Leg-braces, Hysterical Paralysis, Spaghetti Plots and Vintage Shots

Hi there, folks. It’s been a while again, I know, but I thought that if I got something out today then at least it will have been less than a week this time. How it is the new book knowing, you're probably asking?

Well, the truth is that it's all been a little in the doldrums last week or so. Perhaps the doldrums is not entirely accurate; it's more that it has become bogged down in a spaghetti tangle of plot that even I find confusing its present form - and I wrote it! In terms of actual writing there are only a few more scenes to work through, although I still have one or two ideas that I'd like to weave into the back-story at some point. For example of the use of leg callipers or braces to restrict or curb an over exuberant teenage spirit seems self explanatory and of course their continued wearing can always be enforced by the judicious application of the cane or the strap or even by the use of straps and buckles secured by padlocks, if in an institutional setting. But how much more delicious if the young lady concerned - against her naturally rebellious nature and despite the measure being entirely unnecessary from a physical standpoint - can be persuaded to compliantly don her ugly restrictive leg callipers each day without having the supervising figure of her guardian or governess or whatever standing over her and flexing her cane?

The question then becomes of course; how might one bring about that situation? What powers of persuasion might be brought to bear to so dominate the young lady's will that eventually she comes to accept this humiliating restriction along with the juvenile uniform and all the other points of discipline she must now live under? The angle I'm presently working from involves - without giving too much away, I hope - the concept of hysterical paralysis or semi-paralysis and muscle weakness; I can say no more than that for now.

As for the hideously tangled plot - I have to keep reminding myself that I have been through this stage before and come out the other side. It is partly the outcome of the way I work - in stops and starts and the creation of vignettes as and when the ideas come - but mostly it is a legacy of the style-path I set out along when creating INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1. It's a case of sitting down and reorganising the various chunks of writing into a logical stream of consciousness, even if having to tie in flashbacks and the like. Once I have worked my way through this current book, the way will be left open for me to tackle subsequent works such as the true volume 3 and whatever might follow that in a simple beginning-middle-and-end linear fashion (which is how I should have set out initially, not being a professional writer). Ambition has its costs - and boy, have I been ambitious with this one!

In truth, today's blog entry - other than the above ramble - has pretty much written itself. Some kind soul anonymously sent me these vintage shots last night. I would imagine that they originated with the old Spick and Span magazines but the source of the scans is pretty obvious as it is emblazoned right across one of the photos. This of course led me to investigate and thus I came across Vintagescans.blogspot (click top left pic to visit). Vintage Scans features “mid-century advertising, strumpetry & design”. These are large images scanned from vintage publications owned by the blog author - and very good they are too! Indeed, many have been scanned from magazines that I had no prior knowledge of. “Stocking-clad ladies are well represented”. but the collection is not limited to the blatantly erotic; there are many fashion plates, underwear adverts, sections on food and drink, technology and transport, health and beauty and the like covering the period between the 1930s and the late 1960s. For example, I was able to add to my burgeoning collection of vintage corsellete and girdle pics . Talking of which; I have managed to dig out a couple of old women’s magazines of the period at boot / antique fairs of late which very soon I shall start scanning to a new PicasaWeb album which I plan to create.

While on the subject of PicasaWeb: I now know what part of this site was deleted (no - censored) by PicasaWeb - as reported a while back by yours truly. Two of my carefully crafted PicasaWeb albums have vanished: that containing the work of Thorn / Hobbs (I'm not going to get into that controversy again) and that containing the work of Mr Roger Benson. I can understand why the Thorn / Hobbs stuff was targeted as one or two of the more up-to-date illustrations taken from online adult comics were a little, shall we say, gross. But I can't understand the deletion of Roger Benson's work. I daren't reinstate either, through fear of the blog being closed down completely, but I shall endeavour to provide links to other sources of their work in the fullness of time. Meanwhile: who can give me at least four reasons - other than you just feel like it or the fact she is clearly a strumpet - why this young lady should be given a long hard caning. I'll give you a clue: they're all uniform related.

Institutionalised Volume 2 Goes Live on iTunes

Hi folks!

It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce that INSTITUTIONALISED Volume 2 has today gone 'live' on Apple iTunes click title above highlighted in blue to visit. I am out and about, 'chilling in the Woodgreen Wetherspoons, The Spouter's Corner, today but seriously bogged down in the writing of the new book - an ambitious tome to be sure. A little too ambitious? Only time will tell, but I am too loaded with ideas to let it go now, so I guess I will just have to run with it and see where it leads me. I am a little worried that the blog is going to rack and ruin - along with a big chunk of my private life - always it seems permanently bubbling away on the back burner. Its not that I have no ideas for it, far from it, it's just that I am so completely focused on my writing right now. Which unfortunately means through the bottom of a beer glass, as that is the way my imagination focuses best.

The Girl in the Striped Pyjamas - A Good Reforming Spank and a Blog

Since I have been going on at length in recent weeks (or has it been months) about humiliating baggy institutional pyjamas, can you imagine my joy at coming across a blog featuring a continuing reform-school style storyline including exactly that. The approach is somewhat different to my own and the scenario is entirely different of course, but the addition of
matching elasticated cotton mop (sometimes, mob) caps is inspired - although those of you who have read the first two volumes of my INSTITUTIONALISED series (see sidebar) (there are only two at present - but with a third on the way) will have come across the concept of the wearing of bonnets as part of an institutional uniform, although not with pyjamas and not at all of that style. But as part of institutional nightwear it makes perfect sense, somehow. I pinched the pic from the section that deals exactly with that - simply click on the photo to go read. To read the latest instalment from The Girl in the Striped Pyjamas.blogspot.com - click blog name here, or see the link I have posted in the right-hand sidebar blog list (err... over on the right?). By the way: I don't know where this pic originated - I have never seen it before - but notice how each seems as if obliged to permanently utilise one hand to keep hitched up her pyjama bottoms. A hugely demoralising feature - and a concept I have recently been exploring in my writing, although in what I would imagine to be a completely different context.

Badges of Shame and Other Summer Madness – With or Without Bars, Though?

Yesterday was a bit of a lost day at this end, I'm afraid - but that has been too often the case recently. First of all there were personal problems at home, necessitating going out quite early on and not having the space to boot up the machine even for a glance at my emails - it would all have caused too many more problems! Then I had to scoot up to Enfield to help my mother with something... Then finally I sat down at the Enfield Costa-packet coffee house - from where I can ordinarily get a good fast WiFi connnection - only to find that I couldn't log on. Next I went to the nearest pub, The George in Enfield Town, which, I happen know, has a free WiFi setup - but it was full of football supporters waiting for the England v someone-or-other match. So I cycled back down to Woodgreen, to the Wetherspoons there, as I know that branch is not showing the matches. It quickly became apparent that their WiFi was down and I couldn't get a signal from the local library WiFi box while sitting at a table outside either, as I usually can (probably because there was a huge mobile unit lorry (truck) thing parked directly outside it, blocking the signal path. Next I wandered down to the Turnpike Lane wetherspoons branch where they were showing the match but where I also knew I could sit outside away from the row. So I got a beer, as you do; I got a seat - great - I even found I was getting a good WiFi signal - even better! But before I could even begin to log on, let alone get anything done, a guy who knows me and who sometimes chats to me sat down and...well, chatted to me. ...And chatted and chatted and chatted... Beers were bought and downed, the sun fell low in the sky...well, I'm sure you get the picture. Then it was morning and I found myself back home, with not a single word or idea or thought to show for it.

It's a difficult thing to deal with and I am trying not too beat myself up about it. If I am working and get a lot done - as is often the case on a bender - then I can justify it in some way in my mind. But if all I am doing is sitting getting drunk? It's just that everything and everybody seemed to be conspiring against me. As it is there are constant rows over the time I spend writing, both with the other half and my mother, both of whom keep coming up with things that need doing, the argument being that I am not working so I must have plenty of time. Writing a book is not seen as 'work'. I should have lied and said I'd found a modestly-paid 9 till 5 job some place and then gone out every morning as if off to work. Sounds crazy but I have heard of folks doing exactly that!

Right, enough of my babbling sorrows! I have managed to do a fair bit of writing over the last week or so, despite these and similar tribulations and think a complete first draft of the new book should be about completed in three weeks. Meanwhile my arty collaborator in the 'States continues to throw up new ideas and to explore new directions and of course I have a contribution or two to make (I hope). Actually I am looking forward to starting work on designing the new cover soon - one of my favorite bits of all this - and in preparation I have today be putting together some ideas for how the badge might look on the regulation hospital-issue patient uniforms in the institutional discipline scenes depicted. Actually most of the illustration work has thus far focused on the institutional discipline aspect but ideas have simultaneously been emerging as regards the domestic discipline scenarios - and there are plenty of those - so some effort will, I expect, soon be expended in that direction. Meanwhile here are two variations of the uniform badge I have come up with, this version being intended for patient 30, quite obviously, who those of you who have read the first two volumes will recognize instantly as a young lady who is never far from the controlling, grasping hands of her guardian - even if safely behind the locked doors of a secure institution. By the way; the textual appearance is deliberate and supposed to make it look as if painstakingly embroidered on fabric.

A Tiny Bit of What I Have Been Writing

The choice was stark, but even having the notion of a choice was a form of subtle psychological torture. She could sit quietly and dwelling more and more inwards, turning it on herself and sending herself quite mad in the process or let herself be gently led by the hand deeper and deeper into mental illness by her sweetly smiling guardian angle rustling and bustling around her in her blue-checked uniform dress. For what else could this be but some form of mental illness? Head swimming in swirling sedative fog, hands thrust down the front of her hospital issue asylum pyjamas masturbating furiously, fingers plucking and twitching under stickily-humid plastic mental-home incontinence knickers and worrying at a sutured rubber thimble cap device who’s sole purpose was to rob her of the one thing she desired more than anything else in the world at that moment – sexual release.
“Stop that, now – it’s time to get you back into bed and I’m going to have to draw back the curtain”.
The command bit deep into Lavinia’s psyche; shame and humiliation shared equal billing with hot-cheeked heavy-breathed, tear-wrenching frustration. She felt her hands being physically tugged from their private fumbling and being placed forcefully in her lap, the musky pungency of her unrelinquished arousal rising accusingly from fingertips left tacky with bodily lubrication. She was only half aware of the head and shoulders pressing thorough the opening in the plastic curtains surrounding the bed and the chair in which she was presently seated, wriggling uncomfortably in her sweat-soaked pyjamas.
“I’m so sorry, Sister – I just didn’t know what to do to stop her”.
“A quite disgusting display! I want her put back in full restraint immediately and she is to be confined to bed at all times for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, you are to make out a full report of this behaviour for the doctor under the heading of ‘evidence of pathological sexual obsession and obsessive-compulsive behaviour’.

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Now, I bet you're wondering what the pony-girl illustration is all about - hmmm? Not really my thing as such - and nothing to do with anything in the new book - it's just that I recently came across a couple of great pony-girl sites which I have now added to the 'Useful Resources' list that can be found in the right hand sidebar (listed under pony girls, amazingly enough!).

Homecoming… But to Nothing Pleasant!

Well that's a little bit of an untruth, if I am be honest - I have actually been back from Eastbourne / Brighton and other stops along the south coast for a couple of days now but the writing has been going so well and I have been so overflowing with ideas of late, thanks at least in part to my collaboration with 'Snooze' my digital artist chum in the States, that I just wanted to keep my head down and keep going. Consequently I've been writing practically non-stop since my return and still have barely scratched the surface of the fresh ideas and inspirations that have manifested, partly through swapping ideas and playing with images etc. Words lead to images and images lead to words - that's how it has been working. Which brings me to the little illustration top left, knocked out recently by my digital chum not for the upcoming book - I can't really see where it would fit at the moment - but just for the fun of it and to see where it might lead in terms of plot ideas, not necessarily for the present work but perhaps for some future collaboration. Indeed, one hopeful possibility is that it might stimulate one or two of you out there that I know are raring to get on with a little creative writing themselves to put pen to paper.

.....

The basic premise behind the illustration is that one girl is fitting handcuffs on the wrists of the other - the question you have to think about it is; what is going on... I mean, what really is going on? Does the girl who is being placed in restraints actually want to be in handcuffs or is it some sort of non-consensual bondage? if non-consensual, then the question is; has the girl fitting handcuffs in some way managed to manufacture the situation - ie is she the instigator? If so, bearing in mind that the girl being restrained does not appear to be struggling, how has she developed such control over her. On the other hand, if some third-party has instigated the scenario, then is either girl a willing participant? If this latter case the question becomes how has this come about, is the girl locking the cuffs doing so in fear of some punishment herself or has she been manipulated psychologically in some manner? A similar consideration can be given to the question of the apparent passivity of the victim (or are they both victim's?). If this latter series of scenarios are true and neither is a willing participant, then what is the rationale behind it, what is the instigator trying to achieve, what is his or her final agenda or motive? So many questions to base the framework of a story around - and we haven't even considered the location yet, a factor having a massive bearing on the storyline. The background is, I believe, left deliberately blank, partly to focus the eye on the action but also to give the imagination free rein - sometimes an incomplete framework can say much more than a fully fleshed-out picture!

By the way, while I was away I did a hell of a lot of work on the little netbook computer I carry with me. It was blazing sunshine all the way through from beginning to end (wonderful!) and the only thing better than working outside the bar at the far end of the pier (right) was setting up a little portable office for a spot of breakfast time writing on the veranda at the back of the Eastbourne branch of my favourite pub chain, Wetherspoon's (left - spot the work desk! LOL). Yes indeed! Your eyes do not deceive: It's built in an old recycled garage (bottom, right - click for a closer view)!!!

Now for a little bit of shittier news - someone, somewhere has become a little disillusioned with my Picasa Web albums it seems. Imagine my horror at returning home to be greeted by this jolly little missive:

"Please be advised that we have recently received reports that inappropriate content has been posted to your Picasa Web Albums account. One or more photos displayed in your gallery violates our Program Policies and has been removed.

Our Policies state that images displayed on picasaweb.google.com cannot contain obscenity, pornography, promotions of hate, incitement of violence, or spam, malicious code, or viruses. Please note that if you continue to violate these Program Policies, we may suspend your Picasa Web Albums account."

It would have helped no end if they had been kind enough to specify which particular pictures had been objected to and had been removed, because at this point in time I have no idea - I certainly can't see anything obvious missing and without knowing precisely the problem it is difficult to be sure to avoid it entirely in the future. I guess one thing I may have to do is to flag up this blog as adults only as many others have done - does anyone out there know how to achieve this, only I am worried about fiddling with it myself in case I inadvertently end up deleting the entire blog or something and it has a hell of a archive built up that I have yet to work out how to back up properly, by which I mean as they complete working blog or website.

By for now, but I have to get on with some writing, of which I will tell you more next time. Safe to say, though, that barring certain working obligations, now that I am back I will be updating the blog more frequently; perhaps every couple of days or so.

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!