A Vague Outline and a Few Beers More

Hi folks it's another bright sunny day here in North London and I'm off down the pub - yes, at this time of day. The local Wetherspoon's opens its doors at eight and serves its first pint at nine - I'm already behind schedule then! I didn't get much done yesterday past answering the plethora of e-mails that had built up but I did develop some interesting ideas last night over a few pints and those shall be the seeds of today's work. I should think today's outpourings are more likely to become part of volume 3 rather than volume 2 but without giving away too much the basic outline revolves around the concept of a very detailed, personal and embarrassing interrogation of one of the girls by a doctor. Initially she is non cooperative but then the interrogation of another takes place in her presence and she is able to witness first-hand the likely results of the repercussions she is risking bringing down on herself.

The picture today is another supplied by ‘Domestic Disciplinarian’, I think originally from one of the Blushes / Whispers / New Supplement / New Uniform Girls magazine stable. I just think it's evocative of the scene - albeit with a male doctor and an altogether wrongly attired subject. Anyone out there with anything more suitable, than be my guest - please send it in.

I realise I still haven't added the illustrations to the post I made the day before yesterday nor the discussion I promised but this will have to wait to a later date as I'm still suffering quite a lot of visual disturbance.

School Badges and Humiliating Mottos - Any Ideas Out There?

Yesterday was one week to the day since I had my eye laser treatment and so it was off back to Harley Street for an examination and eye test. My eyesight is still a bit pissed up so writing to the computer is still somewhat hard work. Apparently the reason is that I am suffering from dry eyes, despite all the eye drops that I've had to put in each day. Now I have to put in moisturising eye drops every hour on the hour and some new horrid oily substance three times a day - this stuff makes my vision temporarily even worse (around five to ten minutes worth anyway) and turns everything into an oil painting (and a somewhat runny one at that). I had chosen for an early appointment so as to meet up with an old school chum for lunch in a nearby pub (where else?) - The Jack Horner in Tottenham Court Rd - a purveyor of fine pies and even finer pints of Fullers ESB (Extra Special Bitter - and it is, too) (possibly the best bitter in the world -at least I think so). It was all a bit of a disaster though; my old mate didn't turn up until two o'clock in the afternoon by which time I had already knocked back five pints, I hadn't started any writing because I was expecting him to arrive any minute (for around two and a half hours worth) and then we moved to Camden (I think - I can't really remember) and by the time he left I was far too inebriated to start. And then of course there was those bloody eye drops, everything swimming around in an oily sea of colour, and have you ever tried putting in eye drops without poking yourself in the eye while extraordinarily pissed and in some crowded and excessively noisy Camden pub. I do remember that the eye strain was making me feel tired, and then I guess I must have gone home - because the very next thing I knew it was the morning and I was back here. Today I've mainly been gathering source material for the blog, various illustrative pictures and also hoping for inspiration to get me writing again - I have a lot of stuff part written but that at the moment I can't really face finishing off so rather than waste my time completely I'm starting of one or two new story arcs. I have decided that it might be fun if volume 2 and/or volume 3 were to have one or two small illustrations here and there had to start the ball rolling and to explore further the idea I have attempted to create the embroidered blouse pocket badge outlined in that small and partly written fragment that I published a couple weeks or so back, click on badge to link to it. Later today or early this evening I am going to be adding some illustrations to the blog entry that I posted the day before yesterday and some discussion points but for now I'm going to try and get a little bit more of INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 finished before I go out for a couple of pints (for medicinal purposes only you understand - the cruelest thoughts only ever come after a couple of pints or so, I'm too nice ordinarily).

And finally: Well, I just I couldn't resist showing an example of something of the way I imagine it would look embroidered on the bodice of a gymslip - or perhaps it should mirror the one that embellishes her blouse's top pocket beneath, in terms of size and placement.

Personaly I think the 'great big statement' aproach is rather humbling to the wearer - a nice refinement of her humiliation. But...What do you think?

Corselletes, Corset Discipline & Institutional Hair and Fingernail Cutting

Today's posting was going to be one of those explanatory things - this one dealing with the corselet (corsellete), a garment that crops up in description several times in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 and will undoubtedly do so again along with corsets, corset discipline and other associated subjects in the subsequent volumes. I don't have time at the moment to post up any explanatory illustrations as I am hard at work on volume 2 and the writing is coming along quite nicely today so I don't want to interrupt my flow as it were. I have located some interesting articles and a suitable website to visit however and those links are posted below.

On a completely different tack: while looking around a forced-hair-cutting story site last night I came across what I think is a really great storyline, or at least has the potential to be so if it was to be continued by the author. It is called Industrial School Days by Harry Standing and is easily one of the best things I've ever read incorporating the hair cutting (and indeed fingernail cutting) theme. The tale has quite a lot in common with part of the INSTITUTIONALISED storyline in that the main character hasn't really done anything to justify her incarceration (so I guess it has a certain affinity with those so-called ‘blameless punishments’ so beloved of the 1980s Janus letters pages correspondents), secondly (and this part I love), despite being placed in ‘care’ initially just for the weekend it becomes clear that this period is likely to extend to 21 days and it is hinted that such a period could possibly be extended, quite legally, perhaps indefinitely (I certainly hope so). She has done little wrong, she is really there at the whim of others. Finally, the tale is based loosely on the existence of, and the exploitation that allegedly occurred in, the Magdalene Laundries or asylums of Ireland (See also the 2002 film written and directed by Peter Mullan entitled: The Magdalene Sisters, click to view trailer), a little bit of history that went a long way in influencing the direction of my writing in the INSTITUTIONALISED series. Click on the title above to link to this story.

Hopefully I will be returning to this post later today or early tomorrow when I will post up the relevant illustrations etc.

Corset article 1
Corset article 2
Corset article 3
Corset design resource site

The Perfect Gymslip?

Probably not, but very nice nevertheless!

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Greetings good readers, from a still half-blind Garth Toyntanen. post my laser sight correction surgery of last week I now think that one eye is recovering faster than the other, or something similar. Whatever the reason, one eye is an awful lot better than the other at mid range and this difference is causing visual disturbances. It's probably not worth my purchasing reading glasses until my eyes settle down So for now I'm soldering on as best I can. It's all a bit annoying though as I'm about five days in from the surgery and I was led to believe that after 24 hours or so my vision would be very much back to normal.

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There are various points within the story arc so far developed in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 and that will continue to develop into the upcoming volumes two and three, wherein a young lady, despite her apparent maturity and physical development, is put in school uniform. Although the story is clearly sat in the present world, or at most a very recent past, the point is that those school uniforms are without exception not only juvenile in design but also both strict and anachronistic in appearance, and therein hangs a great deal of that all-important element of humiliation. Although I have always done my best to paint a picture in words, and will continue to do so of course, for many I fear that the imagery still leaves much room for misconception and puzzlement.

One of the most intractable problems I have had in creating and writing the INSTITUTIONALISED series has lain in getting the modern reader to understand exactly what is meant by the term ‘gymslip’ as pertains to the various encounters portrayed in the books. More specifically the problem has been how best to put over the image of the garment as I see it on the girls in my mind’s eye such that the reader shares the same viewpoint and perhaps understands the mental anguish and bitterness the girl feels in it, particularly having previously viewed herself as being a young woman of some independence and even sophistication. By way of an example; in volume 1 it is recounted how one particular young lady is delivered to the institution’s door in a rather strict example of an English boarding school uniform of a bygone age of a rather juvenile appearance and featuring a rather brief knife-pleat skirted gymslip. In some ways the American ‘jumper’ has come to the rescue to some extent as I expect quite a few readers have come across such garments on the Internet in various ways.

Here a reader’s contribution can lend a helping hand; the contributor known only as ‘Domestic discipline’ has again provided some wonderful vintage illustrations of English school uniform for which many thanks go out to him.

If one keeps in mind the bodice of the example at the top of the page, and considers the second of the two pictures above to be the view from the side (yes, I know it's a different girl in a completely different gymslip, but bear with me) and if you now think of the skirt as being flared and sharply knife-pleaded, coming to perhaps mid thigh, then you are beginning to see the image that I had in mind in that scene in volume 1. One should keep in mind, also, the starched stiff collar, school tie and hat of the first picture -and, of course, the young lady's cheeks, apple-red with embarrassment - in conjuring the picture.

The photo on the right I've included by way of contrast and intending to illustrate exactly what I don't mean by the term gymslip in my writings - this is the type of thing more typically thing seen and depicted in the spanking / discipline literature world but is something I think I would tend to refer to as a gym tunic rather than a gymslip per se as I intended depicted in volume 1 (yes I know the gymslip, as I describe, was originally derived from such gym tunics, see wikipedia for more).

Inspiration is Where You Find It (2): Mind Control, Phone Boxes, Catalogues, Friends Reunited (And Another Bit of Penny's Punishments Too (From Janus)

My eyes are still a little problematic so for a while text will be a bit sparse, but as I have said in the last few posts; I will go over these posts again with updated text, labels and explanations etc once my vision settles down and will then post links to the updated pages. So for now mostly pics. First I thought I ought to post the rest of the pics from that classic photo-story, Penny's Punishments, that I scanned from Janus. I had intended to do so, partly for the sake of completeness and partially to provide some sort of pictorial content while writing was being such a strain. In so doing it occurred to me that there is another tale to tell, unwritten yet embedded within these pictures - to my mind there is a tale within a tale here if one looks deeply enough. Now that I'm thinking about it I do remember it occurring to me at the time and that it was something that fired my imagination ; as it does so still now, looking at them again through fresh eyes.

On the surface, for the time it was a fairly standard Janus spanking / caning / discipline photo story ( click on the link above or here to read more of the outline), but I like to feel that there is a more sinister undercurrent. Particularly in the pyjamas scene, but also to some extent in the following two pictures, the girl has this strangely emotionless look about her, expressionless, blank; even at the time, being relatively youthful and largely unaware of the mind control story genre, I thought she looked sort of...well, hypnotized, for want of any better description.

The impression I received was that, although not eluded to in the text, her guardians had more of a hold over her than might be explainable by the threat of a caning from time to time...Soon after, I came across the works of Victor Bruno wherein, at least in his 'private boarding ' reform school' tales, the use of hypnosis (and even brainwashing) was alluded to -although sadly, never elaborated on beyond expounding on the various benefits in keeping the hapless inmates of his various institutions under control.

And there you have it; notwithstanding one or two other influences that I will discuss at a later date, my interest in mind control, especially in the use of hypnosis, was born. What with my frustration at the lack of detail included in the Victor Bruno novels and then having later come across, first the Erotic Mind Control Story Archive ( click to visit) and then story ideas put out on various newsgroups by Acid Tony (under more than one name I think - click to read) you can, I'm sure, understand the strong element of psychological control and punishment, of various forms and levels of subtlety, that weaves its way through INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1. I have never viewed this element as any replacement for good old-fashioned corporal punishment but rather as an adjunct to it - much like Acid Tony, I see each being in support of the other.

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While on the subject of hidden meaning and inspiration here are a few scans of a couple of pages from a very mainstream 1980s fashion catalogue (below). At the time I thought of her as the perfect mistress figure, a couple of steps up from the governess so to speak, perhaps the haughty guardian of some hapless browbeaten girl. Later she was to become (as part of an amalgam of characters, along with certain other influential models and pictures) the model for the character of Lady Madison Daisy Bartlet as appears in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 (click to read extract on this site).

More hidden content: At one point in my life I worked as a cycle dispatch rider in the West End of London and would often throughout the day have occasion to visit a phone box or two. There were always plenty of cards advertising various 'personal services' and from time to time one would catch my eye. This example led me to search for and explore all sorts of medical fetish literature that I didn't know even existed at the time; I wanted to know just what these procedures might consist of. More importantly I wondered just how such procedures might be applied to the young ladies that by then populated the stories and fantasies that, in the absence of suitably imaginative published literature, I was beginning to concoct for my own amusement by this point. These tales existed only as bare bone fragments of ideas that this stage, but as I learnt more about this new world new storylines evolved and necessarily became more complex in order to incorporate techniques and procedures that I was learning about. All sorts of devilish torments came and went in my imaginary tableaux - the ideas that would one day grow into the INSTITUTIONALISED series were beginning to take root. Incidently, a nice collection of such cards can be viewed at Mike's Spanking Booth (click to visit).

Post Eye Surgery: Very Old Influential Publications From my Scans Collection

The bit of eye surgery I underwent yesterday seems to have gone okay but it must be said that my vision is still somewhat blurred and apparently is expected to remain so for the next day or so of slowly improving. I attempted to do a little work on the computer late yesterday afternoon but soon gave up due to the strain. While I can see well enough to enable me to post up a few pictures reading text off the screen presents something of a challenge and a bit of a strain -I write using voice recognition software to dictate my thoughts directly to the computer, but of course the software is nothing like perfect, it makes mistakes and I need to be able to read the output in order to slap it round the face and put it right when it makes mistakes. For this reason this post and the next will consist mostly of pictures with only the barest of bones of an explanation and discussion. I will return to both to add my thoughts in a day or two's time - there'll always be some relevance to the INSTITUTIONALISED series.

Perhaps it's something that inspired me to begin writing in the first place, perhaps it's something that illustrates some event within the story arc or that portrays something of the atmosphere that I try to evoke or serves to clarify some potential source of confusion. The various aspects of 'punishment dress' - encountered in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 and that will continue to be encountered from time to time in various guises throughout the series - gymslips, corselletes, nylon overalls, little girl dresses and the rest, comes to mind regarding the latter point (something I attempted to tackle by the inclusion of a glossary - the only instance, I'd wager, of a glossary occurring in a S&M / D&S publication).

Sometimes, as in the post to follow this one, the content is some contribution made by one of our visitors (for which I always have the utmost gratitude). Reader involvement and contribution is something I am always keen to encourage as it criticism both positive and negative, interest and fetishes and storyline ideas that might be woven in to the series. But whatever the content there is always the need to explain the context if this site is to remain more than just a collection of eclectic and seemingly unconnected images, both erotic and otherwise. So there you have it, it's been something of a strain to write this much so I'll return to rewrite both this entry, and that following, in a couple of days time.

Just to quickly set the scene; these are the front covers of a few of the early publications from my formative years and that had their part to play in developing my interest in spanking, discipline and other associated areas.

Anyone out there remember these publications?

A Reader's Contribution: From 'Domestic Disciplinarian'

'Domestic Disciplinarian' has kindly contributed a whole swathe of pictures to the blog ( my thanks go out to 'Domestic Disciplinarian' - clearly a man after my own heart) of which these are just a few - there are more to come and I will add my thoughts at a later date, as I explained in the previous post.