Riotous in Tottenham

Hi folks! It has been a hell of a long time I know but here I am again. After the completion of the mamoth (for me) work that became in effect INSTITUTIONALISED volume 3 almost by default and the marathon writing task it turned out to be - taking well over 18 months from concept to completion – I was left feeling drained. I have had liitle enthusiasm since and a similar dearth of inspiration. What little inspiration I have had has come by way of the private commision I received and that I have mentioned before and what creative energies have been unleashed through that route I have ruthlesly harnessed to that cause. Even then progress has been slower than expected, though mostly that has been due to my having to take time off to do other things in the background to earn a crust and though I could of course put aside an hour or two every day to work on the project the ideas just do not come to me as if on schedule in that manner, on demand whenever I have a couple of free hours. I prefer to work in an uninterupted burst of at least a day at a time, though entire weeks are so much better. Still, quite a lot has been achived although I have held back on comleting the project until next week. I am going to the greek island of Koss (hope I spelled that right) for 10 days and it is poised to be one of those quite holidays with very little to do during which I'll easily have time to fit in at least 5 full days writing or more – and so that will be that. I recently went away for 7 nights to Sorrento in Italy but that was another story entirely having an itinary so packed with museum and archiological site visits that I didn't even bother to pack the netbook computer I ordinarily carry around with me.

The photo incidently represents one of the few moments of inspiration on my various travels, being the window I alluded to in an earlier entry that I photographed in Marbella, Southern Spain. The reason I have posted it up is that I intend to use the shot as the basis for a little experimental photo manipulation project I have in mind and the results of which you'll be able to judge for yourselves right here as I go along. Talking of photographs, I have been contacted by 'Wringer' the creative force behind what must be one of my favorite photo sets of all time saying that he is happy to have his pics featured here as long as they are correctly attributed to him – which is fine by me. Many you will have seen before – but possibly not all – and all have fired my imagination, spawning miriad scenarios and diverse creative pathways: Watch this space, as they say!

Now: why the odd title? You may well ask! Well we have just had a riot here in sunny Tottenham. I'll hopefuly have a few pics next time (before Wednesday when I fly out) as soon as I can work out how to coax them off my (not so smart) 'smartphone' 'camera phone' thingy. Not that exciting I know but I'll be more on the ball when I get back from my hols and it's all gonna get a lot more busy on the blog then. Just like the good ol' days when it got started! Bye 'till then!

Riding Along with that Jodhpur Fetish Thing

Well, what a long time it has been! And a busy time too, although I wont bore you with too many of the details. Suffice it to say that I have had to earn a crust; or rather I have been obliged to aid my ‘other half’ in earning a crust since it is she who is currently the breadwinner in our relationship. The trouble is that she is occasionally a little over zealous in fulfilling that role and a little over ambitious in the quantity of work she takes on. She teaches full-time nowadays in a London based university but still likes to hold on to some of her old freelance contacts and so is loathe to give up on taking on freelance work altogether.

Thus it was that I found myself doing a little research work which amounted to trying to uncover how many outlets certain retailers have around the world by going on their websites, utilizing their ‘store-finder’ – which generally lists stores and stockists by country and then by city – and manually counting up the total (over 400 in one instance!). No you can’t just simply ring them up (or email) them and ask, apparently – I’m not sure why but apparently that’s just not done! Besides; some of these companies don’t seem to actually know how many outlets they have themselves – in interview their representatives say one thing but their website ‘store-finder’ says something different entirely. Go figure! There we go – I said I wouldn’t bore you with the details and now I just have!

Right then: The (world’s most tedious) research is not the only kind I have been engaged in – thank fcuk (little fashion-world / dyslexia joke there). Although I had to place on the back burner for a while that commissioned piece I am writing and that I mentioned before I did find time to do a little research around certain aspects that need to be incorporated as I went along. So what did I uncover? Well did you know that there is an entire horse riding attire and jodhpur fetish literature out there? I didn’t. Obviously I knew that riding attire, riding crops and jodhpurs etc sometimes feature in D/S and S & M literature and interests but not jodhpurs as a ‘standalone’ fetish. Indeed it turns out there are several sites catering to this interest and although not directly related to my commissioned piece I have done a little exploration and have added a selection to my ‘Useful Resources’ list in the right hand sidebar. Although not by any means exhaustive, these include: ‘ridingfetish.com’, ‘equestrianbabes.t83.net’, ‘sexyjodhpurs.com’ and ‘jodhpur-fetish.com’. The latter hosts an interesting forum and both it and ‘sexyjodhpurs’ are listed alphabetically together under ‘J’ - for jodhpurs - for the sake of simplicity.

As always one link followed the next and so I added the Yahoo Group ‘Female_Farm_Animals’ (see pic above right - I don't know who created this so can't credit him / her, but it's great) to my sidebar’s ‘Useful Yahoo Groups’ listing and ‘Thomas’s Picks’, ‘The Memories of a Strict Uncle’ and ‘Brambleberry Blush’ to my blog list (the standard one) – also to be found in the right hand sidebar. Finally: A while back ‘Scarletfanny’ added a link to her site ‘Strangelove’ as a comment to one of my postings (a bit naughty that!) which you may have missed. Anyway; I have finally got around to adding it to my blog list and you can get there by clicking on the good lady’s pic (in her school uniform, below left).

Oh! And the box of knobs and wires pictured last time is my Doepfer modular electronic music synthesiser fronted (though lost in the shadows) by my Yamaha DX7 MK II FM synthesiser that I use to control it via a MIDI to voltage / trigger converter module (for those in the know or who actually care!).

Amother Excuse and a Weird Piece of Kit

I was going to to tell you all about the exciting new links I have added today. Except I'm not, because I forgot to email myself the document I'd prepared and now I'm out down the pub. The aforementioned document also contained the links I have just mentioned so that is the end of that for the time being – perhaps tomorrow? But what it was to have been about was something that came to light while doing a little research for that commission piece I mentioned last time.

Did you know that there was a specific jodhpurs fetish? Not just for horse riding gear generally or that fairly well known 'pony-girl' thing but jodhpurs in particular – not even 'riding britches' (no I don't know the difference either!). Not that the subject is necessarily connected to my client's interests - discretion is everything - but it just happened to crop up in a search I did (if you pardon the pun... crop, get it? riding crop? Oh, please yourselves!)

Well, there is quite an extensive literature it turns out and next time I shall be posting up a plethora of links to prove it (well, perhaps not a plethora). I'll also be adding a few new blogs to the blog listing, including a young lady who has added her blog link already as a comment someplace – I'm too pissed to remember where – naughty, that, but she has a nice school uniform she wears so I'll have to put that up as a focal point for a link just for the irony of it (and the fact that it looks great! Though it is typically American and she hails from South Shields – somewhere in the north of the UK apparently; but I'm a Londoner, what do I know?)

Meanwhile, here are a few shots of another of my little distractions – hands up who knows what it is,,, Yes, you at the back, there?

Looks technical though, doesn't it?

Time to Sound the ‘All-clear’ and Punishment Clothing Sans Armholes

Yes at long last it is time to sound the ‘all-clear’! With the indispensable help of several volunteers I think we have finally dispensed with the last of those tenacious little typos that had somehow clung on to a few of the pages of INSTITUTIONALISED volume 3.

Partly I have been hard at that task (making the corrections that is – I am dyslexic, so there is little point of my checking through myself) and partly I have been doing some prelim research for a private commission I have received to write a bespoke piece. The latter is especially exciting as I was becoming more than a little jaded, not to mention disillusioned. Now, having been presented with someone else’s vision for a story framework, I find my self all ‘fired up’ again. Obviously I can’t say much as regards the brief, but surface it to say that even a preliminary scratching around has spawned all sorts of new ideas.

Going back to the proofreading for a moment; a very special ‘thank you’, I feel, must go out to ‘Orage’ who has proved especially diligent in this task. That is not to belittle all those others that have contributed of course, to whom my heartfelt gratitude goes out. Now, despite having now passed through several different individuals’ hands at various stages in the process, it is such an elephantine work – weighing in at well over a quarter of a million words – that some errors and stumbles may yet have fallen through the net, so if you have downloaded a copy since yesterday (Thursday 2nd June) - which was when I created the latest revision – please let me know if you spot anything glaring.

Now, in my defence as to my apparent neglect of this blog of late, I have not been quite the laggard I may appear. I have made several additions to the ‘Useful Resources’ section of the side bar and added a couple of blogs to the blog list. The trouble is that I have failed to make a note of each addition as I have been in a perpetual rush most of the time – it has been the half term school holidays and I have had to do my share of that ‘parenting’ thing – and so you will have to check through to see what has changed. I have also sourced a couple of affiliates that seem suitably appropriate for the direction this blog usually explores. Lupus Films, in particular, always seem imaginative in terms of the plotlines they develop and authentic in terms of their costumes and sets – where else can you see young girls put in button through overalls / work dresses as part of a disciplinary régime? The nurse delivering a spanking pic from SIT-Spanking could almost come out of a certain scene in the new book – at least as depicted in this shot. You can find the links in the right hand sidebar someplace. 'Spanking Shame' is another affiliate I will be adding soon (Bared buttocks at school desk, above)

As for the other half of this entry’s title; I have been playing around with the idea of dresses and blouses etc designed excluding the provision of armholes as an adjunct to certain bondage / discipline themes. I am not talking here of just sewing up the arm holes of pre-existing and commercially available garments but rather of tailor-made bespoke garments, carefully fitted and designed with the aim of making the wearer appear as if a double amputee. The question I find interesting is exactly how such designs would appear to the eye and how one might put that impression over in writing. Your thoughts, please.

Typos Typos Everywhere - And Not a Drop to Drink (And a Ramble about Enforced PE and 1930s Gym Suits)

I know I have been away a while, but despite my initial euphoria on getting the book out of the way I have been feeling a little down. I hope the typos that somehow have slipped through the net have not marred your enjoyment too much if you have already read the third book but neverthe less some did get through - some multiple times such as [who's] used where [whose] would have been apropriate. Worst of all, in terms of sheer emabaressment, were those that cropped up in a couple of the chapter headings - thanks for pointing those ones out in particular, 'Orage'!! Strangly my spell check facility failed to detect anything wrong in any of my chapter headings. I did a little experimentation and lo and behold! MS Word does not flag up spelling errors where words are all in uppercase - well, at least my copy doesn't! But I bet you all knew that! All of the chapters had been previously proofread at least once before going up on Lulu but the thing is fairly big at 473 pages and I know these things get missed and most were rather minor, but when is all said and doneI am something of a perfectionist and it all gets a bit depressing. Being dsylexic doesn't help either!

Before I got all down about it I went out and about with pound note drinking vouchers and camara in hand. Having posted up some pics of where I originated, I though I put up a couple of the squaller to be found in the part of London I inhabit now (North) Just click to enlarge. To be fair this represents just one facit and in a couple of posts time I'll put up a few shots of the environs of some of the pubs I frequent in the area around Muswell Hill, Highgate and Hampstead.

The top left shot is of Turnpike Lane tube station and the empties were seen in 'The Tollgate' pub, Turnpike Lane (just for that chap who said "I don't get it. You post that you had a beer and 9 other people make comments. You publish the book we have all been waiting for, and 2 people comment"). And just to prove that, though not too active, I still read the comments sent in, here a a couple of pics for ‘Sixofthebest’ who wrote a while back... "I have always loved a naughty woman wearing a girdle, pantygirdle, suspender-belt, and stockings, when they are spanked. Thank you for this most erotic feminine underwear"... Hmmm, yum!

Meanwhile, although I had intended to shelve writing any more - at least for the present, as I need to go earn a crust - under the influence of a few beers I started rumaging through all the unused fragments on my netbook and before I knew where I was I was resurecting something I'd written around a PT / PE theme involving girls dressed in "bottle-green bloomer-style gym suits" adapted "straight from a 1930s pattern book" and under the instruction of a gym mistress resplendent and implacable in starched white blouse and skin-tight jodhpurs, cane in hand... You get the idea! I may go a head with it in my spare time just as something to post here - what do you think?

A Little Fashion Fame - And There is a New Book Out There Some Might Find Interesting

Hi there! Unbelievably A website called Fashion Trending has used a quote from my blog - the first few lines of that 'Happy Birthday Poly' thing I wrote to celebrate the birthday of the invention of polyester under the headline: 'Women's Satin Dresses A Must Have For Any Womanly Wardrobe'. The mind fairly boggles. And this crops up on the same page as ''How Michelle Obama Is Influencing Women's Fashion' ! The snippet they have pinched off me (quote?) is: "There is something about the delicate combination of the dress of a young girl of thirteen or fourteen with the rather slender yet womanly figure and confined waist of a young lady of perhaps seventeen or eighteen – a woman in her own …" And there they leave it. So now I'm a fashion guru and trend setter... So the you are - just accessorise, girlfriend! (said in uber-camp voice with a twee shrug of the shoulders and a flicking back of the forelock - well' I can manage the last part - anyone seen my alice band?). I mean; boy! are they off course, or at least whoever it is who does their research is - it all smells of some sort of automated robotic 'intelligence' gathering thingy if you ask me.

It is a warm (-ish) sunny evening here in Londres and I am enjoying a pint in my local Whetherspoons pub, The Tollgate (crap - but cheap; there's a slogan there somewhere; must buy some shares!). Anyway, it is my first pint in just over a month and so a new record level of sobriety has been reached - three cheers for me!!!

I reckon I have earned it coz I was up working on the rear cover of the new book until 4 AM and was up working on it again, as I was still far from satisfied, at 9:30 AM. Then I had a lunchtime nap. The bloody thing's done with at last, all 473 (I think) pages. The rear cover here I have boosted up the 'Gama' a bit to better show the background image, but it will appear darker behind the blurb in the print copy.

The front cover you will have seen before but without the title (or with an incorrectly spelled title if you were one of the 'early birds' who glimpsed it before I changed it and then buggered off to Spain).

The center image is something I created as an amalgam of images some time ago for another purpose and that has been pressed into service, horizontally mirrored and recolored, as a semi-transparent image behind the text on the rear cover. Snoozz (whom I rightly credited for the nurse and straitjacket computer-generated image I used in the posting before last, it turns out), supplied several of the elements making up the front cover and my thanks go out to him for that (though I need to revise the book text as I just realized I have not added that credit - not a problem while it is only on Lulu, but would be later if it was to go out on the e-book format!). The latter is the reason I have a team of dedicated volunteers carrying out one final round of proofreading for me - and my heartfelt thanks go out to them also; 473 pages would be a little too much for me alone! All the chapters have been proofread previously as the project has progressed through the efforts of various folk of course, otherwise...

Oh!... And it is now up on Lulu!!! Check out the link in the right hand sidebar.

New Hypno / Mindcontrol Blog List - Oh! And I Have Finished Writing!!

Just a quick update today as I am away from home for a couple of days. A big 'Hi!' to 'Wringer', 'Madmonkey' and others who have left comments or emailed me - I'll be getting around to dealing with comments tomorrow or Monday, depending on when I get back. I have had my head down slaving over a hot computer these last few days - practically non-stop and practically to the exclusion of all else. But it's been worth it. The book is finished!!! All bar the shouting (whatever that means - I've never been too sure). All that are left are little details such as getting the page numbering right (that part got all messed up when I did a little editing on holiday using OpenOfice 2 on my netbook) and that sort of thing - a bit of fiddling about, basically. Even the chapters are numbered - all 38 of 'em!! - and the problem with the front cover has been corrected. There is one chapter I want to read through again and a couple of pages or so that I hacked out but that I may now re-include (if I can make it work) now that I have a little time to spare, mostly because the piece is highly descriptive and I am sort of proud of it. I may also put together a little something to make the back cover more interesting along with the usual blurb type of thing - mostly because I enjoy the artwork side of it so much.

I could do with a little help with the final proofreading - there are over 400 pages in the thing - so if there is anyone out there willing to take on 100 pages or so, please step forward now. I'll send the whole thing out to each as a word file and with a page range to proofread / edit. The first five or six folks to email me perhaps? I don't feel I can impose on those that I have already roped in for the initial proofreading of the individual chapters, although I will send PDF versions out to all those concerned for their opinions of the finished (but probably still imperfect) product once the formating has been finalized and I have converted the files.

Changing the subject: I have now added a brand new section to my blog list specifically to house links to blogs having a strong mind-control / hypnosis content as pertaining to the world of D/S, domination and corporal punishment etc. This new section may be found between the French Language blogs and the Thumblogger blogs in the right hand sidebar - explore and enjoy. I have also added to the main blog list a family of blogs I have just stumbled across; namely 'The Pink Report', 'The Pink Papers' and 'The Pink Reviews' (all listed under 'P' for Pink rather than under 'T'). Click blog titles here to visit or check out my list in the sidebar. Despite the 'Pink' nomenclature none of these have anything to do with the Gay scene (not boy-on-boy anyway) but very much to do with the gentle art of spanking - well worth checking out!

Now, those of you that have read INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 may remember the description of the heroine's father's funeral and the streets and roads the procession passes through. If so, do you recognize anything about the two photos above? Well guess what; it was based on the area of London I grew up in - Queen's Park - and this is what it looked like (the two pics above). Anything like the imagery you had in your mind at all? I'd love to know! Bye for now!!