Punishment Dress: More Inspiration Taken from Blushes Reader’s Letters Pages

Hi folks! I'm a little pushed for the time at the moment as I'm struggling to get the new work out there and finished by Christmas and it may well end up published as two distinct volumes, with all the extra work that will entail (three, if one counts the planned illustrated version of one of the books). The rational behind spliting the tale into two distinct books is twofold: One: the total number of pages if presented in one book as it is at the moment would be colossal. Two: the storyline follows two distinct characters, both of whom you have met before, along two very distinct and very separate pathways. These paths only overlap to any extent to a very small degree.

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On the other hand it may be possible to pare away certain areas where the commonality between the two timelines threatens to introduce too much repetitiveness. After all there is a limit to how many times even the most ardent uniform discipline aficionado, for example, would want to read a detailed description of an ultra strict, ultra restrictive, school uniform imposed on a petulant teenager (or is there? you tell me!).

The reason I would like to finish by Christmas is because - to put it bluntly - money is getting a little short this end; I get very little return financially from book sales and the amount that I've taken from my savings this year to support myself has already exceeded that which I had scheduled and is already threatening to eat into the funds that I had earmarked for next year for various projects. In short I shall need to set aside a little time to seek some form of supplementary income: vis-à-vis a job! You can get an idea of how serious the situation has become by the fact that I plan to forego my usual visits to the pub throughout the month of October and to limit my enjoyment to only two or three visits, at the very most, in the month of November (timed to catch the end of the Wetherspoon's beer festival with any luck).

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As a change of subject: The above chatter over the imposition of strict, restrictive uniforms on recalcitrant young ladies brings to mind the notion that in the domestic or private institution scenario the dividing line between such dress discipline and what might be described as punishment dress can easily become blurred - a thought that came to mind when reading through a couple of the scanned reader's letters pages taken from that marvelous publication of the 1980s and early 90s: 'Blushes' in preperation for today's post. So without further ado here's a couple more of the pages sent in courtesy of our kind contributor 'Alan' (I just had to cut out and zoom in on that natty little drawing!). Needless to add that to read, just click on each page to enlarge. See Y'all!

Blushes Reader's Letters Pages Inspiration

I've just been lucky enough to have received via email a whole series of scans taken from the reader's letters pages of that grand old institution, the Blushes, Whispers and New Uniform Girls magazine stable (many thanks Allen). Longer-standing readers of this blog will remember the letters pages scans I published taken from my own collection that I used to illustrate the type of thing that went to inspire my writing. As the contributor himself says: “Breast punishment and leering old men, you can't beat it, and this letter is also illustrated with a rather pretty girl”. Indeed, old chap! Indeed! I have to say I've had great fun reading through all these great old letters pages.

Most I have had in my collection at one time, but long, long ago, before I sold a few off and then gave away many of the rest. Why? Who knows? That was all long before I had ever thought about writing my own stuff of course, although the memory of the imagery conjured in my imagination when originally I'd leafed through those pages is still fresh enough in my mind to have informed some of the events presented in my publications - including the unfinished new one.

One other area that would crop up from time to time within those same pages and could always be counted on to generate a fascinating and imaginative discourse was that of institutional 'admission procedures', especially those dealing with the importance of the psychological implications behind the ritualistic nature and design of those procedures. Those letters that I could still locate in the remnants of my collection I have already scanned and shared with the readership of this blog - tagged with the term, 'inspirations' or something similar I believe, just in case any of you want to look them up in the blog archive. While I'm at it, I'd just like to point out that for your delectation and delight I have today added a link to a diapered girls blog – check out the blog listing in the sidebar on the right.

An Apology from the Central Department of Dodgy Links

What can I say? Flushed with the excitement of the moment - and a little too much ale - I neglected to put in the link from the illustration at the top right of my last posting to the artist's site. Suffice it to say that I have now remedied the problem and a click on the aforementioned pic will whizz you straight to his site. As a little compensation, here is an intriguing little number from that great doyen of spanking art, Paula Meadows (Lynne Paula Russel - a link to her site can be found over in the right hand sidebar, listed under 'Useful Resources'). The question is whether or not the young lady's outfit qualifies as a form of specialized punishment dress and thus part and parcel of her discipline. Is it intended to facilitate / augment corporal punishment or humiliate or is it just part of some rather edgy in-vogue fashion and worn by choice. If the latter, then the question becomes; should it be allowed or should the caning be closely followed by her being handed her new school uniform? By the way; for any who might be interested, despite the time of year it is sunny and bright here in London and I'm sitting out working in the garden - I wonder how long this will last? I am going to award myself one more day out in the pub next week, the proviso being that in that day I get the final outstanding part of the new book finished - the section wherein one luckless young thing receives a visit in the institution in which she has become incarcerated from her guardian and that formidable hellion woman's tame lawyer: there are some papers to be signed and the ever-present threat of the cane is there overshadowing events... Yum!

Art, Liberty Bodices, Discipline and Crashes

Hi peoples, init. I know, I know, yet another week gap. But I have been hard at it in the background, bashing away at the new book. There is so much written, one year in, that that I am considering rearranging the work into two distinct volumes – for clarity of storytelling rather than for any financial advantage; I get very little out of this financially anyway. Almost everything is now written to some degree or other, except for a couple of short scenes and one major scene that will likely take me a day. I could of course simplify by leaving out some of the descriptive scene-setting stuff. But as I have said before: the whole aim, when I first set out down this path, was to try and create some form of spanking literature - incorporating discipline / submission, humiliation, petty rules, restrictions and uniforms and multiple other disparate fetishes, as long as they could be fitted within the framework sensibly – having proper scene-setting, character development, dialog and all the rest, set out within some plausible premise, just as one would expect to find within any other genre one might come across on the high-street bookshelves. Wow! What a long sentence! Better wait to get your breath back.

In the interim I came upon a site run by an illustrator with some rather out of the ordinary imagery for the genre. I particularly liked the artist’s rendition of what appears to be a good old-fashioned liberty bodice on the girl in the first drawing (above) - very imaginative if set in the modern period… and a garment you will encounter a character being put in within the new book, as luck would have it. Little details such as the puff-sleeved blouses worn by the girls in the second illustration all add to the atmosphere of restriction and discipline, while the third is just perfect for all those that like the idea of drill impositions (bottom). The artist sells his work commercially - and I don’t ordinarily promote commercial sites outside of the couple that I am an affiliate of - but I urge you too check out his stuff. You can find his work on www.spankingcharm.wordpress.com (click the pic at top left or check out the blog listing in the right hand sidebar).

One other thing that has held me back was that on Monday – a day I had planed to set aside a little time to update the blog, I suffered a major computer crash that resulted in my having to reload Windows from scratch - with all that goes with that!!!! Luckily the book stuff is spread in duplicate between two computers and occasionally backed up on to CD. Also luckily I had backed up a lot of other stuff on to an independent drive on the same computer back in July – but I lost anything I had downloaded to my various illustration and inspirational collections throughout August. The worst hit potentially was the voice recognition software I use, as one has to train it to one’s voice – not too bad, as it only takes around 15 – 20 minutes – and it learns through experience and correction, improving in accuracy as one uses it. This latter aspect at first seemed disastrous, as I had been using it practically none-stop for two years and it had gone from being quite unreliable to being pretty good at interpreting my voice over that time… Then I discovered that I had backed-up its ‘user files’ a few months back and so was able to reinstate its vocabulary to a point when it had already become quite competent. In short I lost around a day and a half in total but am now up and running again – touch wood!!!

Drop-Seat Pyjamas: Sifting Through Fantasies and Sieving Thoughts

There have been several comments emailed me recently regarding my infrequent posting of late. The thing is, my view is that a blog should be a work of enthusiasm - something driven by inspiration and carrying at least some modicum of an enthusiastic air about it; hopefully infectious and inspirational in its turn. The trouble with all of that is that is infinitely difficult to be enthusiastic about anything when one is a depressive and going through a phase of plumbing the depths of despair. Not that I am permanently depressive; my mood can go up and down with the coming out of the sun or the clouding over of the sky. It's why I drink so damn much - I am nearly always 'up' with a pint or two of the realist of real ale in me - and that's more often than not when the real work gets done! But conversely, there are days I can barely get out of bed. The gym works too in elevating my mood (which at least keeps me fit – I'll have to show off my abdominals one day on here: remind me), but I have to get there first! So, although the blog is sort of bobbing along, I have not been able to update it as often as I'd like. I have been in various pubs a lot since getting back and although I can write well enough in a pub (actually a few beers are good for the imagination) updating the blog is another question entirely, because of the pictorial element to it and the need to view the blog itself in order to judge the final result (the layout often differs substantially from the preview, which on Blogger seems to be largely useless). There are too many prying eyes peering over the shoulder, and too many judgmental views likely to be expressed here in London – as I have intimated before.

While on the subject of my bulging (I wish) email box I totally love these drop-seat pyjama pics I was recently sent - very juvenile. In terms of story telling; in an institutional setting I'm not so sure it works. But if introduced within the more intimate, personal atmosphere of the domestic environment I love the idea. In fact I have already invoked such a scenario within a piece I have part-completed - but whether I use it in the upcoming volume or in the 'true' volume 3 (which continues on directly from where volume 2 left off) - if it ever gets written) I have yet to decide. I'd love to use the idea in vol 3 but as you will have read (I hope) at the culmination of volume 2; although it is a sort of 'domestic' arrangement the two girls concerned in that scene are about to enter, it is a very strange one indeed. Without giving too much away: basically volume 3 was planned to revolve around a sort of faux-Victorian world constructed within an English country manor house and so complete that the girl's two new 'siblings' – two pretty teenagers already in residence and completely under the thumb of their stern governess and nanny - have become convinced that they really do live in the Victorian era - albeit with a little psychological persuasion – with all the restrictions, petty rules and possibilities for discipline that brings to mind. The thing is: do drop-seat PJs really fit into what amounts to a Victorian boarding school scenario? The other possibility is that our young Lavinia - the girl left behind in the institution at the end of vol 2 and who's previous pre-institutionalisation life forms part of the new volume I am currently working on - was put in drop-seats by her aunt when resident in her aunt's home. Even better, if the institutional discipline scene is favored, is the possibility of their imposition in the church-run charity home for wayward and runaway girls that also features in the upcoming volume.

Such considerations form part and parcel of the type of problem currently holding me up. Generally put; it the issue of putting together the various chunks of writing I have completed into some sort of logical flow and deciding what to put in (and where) and what to leave out. For example; some of the ideas I had while away on holiday are more suitable for inclusion in the true volume 3 - which at one time I was uncertain I would even bother to write at all. But I am loath to brush over those ideas and have been trying to get them down on 'paper'. Actually, while reading through various bits and pieces and scenarios I have finished recently, I have begun to wonder as to whether I might not be too far from being able to split the work in two, with a little extra effort, and produce two books for the price of one, so to speak.

To keep you up-to-date: I have just returned to a section that I was working on and abandoned earlier in the year and that involves a perfectly healthy teenage girl becoming convinced that she requires leg calipers. Later on she is encountered as a residential 'volunteer' subject in an experimental psychology study that involves the deliberate induction of stammering, dressed in a very strict school uniform and with her leg calipers, now each kept fastened by a series of padlocks set along its length. Obviously I have mentioned it before but any ideas along these lines anyone?

And so this is Christmas, or so it would seem,
another year over - so soon it has been.
But it sure must be Christmas,
though the days still be long.
It says so in the 'Wethers' (local pub)
and Tim can't be wrong (Tim Martin, CEO of the Wetherspoons chain).
With apologies to the late John Lennon (not that he cares - he's dead and out of it! Which just goes to show my present state of mind).

Cynical? Yeah, I guess you could say so. But it's a cynicism based on bitter experience - that's what life does to one. There are times that, sitting here, I can envisage little more attractive than stepping out into the midst of the Woodgreen / Turnpike Lane traffic. Not that it would achieve much other than an excruciatingly slow death, given that the average speed along the local highways and byways here hovers around that which might be expected of a particularly respectful horse-drawn funeral procession. But then, swigging back the second or third tankard of the day (today's tipple being the insanely strong Abbot Special Reserve - weighing in at an impressive 6.5% alcohol by volume and possibly lethal in large doses to the unwary), one opens ones email and lo and behold, more often than not a smile comes to one's face. No less true than today, people, when upon opening my mail mere moments ago I found myself faced with this gem, yet another of the set I posted so many moons ago originating I believe from the Spic and Span magazine stable published in the sixties and to which I owe so much in terms of my descriptions of the school-type uniforms featuring in the INSTITUTIONALISED series. I have boosted the contrast ( strictly speaking the 'Gama' if we are to be technical) and I think the detail revealed is remarkable. Notable are the integral belt loops and the breast pocket detail, the perfect space to fill with a colourful and suitably humiliating badge and slogan. If one needs a guide to the sort of thing I am - or will be - eluding to in the domestic discipline / 'schoolroom' scenes in my stuff this is it!

Domestic Uniform Thoughts Back in the UK

Hi folks! I’m back in the UK and raring to go! To be absolutely honest with you I have been back for a couple of days now but today is the first I have decided to designate as what I would call a ‘working day’ - one has to start somewhere. I seem to have returned to something of a mini heat wave here in Angle-land and so decided to spend a couple of days touring around several pubs I've been meaning to visit for some time as a sort of holiday extension. Not that I've been entirely idle you understand; certainly the first day I have to admit that I didn't get much written as I visited my local Wetherspons pub wherein various friendly and well-meaning folks kept pitching up and joining me at my table. As much as ordinarily I'd welcome the company and diversion it was a bit of a shame that by the time I was left to my own devices again I was too pissed to continue! Yesterday was far more productive, although I'm not at all sure where the piece I was working on fits in the greater scheme of things. One aspect that has come to interest me, while I have had time away to think, is the concept of the subject, assuming a domestic environment, being placed under another's control who has been charged to act as a proxy in the absence of the dominant character. This seems especially potent if the person placed in temporary authority is someone who ordinarily would herself serve in some sort of subservient role. For instance one can easily imagine the gall felt by the pretty teenage stepdaughter placed by her haughty overbearing and domineering stepmother or guardian under the supervisory control of the housekeeper. Just imagine the thought processes running through the girl's mind as out in the kitchen she is loudly berated by the elderly housekeeper for having the collar button of her crisp nylon overall unfastened or perhaps having a stocking seam crooked and out of place - and all within easy earshot of her stepmother's or guardian’s guests. Perhaps one or two of the latter might be accompanied by their daughters, contemporaries of, or perhaps even ex-acquaintances of, the deeply shamed girl! Yes, I know it's been done before, most famously I think in the novel, Emma's Secret World, by Hilary James - or was in its sequel; I can't quite recall. But I think there is a lot more mileage that can be got from the idea if one revolves it around the central concept of the gradual introduction of some form of ‘domestic’ or ‘home uniform’ of her guardian of stepmother's own devising as a means to at first curbing then finally subjugating the girl to her will. One can imagine harsh angry tones emanating from the scullery and cutting through the gentle cream-tea-and-scones chatter of the well-to-do ladies gathered in the sitting room and the clink of their setting down their bone china teacups, all the better to overhear the carrying on. One can imagine the occasional amused smile and half stifled giggle as they hear their host’s housekeeper sternly issuing the reminder that it might well be the hottest day of the year so far and the new rubber corsellete her guardian had recently purchased for her might well be feeling uncomfortable but every button of her dress was to be kept fastened and that included the collar and the cuffs… and yes, she was to wear that new nylon tabard properly fastened over the top.

Of course I haven't given up on the institutional discipline side of things either in the above picture I found particularly intriguing is one thing I've always found interesting is the concept of an inmate in a privately run prison or asylum perhaps, being visited by the person responsible for their incarceration and being punished by that person. That is what this particular picture says to me. The woman in the background wears a tie suggesting some form of prison guard uniform, which helps set the scene, and the well-dressed woman I imagine as the visitor. What the plate laid in front of the inmate is all about I've yet to decide - any ideas anyone?