and floor, as if at one with both, rising up from the latter by around half a metre and extending out from the former by one meter, thus accounting for fully half the available floor-space. Its upper surface was inset, the hollow so formed holding a mattress that rose proud of its edge by perhaps ten centimetres and that had the appearance of the rubber-covered foam construction that Susan was now familiar with and that was seemingly ubiquitous in this institution; already she could detect its latex-warmth intermingled within the sterile, disinfected-polythene ambiance. Towards its far end, where it practically butted up against the end wall, the mattress thickened markedly and sigmoidally. This latter feature formed a gently rising hillock clearly intended to perform something of the function ordinarily provided by a pillow yet its U-shaped central contouring seemed to argue for some augmentation of that function; indeed, an element of restraint seemed to be suggested.

.....

This latter theme was echoed along the entire length of the ‘bed’. Medical restraint straps lay abandoned in various random orientations upon the mattress, broad white bands held soft padded plastic cuffs of various diameters, their distal ends permanently fixed at purpose-moulded anchor points spaced regularly along the inner edge of both sides of the platform, from its foot, at those prison bars, right up to and including the ‘pillow’, at the end wall, whereupon a broad strap lay roughly corresponding to the position that might be expected of an occupant’s forehead. Here again, at the ‘pillow’, there was a sinister element that went beyond that of mere restraint, being in the guise of a three centimetre diameter circular hole in the relevant strap, neatly let-in at its very centre; its relevance was mercifully obscure to the girl and would remain so if her present docility persisted.

.....

Roughly one third of the height of the wall alongside the bed platform was presently occupied by rack of closely spaced white cylindrical bars of an appearance similar to those occupying the cell’s front but of a third of their diameter, being of perhaps just over one centimetre in thickness, and longitudinally cross-braced at regular intervals. At its lower edge its weight was taken at a broad hinge, set into the wall fifty centimetres above the bed’s surface and running the entire length of the bed and thus of the wall. Along its upper edge ran a smaller, yet still substantial, hinge from which hung a secondary array of bars; at present positioned parallel to the first, this set was clearly designed to swing out into a perpendicular orientation when the entire contraption was released from the catches securing it to the wall and swung out into position. The length of the bars, being fifty centimetres and matching the elevation of the wall hinge above the bed’s surface, this second set would then form one side of what amounted to a cage around the bed; the array’s lower edge forming a flange designed to dock with, and lock into, a matching slot running the length of the bed-platform’s outer edge. The far end wall had embedded within it, although being difficult to see from the outside being white on white, a curving channel or runner that served to locate and guide the contraption. The external bars to the alcove’s front also incorporated a similar channel, manifested externally as a curving arc interrupting the linear fall of the bars.

.....

The girl stared dumbfounded; she could do nothing but sit in her wheelchair looking on numbed with fear and incomprehension in equal measure. She had never seen such a thing outside of a flickering wallpaper of images behind an outraged investigative reporter within a report about the mistreatment of psychiatric patients in some far-off ex Soviet bloc country. Nevertheless she recognised the implications of the contraption immediately; it was designed to form, when unfolded from the wall, a caged bed. Here was a device historically employed in asylums and supposedly endowed with almost magical qualities of calming. In truth, although of undoubted efficacy, the patient tending to fall into a stupefied submission given time, its long-term use had always been morally and ethically dubious at best and its mechanism of action even more so; such devices had long ago been abandoned in enlightened, mainstream, psychiatric practice in the west. Indeed, in Britain, it was, and had been for some very long time, illegal and yet here it was, in the flesh as it were and very much extant.

.....

Any suggestion that what stood here was merely yet another of the building’s Victorian asylum-legacy fitments could only be expected to meet with incredulity; it is noteworthy that no mention was made of, nor attention drawn to, the device, it was just there and that was all there was to it. Indeed it was obvious that there had been much ‘ improvement ’ made upon the antique original; it and the entire cell, despite the apparent antiquity of the layout, had benefited from the incorporation of modern design and technology, as this, its newest occupant, would soon

discover.

.....

The wheelchair having now been turned to face the bars, the seated, restrained, girl viewed, for the first time, this new home of hers in all its limiting-entirety and did so through fear-widening eyes. Straight ahead and to her left, two chunky square blocks, each of around twelve centimetres on a side, were set within the bars, one above the other and separated in the vertical dimension by approximately ten centimetres, at the point at which the grille met the wall at that side. Mounted at approximately waist height to a standing adult, the uppermost of these was notably dominated by the overly-obvious keyhole at its centre with its bygone-age appearance. Its lower-down sibling had, housed at its centre, an altogether more contemporary key-slot; the latter being of slim profile and mounted in a raised oval section of around three centimetres at it longest axis that extending proud of the surface by, perhaps, two centimetres. Little more than one meter to the right of those locks, a floor-to-ceiling rectangular member, interleaved within the screen of cylindrical bars, housed, a hinge running uninterrupted from the floor to three quarters of the barrage's rise whereupon a horizontal square-section beam ran across to the left-hand side, interrupting the bars and giving notice that here transit was possible, while making quite clear that such movement was not to be subject to the vagaries of free will.

.....

Within moments that view had been interrupted, the navy-blue, tailored contours of the Senior Wardress’ ample, rounded, rump almost pressing into her face as the woman, having selected a key from the large silvered key ring that hung from her belt by a chain, turned away from her and bent forwards so as to better deal with a lock that was presumably being somewhat awkward in its operation.

.....

Fleeting though her first full view had been the girl had nevertheless seen enough to send her spirits tumbling in free-fall and for trepidation to turn to despair; indeed she had seen everything that was to be seen, for in truth there was little to see and that sparsity of detail, in itself, weighed her down with its leaden dread. There was nothing there, nothing at all, it was just a bar-fronted glowing white plastic-box of space; the raised bed platform and the contraption on the wall lay to the right and directly ahead, beyond the entry gate, lay a ‘living space’ comprising an open section of flooring of a similar area as that occupied by the bed platform itself. There were no other furnishings or contents to be seen of any kind save for what appeared to be a white plastic hospital bedpan. The latter squatted up close against the rear wall as if trying to merge with it, cringing back from the bars, vainly seeking privacy and to evade prying eyes as if infused with some essence of the previous occupant's fading and flickering spirit; it was a semi-successful camouflaging, an optical illusion that brought with it a strange pearly-transparent quality to the object.

.....

Simultaneously, from each side, soft-looking, velvety-pink, hands came and went and were accompanied by flashes of white, buttoned, cuffs and rustling, light blue, sleeves. The two women that had, up to that point, existed only in the rhythmically-familiar polyester-swish of their dresses and in the trundle of the wheelchair, began to tackle the various restraints and attachments surrounding her. Turning her head to the left, to the direction from which they had come, she glimpsed a concealed-button, panelled, dress-front constraining an amply-rounded bosom, a flash of gold thread on a blue breast pocket and the silver glint of a ball-clasp belt buckle against a white crepe nurses’ belt...

.....

It was shocking rather than painful as such but it was that very acuteness that punished the most, that and the shame of being struck in such a manner; more to the point it was the shame of excepting such correction without comment, as if such were simply an expression of the natural order of things. It was just three fingers of the nurse’s left hand, three fingers not particularly long yet notably tapered and slender. There was no movement at all in the arm; the woman's wrist flicked sharply but, describing only a small fraction of its potential arc, contributed little to the actual force of the blow while the majority of the travel originated in the folding of the woman's palm. The efficacy of the slap’s sting lay not in its force but rather in the accuracy of its landing, the sharpness of its delivery and in the commanding confidence of the accompanying rebuke. It was a precisely and expertly delivered sharp little sting, laid diagonally across the lower innermost quadrant of the girl's right cheek, the nurse’s index finger landing close to, but not touching, the girl's right nostril; the side-cheeks of the girl's bonnet limited the

area available to strike.

.....

“Face forward.” The nurse didn't raise her voice, she didn't have to; the requisite correcting sharpness was there in the crystal-hard crispness of that educated enunciation, her authority was embedded in the tone.

.....

For Susan's part, a surprised, shocked, exclamation accompanied an embarrassingly, for the girl, contrite compliance and a spreading blush that was already outgrowing and swamping the reddened site of her chastisement. Even then, even as, in obedience to the order she looked away, even though disorientated by the sudden numbness of shock, she knew that something was missing, had been omitted; was there still time to make amends? To the latter the answer came quickly and in the negative; this time delivered by the other nurse, the woman standing to her right hand side, her right-hand delivering a similar sharp-shocking slap to that of her comrade’s and overlapping the site of the latter's sting, her voice just as crisply punishing. There was just a single word this time, it was all that was needed; the girl's detention had already been long enough for the nurse to be confident of that. “Manners” was all she said, her voice soft yet her enunciation crisp, polished, superior.

.....

“Yes n,n,nnurse, a,at w,w,once n,n,nurse,”

.....

Immediately there came another slap, this time delivered to the corresponding position on the girl’s left cheek and coming from the left hand of the nurse on her left hand side, the woman accompanying it with yet another prompting rebuke; “what do we say?”
“ S,s,sorry n,n,nurse, I,I m,m,mean th, th, th,ank y,you n,n,nurse.”

From Behind Stained Glass: Meredith's Tale - Part 2

As promised, if delayed, Yet Another extract from INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2: please understand, this is very much a first rough draft so if you find typo's / grammatical errors, please forgive me and, better still, point them out to me either by email or by way of posting a comment - the same goes for feedback, its all welcome, that's the point of the blog.

There's no actual spanking / caning / tawsing in this section but it develops the story. It is part of the manifesto for the INSTITUTIONALISED series that it should step away from what seems to be the convention in spanking literature of depicting an unrelenting series of beatings with only thinnest, vaguest of threads to tie it all together. The second part of the manifesto charges the series with attempting to integrate many disparate fetishes / interests rather then limiting itself simply to CP per se. (see the story ideas posted by Acid Tony - Click here). The third part states that the story arc, even though in fantasy, should at least contain some element of plausibility; some plot mechanism should be developed to explain the situation and the relationship between the various protagonists. To this latter end, volume 1 started with a fairly lengthy preface.

Incidentally, those of you who have read volume 1 may be puzzled by the characters introduced in some of these volume 2 extracts - Meredith is a new character but bares a strong relationship to the events that occurred in volume 1, as will become clear in the book. Similarly the storyline involving the characters in Volume 1 will be developed and we get to see how the two main protagonist's (Susan and Lavinia) have been coping, or not, with the strict discipline under which they have both found themselves and particularly how Susan has to learn to cope with confinement to a tiny bare (almost) cell and the humiliation of prison uniform. (There will also be a series of flashbacks during which we will learn more of the girls' pasts and come to appreciate the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, means of the psychological manipulation that has lead them to their present situation. Finally, there will be punishments and impositions for them to endure; lots more spanking and caning (of course) but also some quite delicious psychological torment - the latter will rival, if not exceed, that endured by the unfortunate pair in volume 1!

(Hope you like the little pic; yeah, I know the cane's still a bit out of proportion but what do you want?...Oh, alright then; I'll fix it later. No, honest, I really will)

.............................................................................................

Intermezzo

(Click on title for previous part - part 1)

Meredith lay lost in her thoughts, quite literally petrified and frozen in place, the bondage of her nightmares seemingly mirrored by the immobility of this new reality. This was how it always was, the dreams, the nightmares, then the awakening.

Always it felt as if a new reality had been built around her, a false reality, an illusion, a reality in which her helplessness was almost indiscernible from and as complete as in her nightmare world. Always, as if for the first time, she would glance down along her prone body and the shocking understanding of the nature of her hopelessness, the origin of her immobility, would bear down on her like some dead concrete slab. Arms set in plaster casts, modern soft resin-based casts, could do nothing but disobey her, lying straight and at 30° to her sides. Legs, similarly encumbered, rested angled toward the bed's lower corners. Even her fingers were held, each individually wrapped in its own cast, splayed out, fan-like and useless.

Memories spilled and unfurled like discarded spooled celluloid; edited dadaist highlights of confusion inter-cut with fantastical images of sojourns in some grotesquely abusive world, seemingly plucked from the mind of Poe and realised in the inflamed-red and bruised-blue pallet of chastised flesh.

Meredith Hewson; known as 'mushroom' to friends and acquaintances both, a tiny squeaky little thing – bouncy and bright as a gambolling lamb and with a smile like summer breeze nature had destined her for more. Yet, a Shropshire lass with a less than agreeable home-life to look back on, it was a somewhat hackneyed tail she had to tell.

Of course it would be simplest to lay the blame at the faux glamour portrayed in all those television shows, drawing her in, spiralling with moth-like lethality. The trends and bright fashions of Camden Market, the bars and bistros of Covent Garden; aspirationally bright beacons of such irresistible brilliance, far too dazzling for one of her innocence to see the darkness behind, far to beguiling.

To many she had been the welcoming smile behind the horseshoe bar, pulling pints with child-like wide-eyed glee; those tiny hands as pale and as perfect as porcelain - like that of the hand pumps her fingers failed to quite curl around, with their country scene decoration, all hunting pinks and running foxes.

She had brightened the day of many a jaded pen-pusher – her short stature obliging her to stretch for the ale-pumps, the effort causing those pert breasts to be thrust forward, the flesh bouncing, the cleavage distinct to the most bleary of drunken eye. Her pretty unworldly features would be moon-mist lit by the shafts of diffused sunlight filtering through the curling fern-like motifs of the Victorian acid-etched glass – the traditional public house windows and glass partitions had been retained here, along with the worn, once-red, leather seating.
She had been flirtatious, ever-smiling – then she was gone; a lover's tiff an ill-advised dalliance with her manager at that, forcing her flight.

Suddenly the London streets had not seemed so welcoming – not without money in her pocket, not without a place to call home; the accommodation had come with the job, you see…
Her mind ran back to the very first time, her first awakening to this world; it was a birth, or rather a rebirth, at least that was how it seemed now...

“The crash, sweetheart, surely you remember the crash?” The nurse's, concern had been palpable, her brow furrowing. Yet as insistent as the woman had been it had felt as if she were seeking to convince while, in some way, being unsure of her own sincerity.
Try she might she could recall nothing at the time; her immobility had almost seemed comforting in its familiarity yet otherwise there was nothing, just nothing. She could remember nothing still, at least of her history as they outlined it, nothing, that is, beyond the abuse, the beatings, something about a social worker, a friend, a young woman sworn to extract her from that hell.

Yes, the social worker; she had seemed so approachable, a woman who might care, who might believe her, who had seemed to care. The woman with the car, the woman who had promised to take her away, promised to save her from him. There was something else... what was it? A drink, a drink proffered from a flask, warm cocoa... that can't have been it! What possible significance could that have?

“You remember the crash, surely?”

In truth, she could not. There were fragments haunting her though, fragments of recollection or what seemed to be recollection; a jumble of shards, just as easily the constructs of imagination as bearing any relation to reality and feeling more like memories of what she has been told than of the actual events.

Feeling as if deceiving herself she nevertheless nodded in the affirmative; to do otherwise, to question it, would have been to risk being left starkly alone, ignored. This she had experienced many times before, being left ignored, isolated and alone in the silence of her curtain-enshrouded bed. Her inability to recall appeared to really irk the staff and as for her nightmares, her delusions as they referred to them, the merest mention was enough for the nurse or doctor or whoever was attending her to simply up and leave and many were the times she had found herself missing her next meal or diaper change after that.

And yet it was those dreams, those nightmares, that were the clearest representation of reality to her, her reality; certainly they seem more real to her than her present surroundings and the fuzzy pseudo-memories filling her head. There was a certain vivid and unmistakable clarity to their recollection, the clarity of truth and conviction.

Deranged? Deluded? Well, such were the murmurings, the whispered accusations that, on occasion, came to her from beyond the protection of her curtains, times when they were certain she was asleep and beyond caring; “…such a shame, quite deluded, poor girl”.

Yet it was all so real, so detailed, so, so clear to her: first there would come the probing wiggle of an investigative forefinger, then the thickly- gelling lubricant, ice cold, the digit urging in an out, in an out, twisting and turning, embedded to the knuckle. Then would come the sensational of building warmth, blood-flow stimulated by the mild irritant mixed in with the gel. Finally that podgy finger would be withdrawn and the first taunting rubber-touch of the nozzle would announce her imminent violation.

Every few weeks there would come the added discomfort of the first use of an increased diameter; in time she would become acclimatised, her sphincter gradually stretching to accommodate it, then would come another increment, then another and another, each adding to the soapy humiliation of the laxative the piquancy of torment that came from the knowledge that any improvement in her comfiture came only at the cost to be surely levied her in the future by way of the legacy of her stretched and weakened muscles and that it was all for the benefit of him, for his perverted pleasure.

Every detail was present there - if only in the world of dreams, if only the manifestation of her delusion, then from whence came the design, the knowledge and experiences that could make manifest the physicality of the illusion with such convincing Technicolor realism. What could a girl of her sheltered background know of such things? How could, even in conjecture, she conjure the sensation of a gently rounded belly, swollen with foully-cramping fluid, of youthfully elastic skin stretched paper-thin, of softly urging latex-covered, podgy, farmer's-wife fingers massaging, compressing, squeezing as if to exude the decoration for some filthily perverted demon cake or, perhaps, was it in some exaggerated parody of milking the beasts she once had the duty to? Then the was the voiding into the metal pail, the metallized ringing imparted to the initial fluidic-splattering fall of her wastes, the stink in the compacted surrounds of the room, the tiny skylight could not be opened to improve the ventilation, the cramping stomach muscles and twisting-agonized bowels. Finally it was she herself she saw carrying the bucket through the house so that all and any might see, she herself who would have to scrub it back to the pristine sheen of its manufacture in the yard outside in full view of the household.

He had absolutely despised the way she had been dressed, the way they were always dressed, her type, the young tearaways, the runaways that hung around the stations and the bus shelters on the cold winter nights. And it had been the coldest night of the coldest snap that most could remember, she had seemed the most desolate amongst gathering huddle, the most destitute, desperate bedraggled and forlorn. Then there were her looks, the pretty elfin face, the slight build, the short stature, the childish yet maturely curved frame, small breasted yet with hips and buttocks promisingly swelling and rounded with chubby resilient youthfulness. The denim, though, he just hated; women in trousers just left him cold, let alone jeans. He couldn't abide by anything that suggested other than sheer soft femininity, the slightest hint of boyishness in dress was an anathema to him; it is all to the more curiously contradictory and contrary therefore that the wretch so often bent and sobbing before him no longer possessed the cascades of wavy light brown locks she once had to hide her tears behind but rather a short tousled pixie cut. The latter styled around her ears and tightly tapered into the nape of her neck; the intent most clearly being to enhance that childish elfin look, the side parting, seemingly inadvertently, introducing an element of boyishness beyond anything that might be brought by even the most masculine of jeans or dungarees - such irony

The jeans and the rest of her outfit of that time had been most easily dealt with; his housekeeper, possessed of a rather traditional, if old-fashioned, outlook herself in such proceedings and not being exactly enamoured with modern attire of the like, was quite comfortable with the idea that they might simply fail to resurface from the launderette having become ‘lost’ as unfortunately things sometimes were. Mrs Veronica Merryweather-Cortez, a remarkable woman of an equally remarkable name. Herefordshire born and bred with broad hips and a buxom maturity of frame clearly at odds with her claimed thirty eight years of life and possessed of the ruddy apple cheeked complexion of a country woman, her coarse russet hair kept, on the main, beneath a plain, ‘sensible’, headscarf, she looked to more likely belong on some remote outlying farm as within the confines of the parsonage.

An ancient carved black oak chest dominated the vestry's end wall, squatting all but forgotten, despite its substantial bulk, in the dusky shadows beneath the tiny Norman-arched stained-glass window. Strictly speaking an oak coffer, it featured quite beautiful carved and arcaded front panels, each having an intricate inlay detail of flowers picked out in a variety of different woods, rarely appreciated, being near permanently under a thin layer of dust and tinted by the patina of age. The iron banding running around the sides and over the curving hinged lid was pitted and, blackened with age, was as dark as the wood itself; to the front a typical hand-forged mediaeval tongue clasp was secured by a very modern and substantial padlock.

It was from the latter, rarely visited, cache that Mrs Merryweather-Cortez was able to conjure up her singly peculiar solution to the problem of clothing the girl; if only as a temporary stopgap, for with every will in the world even she, with her archaic views, could hardly have considered such dress appropriate for, nor acceptable to, a modern girl of Meredith's age and background. It had been extracted and selected from a pile of ecclesiastical vestments dating back to perhaps the 1950s or early 1960s, if not earlier, to more prestigious times for the little parish church, to when congregations swelled to the rafters with uplifted voices and on occasion spilled out into the churchyard beyond, to when it had accommodated its own choir.

The princess-line dress she selected, despite Meredith's obviously small stature, had not appeared to the girl at the time to be the smallest there; she had felt certain she had seen at least two or three of a smaller size glanced at and then rejected while the woman was rummaging. She had stood there shivering in the thin cotton nightdress they had given her, grateful to receive anything that would provide some warmth and, more importantly, cover, even some ugly church dress as long as it was to be only a temporary arrangement. And ugly it surely was: featuring full length sleeves with overlong cuffs at the wrists, each fastening with three buttons, it was ‘easy fit’ in the extreme; indeed, it fairly drowned her small figure in its heavy black fabric.

An embroidered gold metallic Latin Cross decorated the region roughly corresponding to her left breast and was one of the few features allowed to alleviate the jet-black severity of the thing, the others being an arc of short stiff white frills around the top of the mandarin collar, matching sprays of frills around the cuffs that extended down to the upper parts of her hands when she was standing with arms to her sides and a large white button oddly sited to the rear of the collar. The latter’s function, enigmatic at the time, was to become clear in time and perhaps would have been so more immediately had she noted the matching buttonhole at the dress’s hem at the rear where it was picked out in white thread as if some proudly decorative feature of design.

Thickly-draping folds, the wetly-puddled shadows lying between even darker and serving to underline the gloss of the fabric where the light shimmered off its surface like moonlight of a black sea’s swell, hung and spread out from a point approximating her waist to the hem swinging barely clear of the floor. Once clear of her bust’s perky overhang the front hung straight and true with barely a hint of any contact with the form beneath, giving scant regard for style or flattery; seemingly dozens of small, tediously and unnecessarily fiddly, black-satin covered buttons, in reality sixteen in all, fastened it from her throat to her ankles.

The fabric, while as smooth as heavy black satin should be, concealed an inner lining of another material entirely, this having a texture approaching that of a rather coarse velvet, and therein hung the seed of another problem; not only was the whole loose-fitting ensemble ugly, heavy and hot to wear but the constant prickly-heat sensation of the inner lining quickly came to make its wearing intolerable. To her chagrin the material seemed particularly coarse in the region over her nipples and the latter's hardening in response only served to further augment their constant teasing.

She had winged and whined and bitterly complained; it had felt as if the constant grazing irritation, the prickling and the brushing back and forth, would serve to drive her quite insane, or so it had felt at the time, although she was later to encounter challengers to her sanity that would all but drive such concerns from her recall. Finally, her patience pushed to the limit, it was Mrs Merryweather-Cortez who was to yet again to save the day; it was simple, one of her own old cast-offs, a full-length slip in white nylon and as smooth as the girl's own skin.

Panelled and darted, with a seemingly hopelessly narrow waist and a pronounced tapering, beyond the curvature that allowed for the swell of the wearer's hips, so as to terminate at knee-length with a tightly-circular hem, the impression was of a garment of the early 1960s and designed to be worn below the pencil skirted fashions of the time. It clung to her hips and thighs like a second skin, the tight hem coming to rest tightly girdling her legs just above her knees.

The effect, whether intentional or not she had no idea, was to restrict her once tomboyish stride to a somewhat sedate and femininely-gentile shuffling gait that could not but reinforce the image of docility they were clearly striving to achieve for her.

Then there had been the question of underwear. The best that they had had to offer in terms of ‘underpinnings’ as Mrs Merryweather-Cortez was apt to quaintly describe the more intimate of garments was a pair of that woman’s own rather elderly cast-offs; a pair of white rayon directoire knickers, the waist far to large for her petite frame and, having been washed and re-washed into submission long ago, their waist-band had been left completely devoid of any residual elasticity in any case…

To be continued

Copyright (c) 2008 Garth. P. ToynTanen