Victorian Governance in the Modern World? - And an Excuse (Internet Woes Keeping Me Off the Air)

Sorry for the 'no-hear' but I have a major problem with  the home internet connection, a fault my phone-line provider - The UK Post Office - fails to find but which keeps knocking my router off-line.  I can update from my portable machine but only in the absence of any pictorial content (very boring).  I do have, it seems, some intermittent access today but little time to enjoy it.  I have to pick up and put down the phone several times every now and then to clear the fault temporarily.  Anyway, here is a pic I came across a while back when the thing was working ok - and then forgot about.  A suitably morose pair that I, in my fertile imagination, have decided are undergoing a prolonged period of Victorian Governance in the modern world, courtesy of some select private and highly secure institution or homeschooling set up somewhere well away from prying eyes.

It was this picture that has led me to re-titling the book I'm presently working on as: 'Victorian Governance In The World Of The Sixties'.   Now, there's food for thought, I'm sure you'll agree!  The pic is, I think, actually from the online catalogue of a company that makes and sells Victorian and Edwardian costumes.  

I've still got that pic of me with the Olympic torch to share with you, but I'll Probably put that up on Facebook  - I'll let you know.

Talk of a Girl - All Alone in the Doctor's Office

Can you believe I could have overlooked a blog called 'Disciplinary Tales'?  No, it doesn't seem possible, especially as it's been around since 2010.  I love the drawing from the magazine Roue used as the blog's banner (left) Just click the blog's title to visit.  

Talking of inspirational pictures painting all those words and all that.  A long time back (I think) someone sent me this one.  I have absolutely no idea who this woman is or where the photo is from so if it embarrasses or annoys anybody I'll of course take it down at once.  But...OMG!  Wouldn't she be the absolute model of our strict, domineering and somewhat less than entirely ethical clinical psychotherapist, Dr Anne Ecclestone.  Can't you just imagine her slinking around the department of experimental psychology, with her white doctor's coat flapping open over that outfit, perhaps leading some hapless bare-foot young thing in an open-backed hospital examination gown along by her painfully twisted ear?  Or perhaps sitting at her desk in her office, her white coat folded over the back of her chair and a silver nurse's fob watch pined over one breast, calmly yet firmly explaining yet again to the pretty young thing sitting opposite her the reason for her being put in those ugly leg calipers, fixing the girl's eyes on hers, forbidding her to look away with her commanding stare while forcefully reinforcing over and over all she has previously suggested about hysterical paralysis and weakness of the legs, smiling reassuringly as she watches the suggestion take root, the belief growing in the girl's eyes day on day.  And now, of course she reaches for the leather strap she keeps coiled her desk drawer.  The girl has been trying again to get by without her leg calipers; and it wont be the first time she has had to go across the doctor's knee for non-compliance with the protocols of her treatment.  She could refuse to flop down, drape herself across the doctor's lap and drop the bottoms of the ugly, shapeless green-striped hospital-issue pyjamas she is dressed - but she wont  Her medication would be stopped if she did that...And the doctor has got her on the most deliciously addictive sedative now...    .........................................................................................................................................

By the way - I saw the Olympic torch procession and then later one of the torchbearers, a sprightly old chap call Bill  who has apparently run in every London Marathon there has ever been, brought his torch into the pub I was in (The Tollgate, Turnpike Lane, North London) and I got a photo of me and him with it.  Hopefully I'll post it up soon here and on my Facebook account but it is on someone else's camera and that person is out of London until Monday...  Oh Bollocks!    

Girl in a Private Prison? You Decide!

 I though you might like a glimpse of something I have been working on this morning.  Yeah I know the illustrations have precious little to do with the writing but I like 'em, so get over it.  The final illustration is an early rendition sent by my old mate Snooz (many, many thanks!), inspired by that old Marks and Spencer salesgirl uniform thing and which might just be adaptable as a suitable 'prison' uniform for some private institution - it's food for thought.  Now I'm off out for a pint to celebrate my birthday (at last - after waiting a week).  I will be in Enfied Town in the George, then the Enfield Wetherspoons and then The Ridgeway (around 4 onwards) if anyone fancies a pint.  I was in Camden yesterday  - terrible place; was served three stale pints in one afternoon!  But that seems par for the course in Camden - don't go there!  Tomorrow I will be in the Tollgate, the Turnpike Lane Wetherspoons pub, for to see the passing of the Olympic torch - pictures here at some later date hopefully!   

Out of Her Cell - Out of Her Mind?

The girl watched, bemused, as her aunt, dressed in her strange Edwardian garb, dropped the cane to her side and crossing to a carved dark-wood straight-backed chair hooked its crook handle over the back before seating herself, smoothing down her long tight tweed skirt as she did so.  “Come here, lie across my lap.”  The stern faced woman was patting her lap,  hooking the index finger of her other hand in a beckoning gesture towards the weeping disheveled mess that she had now reduced her ‘niece’ to before than pointing meaningfully at her lap.  “AT ONCE GIRL!”  Her voice had sharpened and she’d raised it – and Alison found herself coming running like a well trained lapdog, draping herself over her mistress’s knees.  “Good girl” her aunt purred softly in response.  “You see!  It only took one good prison caning to put you under your governess’s thumb.  And that’s where you are going to remain; under my thumb.”
It had taken a great deal more than that, as the woman knew well enough, and that psychological softening-up procedure with the intermittent lighting and the tape-looped children’s television theme tune would continue.  But now the re-education phase could begin.  It would commence the moment the girl willingly put on her prison uniform and returned to her cell when instructed without a struggle.  She would reward the girl with a book or pamphlet to read, the only thing she will have had to relieve the deliberate controlled tedium of her existence for months.  ‘Understanding the Lesbian Mind’, yes that would be a good starting off point.  Then she’d have the girl write an essay on it.  She brushed aside the lower portion of the girl’s hospital exam gown, in her mind’s eye now a reformatory punishment dress.  

Hooking an arm around the girl’s trim waist to anchor her over her lap from the side table positioned alongside the chair she slipped out a drawer and drew from it a hair brush.  She felt the girl tense as in the cheval mirror opposite the girl caught sight of it.   She began to brush through the girl’s long blonde tresses, patiently untangling sweat-tangled ringlets and working through the near-waist length glory from ends to roots, sensing the delicious young thing draped over her lap gradually relaxing as she did so and as the girl realised the wood-backed brush was not to be used on her defenceless and agonizingly throbbing backside.  Then, putting the brush down on the table top she reached back inside the drawer, extracting a rubber band.  Gathering the girl’s partially rehabilitated locks she deftly drew the girl’s hair back and through the elastic band, working the band up close to the back of the girls head.  “There, that’s neater!”  She patted the girl’s rounded dimpled bottom with the palm of her hand:  “Good girl for lying still – not every thing has to hurt you know!”  She whispered, her soft voice sounding oddly throaty to the girl’s ears.   

For a moment or two she ran her hand appreciatively over the girl’s plump behind, pleased to note the lack of any struggle, though she saw the girl wince in the mirror facing her.  Then she reached back to the little side-table, sliding open another, lower, drawer.  The girl barely saw the light glint off the polished stainless steel as the scissors came out in her aunt’s slender hand.   With a single movement and using the rounded neck opening of the hospital examination gown as a guide the woman slipped one blade beneath the ponytail and before the girl could as much as wriggled began to hack through it with a series of jagged slicing cuts, the razor edged hairdresser’s shears making short work of what had taken years to grow and train.  Tightening her grip around the girl’s waist with her restraining arm left, with her right - having relinquished the shears, resting them across the small of the prone girl’s back - she swung the long detached ponytail in front of the astonished and horrified girl’s face before dropping it unceremoniously to the floor.  “There!  I’m going to have Mrs McAlistaire pin a lock of that to the breast pocket of your prison dress before she locks you back up in you cell as a constant reminder of what prison discipline is all about.  You’ll get a proper prison haircut as soon as we get some clippers – I’ll have Mrs McAlistaire do it’ she’ll enjoy that”.                        

Plucking the shears off the girl’s back and dropping them back in the open drawer, sliding it shut, she went back to caressing the girl’s bottom with her free hand as if nothing had happened, smiling as she watched the girls eyes staring at the shorn ponytail lying on the floor in the mirror, the pretty teen’s eyes bulging  almost madly.  Yes, she thought, that has broken you a little, hasn’t it – it’ll break you still further once Mrs McAlistaire takes her clippers to you.  She smiled at the girls’ worried face in the mirror, the girl’s tears flowing freely again, having subsided somewhat from the birching and then the caning of earlier.  “You’ve never had another woman touch your bottom before, have you?”  She watched the tearstained features slowly move in the mirror as dumbly the girl shook her head.  

The jar on the side looked like the cold cream that her aunt’s housekeeper used to soften her hands, but it wasn’t.  Her aunt had just looped out a substantial dollop of the stuff and she’d caught sight of it on the woman’s fingers, all gelatinous and bluish-grey.  The label  was around the other way but she didn’t need to have sight of it to know what it was, the slightly medicated odour of petroleum jelly and the greasy texture as it made contact with her skin was enough to tell the story.  But if she expected her aunt to use it to cool her toasted backside she had another thing coming.  

“`That’s an awfully warm chubby bottom you’ve got there” Flora McBainstone murmured as she caressed the quivering smooth resilient flesh of the girl’s globes, tracing the ridges of the outline of the cane with her finger. Mutely Alison felt herself twitch at the woman’s touch.  “You’re going to be so very grateful to your governess for having corrected you” the older woman cooed, extracting another goodly-sized dollop of cream and beginning a slow, firm and disconcertingly erotic massage, easing the oozing cream into the glowing ridged and wheal-covered flesh.   For the first time Alison now found herself struggling to overtly come to terms with her aunt’s sexual desires – and those unrequited the woman was clearly trying to ignite in her.  And the awful thing was, the woman was succeeding; she knew exactly where and how to touch, and her own body was betraying her, responding to the woman’s knowledgeable fingers whether she liked it or not.   

It's Raining Blogs (And Strict Nurses and Wardresses)

While looking for some background for the new book I’m working on I just stumbled across a blog I’ve somehow never seen before:  I've Been a Bad Girl  (just click to visit, or check out the link in the right hand sidebar).  Anyway, there are some great pictures on it, many of which are new to me – including this wondrous image, top left.  It could have come straight from my own imagination (but didn’t) and all sorts of tales spring to mind! 

Talking of images that look as if they have come straight from my twisted brain the one on the right (below) could have come straight from the plot of one of the more institutional scenarios depicted in my books.  Where it actually came from was ‘Plector’ (just click to visit, or check out the link in the right hand sidebar) which apparently (according to the author) is Latin for ‘to be punished’.  The site / blog deals with the “spanking / caning / corporal punishment of females” (don’t we all!!!).

Finally: I’ve updated the link to The Pink Report, which had ‘moved’ (Click to visit, or check out the link in the right hand sidebar).  For the time being I’ve also retained the old link.  All four related links can be found grouped together in the main blog listing under ‘P’ as Pink Report, Old (The) and Pink Report, New (The)…  I’m sure you get the idea.  Otherwise you end up with a list with dozens of items filed under ‘T’ for ‘The’.

And now I’m off to the gym – Bye ya’ll!

It’s My Birthday (Party) – And I’ll Add Blogs If I Want To! (Three – New!)

It’s my birthday.  Well’ actually it was my birthday yesterday, strictly speaking, but I don’t intend to acknowledge it until next Monday (sort of offsetting it by a week).  Partly this is because I’ll want to imbibe a few beers by way of celebration and that will make it a month since I last did that sort of thing (Brighton, a week’s worth following the London – Brighton cycle ride and my successful scaling of the mighty Ditchling Beacon:  Toyntanen, umpteen – hill, 0).  And partly it is because the weather is crap anyway – although perversely the sun has come out here in North London – and I have done nothing to alert old chums of my intentions. 

So… What have I been up to?    

I’m still hard at work on three novels in parallel but most of my efforts of late have been channelled into a stand alone novel which has little to do with the rest of the series, being set in the early to mid 1960s.  The latter started as a rewrite of a book I once read but has become influenced in places by the work of Richard Manton / R.T.Mason (who used to write for Janus magazine but is also now known for his novels, in particular Elaine Cox), the idea being that a young girl (late teens) has been consigned to live under the authority of a woman in a house in London which turns out to have been once owned by the professional Victorian-era disciplinarian that features in the Richard Manton penned Janus (issue 38) tale, ‘Whips Incorporated’.  Google it or look on Mr Whacker’s blog (check out the blog list in the right hand sidebar).  I have also been doing a little early preparatory work to test the feasibility of a short graphic novel based on the 3D graphics work of ‘Snooz’ – a few examples of which you can find scattered throughout the blog archive.  

Now, I’ve added three blogs to the right hand sidebar blog list this time that I want to briefly tell you about.  

‘Intimate Invasions’ – by Mr Strict - features the enforced application of enemas and non-consensual anal play, much of which is quite inventive, good inspiring stuff which I have to say I really quite enjoyed.  See image top left (taken from the site).  To visit, click on blog title or look for the link in the sidebar blog list.

‘Mr-Tawse’  Doesn’t really do what it says on the tin, to be honest with you, in that there does not seem to be that much content actually dealing with the use of that trusty implement of correction – the tawse.  But having said that, there is an awful lot more going on there that would recommend a visit or three!  (See right hand picture – taken from the site), click on blog title to visit or look for the link in the right hand sidebar main blog list.

‘Spanking the Shamrock’  A strange title and one that I only picked up on while perusing the ‘referrals list’ on my blog’s ‘Sitmeter’ widget – a little gizmo situated near the very bottom of the right hand sidebar (just above the clock) that allows myself and others (visitors – that means YOU!) to monitor the number of folk visiting and so on.  The author has kindly included a link to my blog on his site.  This blog differs from the majority in that it seems to be based around original short and inspired essays written by the author covering various topics pertinent to the disciplining of young ladies such as ‘Corner Time’,  shaving pubic hair (or not – far more imaginative; all sorts of possibilities open up), cold showers and ice baths and young women being made to wear school uniform as a punishment.  To quote from the latter:  

“…being put back into school uniform [should] remind her of how it used to be, to be governed by rules and regulations over which she will have no control but which she has to obey.  She should be required to consider why she has been put into uniform and acknowledge how she looks in it and why she deserves to have been put back into uniform. 

Anything which increases for her the humiliation of being put back into school uniform is to be considered an advantage - the wearing of the uniform should be a punishment in itself.”  

Interestingly the author quotes directly from the magazine interview with one of the actresses from the 1960s film of ‘The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’ that I have mentioned in the past (try the search facility situated in the upper portion of the right hand sidebar) in which an (18 year old) actress describes how wearing the school uniform every day for filming affected her mindset and how it started to make her consciously feel and act as if she were a genuine schoolgirl still at school.       

As always: to visit (highly recommended)  click on the blog's title - or look for it in the sidebar blog list (coz just like the other two blogs outlined above I have just added a link to it!  Duh!). The pic, above left - pinched from the aforementioned oddly-named site - is from the 1958 German classic, ‘Maedchen In Uniform’, Incidentally; highly influential!.

More Shades of Grey - Re-using Old Shop Assistant Uniforms for Disciplinary Purposes

Harking back to my ‘Brighton  Shock’ posting of last week; I've been surfing the net trying to find a colour photo of the shopgirl uniform mentioned - i.e. an adapted vintage 1960s Marks & Spencer's staff uniform dress - as I imagine many of you will have been left in the dark despite my floundering attempts to paint a picture in words.  This was the best I could come up with.  I've had to play around with the colour balance a little as the original had a noticeable red cast to it, possibly due to the original photograph having been exposed to light and having faded over time.  In so doing I've relied on memory to try to get the dress colour right as the priority rather than worry about skin tone (possibly a mistake, I don't know).  The odd thing is that I recall from the period (although I was rather young) a thin light-blue plastic belt being worn with it – and indeed it was such a belt that was threaded through the belt loops of my shopgirl chum’s dress, not the broad dark belt as shown in the photograph.  It was all man-made fibres - a woven terylene and nylon blend, I believe - practical but not exactly comfortable.  In the summer the staff must have sweated buckets, especially with a girdle or corsellete beneath – but what wonderful discipline for a girl of today to undergo.  

The reason I am so fascinated is that many years ago (mid to late 1980s) my wife of the time and I had a girl in her late teens living with us in what developed into something of a genuine D/S lifestyle (I have written about this before - albeit rather sketchily - and it can be found in the blog archive using the search facility in the right-hand sidebar and a little imagination).  Anyway, to cut a long story short the deal was that she did the housework in return for room and board and a little pocket money (and I mean a little).  With Penny (the girl's name) acting as housekeeper and cleaner and day by day becoming noticeably more firmly under my wife's authority it just began to seem right that something be done to make clear her position within our household.  

For purely practical reasons a pinafore apron had been procured (from a very traditional small independent department store in the Holloway Road, North London) but never looked right over jeans and T-shirt nor even the old skirt Penny sometimes wore.  Then one day - perhaps a few months in to the relationship, I can't quite remember exactly - a friend of the wife's who happened to work for Marks & Spencer brought around an old shopfloor uniform dress (M & S were just updating their uniform to a new look at the time), a cream coloured polyester dress with a green and ochre lattice check pattern (I just looked it up that uniform changeover on the Marks & Spencer's archive web page and it would date the period to 1986).  

There was much whingeing and moaning from an outraged Penny but my wife's somewhat domineering personality won the day and despite the girl's complaining that besides anything else the dress just didn't fit - she was rather a plump young thing and it was true that the buttons could hardly constrain her bust and the fabric did stretch at the seams over her bottom and hips - coupled with pinafore apron worn over the top, it soon became her daily outfit.  I seem to remember the dress had long sleeves with fitted cuff s and it definitely buttoned up the front, even though the closest I can find from that period on the Marks & Spencer's archive website is short-sleeved and zip fronted - and to be honest I can’t explain the discrepancy.  It also came with a plastic belt threaded through belt loops - I later used  to use it across her bottom; but that's a different story! 

The problems with the ill fitting dress, incidentally - which I personally found quite charming - were later solved when a visit to a charity shop unearthed a genuine vintage Playtex girdle (which of course became an excuse for insisting on stockings, and it all went on from there).   

In hindsight I think I would have given anything to have seen Penny in one of those 1960s dresses (Although I did get to see her put in a nylon overall from that same period - furnished by the same charity shop as I recall!).

Why Fifty Shades of Grey When One Shade of White Will Suffice?

An anonymous contributor as part of a posted comment sent in a link a good few weeks back to a fashion photo set entitled INSTITUTIONAL WHITE as photographed by STEVEN KLEIN (click on his name to visit the original set on the Interview Magazine site).

I had down loaded the pic and had it all set up to post while away in Brighton after the London – Brighton cycle ride.  But as you now know, due to changes in the way Blogger works and its incompatibility with the browser supported by my portable notebook computer (coupled with my inability to update said machine) I was unable to upload any graphical content while away from home.  I have been back around a week now but what with various personal dramas and yet more health concerns I have done little until now.  I did get quite a lot written in the pubs in and around Brighton though; the place is just so inspirational in one way or another – of which more next time (I took pics on my phone which promptly died on me and so I’m waiting until I can persuade it to let me download from it!).  

Back to the photo set and having followed the link and looked through the pictures I have to say I found this one the most evocative.  The nurse or institution wardress uniform is not really my cup of tea as you know, preferring to imagine (and evoke in my writing) the more traditional British nurse or hospital matron’s uniform of the 1960s and early 70s but the steel key ring dangling from the belt as a sort of badge of office or token of authority is just perfect.  It's these little details that go to build the picture - and write the story.  The same can be said for the protagonist’s facial expressions:  There is that look of despair and desperation on the face of the patient as she senses her mind, her personality, her very soul, being drawn from her by the rigid control and strict discipline of the bleak institution she has been placed in.  As a counterpoint there is the passion written across the face of the nurse or carer as she knowingly and lovingly works towards that very end, not so much driving the girl out of her mind as gently guiding her, expertly dismantling her sanity piece by piece, perhaps for her own ends, perhaps to satisfy the aims of others.  Whatever the woman's motives, the look of utmost passion on her face is enough to assure one that her methods would only be those embodying the most exquisite subtlety.  

As a teller of the tale, then, the question for one's imagination becomes exactly what those techniques might consist of.  Given, say, six months before the girl comes up before a psychiatric review panel, the question becomes; how best to ensure her tenure in the institution is extended when the time comes?

Well, there is food for thought!  And why Fifty Shades of Grey?  Because some misguided pundit recently emailed with the comment that certain parts of my work constituted “The Fifty Shades of Grey for the really kinky!”  Personally I don't think there's enough eroticism in the content of much of what I write for such a comparison (not overt eroticism anyway - although there are quite a few apparently who find the fattening up aspect in volume 3 appealing), but nevertheless praise indeed!