Oh, Those Russians! Or: The Charm of Baggy, Institutional Pyjamas

Do you remember last time, when I mentioned a film I recalled coming across within the Lupus Movies / Rigid East catalogue involving girls being humiliated and punished dressed in baggy pyjamas and straightjackets in some kind of asylum / mental home / psychiatric institution or hospital? (It was actually, last Tuesday: I intended to post this article towards the end of last week but I was away from home and although I took the content out with me on a memory stick I couldn’t get WiFi access where I was for some reason.)  Well, while looking for something else entirely on my hard drives (always the way!) I came across these two ‘stills’ from the film I was talking about.  Even now I find something exciting about these.  I mean; if not for the male character in the military style peaked cap in the background (and the fact that the pyjamas I describe in INSTITUTIONALISED BOOK 3 were green striped) these could have been taken straight out of one of my scenes.  Ok the storyline is entirely different, but whoever has arranged these shots has certainly captured that grubby, dishevelled look of hopeless demoralised despair I was trying to evoke in my third novel. In some shots it even looks as if the girls are obliged to constantly employ a hand in order to hoist up their pyjama bottoms as I describe in INSTITUTIONALISED 3. 

There is even a female psychiatrist on hand – and by the looks on the girl’s faces, she is really getting into their heads.

If there is one little detail that lets the pictured scenario down as far as I am concerned (other than the presence of the peaked caped guy – it really should be a woman in some kind of medical carer’s uniform, white coat or prison wardress’s dress) it is that if you look carefully at one of the shots it can be seen that one of the girls is wearing a pair of slippers or pumps with her pyjamas, whereas I can envisage nothing more ‘levelling’ than permanent bare feet along with pyjamas worn 24 / 7.     

So what is it about pyjamas, you’re asking?  And who would blame you?  Why shouldn’t you ask?  After all, I myself would be hard pressed to say what might be so erotic about such a baggy shapeless, masculine garment, especially if additionally endowed with thick, chunky rubbery buttons down the front, broad green and white vertical stripes.  But there is just something about a girl being kept in pyjamas, all day, every day.  And imagine the additional shame felt by the wearer if the breast pocket were to be emblazoned with an embroidered hospital shield, logo or badge and perhaps a descriptor along the top stating something like ‘dementia’, ‘delusional’ or ‘psychosis’. 

In fact I’ve never liked girls in ‘manly’ pyjamas.  But perhaps that’s the point, that ugliness, that basic, blank, institutional plainness?  Perhaps outside the glass-topped walls of this institution she had been a vanity-obsessed designer victim.  Now she shuffles around in a pyjama jacket with sleeves dangling way past her fingers and trousers which trail around her feet threatening to trip her at each step.  And those trousers possess a waistband devoid of either elastic, pull-cord or ties and so loose as to require constant attention from one or other of her hands to clutch at rolls of scrunched fabric to keep them up around her waist - and imagine if you will how demoralising that might become after a while, how tedious and rushing to the spirit.  And yet that is exactly the mood conjured up by these ‘stills’ (taken from the Lupus Movies production ‘Stalin 3’).  And no, I don’t get any payback from this company - I don’t have Lupus Movies as one of my affiliates.  I just like what they do, the attention they pay to getting their costumes and stuff right. What else can I say?  But what do YOU think?

Now, you probably wont hear from me for a couple of weeks as I am off on holiday, flying out tomorrow lunchtime from London, Gatwick to the Greek island, Rhodes.  I’ll be out there for ten days, so if you happen to be on Rhodes, look out for me – I’m always up for a pint and a chat!

Talking of a sociable pint or so:  If you are in or around Brighton on the UK south coast in about three weeks time I shall be cycling down there for a few days after I get back from Rhodes.  I guess that means the first week in August or thereabouts. I can usually be found in ‘The Hand-in-Hand’ pub in Kemptown or one of the two Wetherspoons pubs in Brighton, but I’ll let you know by Facebook and Twitter.

Lastly: Is there anyone out there who has a copy of  Daz Studio 3D, version 4.5?  It has to be version 4.5, not the latest version and it is for my collaborator, Angela Fox, who lost her copy during a computer crash and can’t make her existing stuff and other software work with the latest updated version – thanks!

Oh!… yes… there IS one more last thing… IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But I can’t have a pint, coz I’m flying out tomorrow!

Girls Caned and Strapped by a Strict Uniformed Matron Behind Bars

Just one of the delights to be found in the extensive new set of photo galleries I have just added to my website:  BEYOND THE BARRED WINDOW.  Yup, I've always loved those stills from the BARS AND STRIPES videos, especially those featuring the prison matron in her nurse-style uniform.  

And other than certain tales within the Rigid East cannon (who currently host a storyline involving girls in both baggy pyjamas AND straightjackets:  Now, where have you come across THAT mix before?) some of the BARS AND STRIPES scenarios are the closest I've come to finding the sort of thing I have often conjured in my own imagination and have attempted to reproduce in the INSTITUTIONALISED trilogy.  They currently even have a storyline involving an unofficial indefinite detention - and I so like that word: INDEFINITE!  So I have just this minuet completed setting up a whole string of FREE galleries (ok so there is a commercial link at the end of each set - but I have to earn a crust somehow! So if you want to buy one of their films I get a chunk of the proceeds; you know how it works!).  I'll be adding more over time, and some film clips too.  But for now, other than perhaps adding a decent-looking start page to the website (the site currently opens on its index and links page) I'll be going back to the comic book project, with another little writing project on the side involving an element of femdom and so a new departure for me.  If you want to check out the new galleries, click on the pic situated at the very top of this posting which will whisk you straight to the BARS AND STRIPES sub-index page of my website.  

A Woman Disciplinarian Ponders

There is little to say about this one, except: having recently come across Pinterest - and having been fiddling around today setting up an account - I blundered across this perfectly innocent image and... Well, the result gives an idea of the sort of thing which on occasion even the most innocuous imagery can conjure up in my mind.

Obviously the cane is an introduction, but also so is the nurses' fob watch - I'm quite proud of that, actually, for a few minutes work; it kind of looks like it belongs there.  

And no, before anyone asks; I don't have a 'thing' about young women in pyjamas, in fact I think they can look quite ugly if shapeless, masculine-styled, stripy institutional things; but I guess that is the point!  Ok, all this may not be your particular ‘thing’; but I bet it gets you thinking though!

I've also appended a comment today to my last posting highlighting an old problem which seems to have resurrected itself, namely comments posted by contributors which fail to appear on the blog even though they get forwarded to me by email from Blogger as if they have been.  I have absolutely no idea how this occurs, so all I can do for the time being is manually post them up myself, as I have done today.  Obviously this may entail delays at times, so please accept my apologies in advance; and more importantly, don’t let it put you off posting your ideas, criticisms etc.  

As With My Internet Connection: Nun's The Word!

Hi folks!  Today’s posting is I admit going to be boring.  But the next one, later this week should be better: I going to restart uploading scans of some of those old spanking magazine Reader’s Letters pages that have influenced me so much over the years, both here and on the website.  I’ve also been doing a bit of writing, exploring a different direction and including some femdom themes, some of which I’ll be sharing with you over the coming weeks. 

I bet you’ve been wondering where I’ve been?  Well, ponder no more, coz I’m back.  In truth I hadn’t intended to post anything more for a week or two following my last offering, but I hadn’t intended to leave it five weeks or how ever long it’s been!  And fear not for my mental health:  My prolonged absence this time has had nothing to do with me having gone down with a fit of the old ‘black dog’ (although I have been depressed at times because of the hassle).  In actual fact I have been as fired up as I have been since I started the website and the joint graphics project with Angela Fox earlier in the year. 

No; it was not my mental health at fault, rather the mental health of some individual or group of individuals (surely not a team – and yet surely no single person acting independently could cause such a rumpus) working at Supanet (my internet provider – or non-provider, as I’d started to refer to them as).  They phoned me up, out of the blue, one sunny day in May and asked me how I found their broadband service.  So I told them: At £19.99 per month for 8 Mbs (I actually receive closer to 5 Mbs), bloody expensive.  So they offered me an optical fibre system (for slightly less outlay per month!).  And like the idiot I am - seduced by the dizzying speeds they were quoting - I signed up for it!!

First they sent an engineer out without agreeing an appointment with me first (I was going out that day, leaving as he arrived).  Then the sent two more engineers on different days (apparently – I was at home on one of those days and neither heard nor saw anyone), again without contacting me to make an appointment beforehand… And then the broadband connection went dead!!!!!!  Assuming that at least one of those engineers had gained access and installed the all-important cable modem at my end, some idiot (clearly without checking the new all-singing-all-dancing optical fibre system was up and running) pulled the plug on my ADSL Internet connection, presumably at the local telephone exchange.  And without home Internet, updating the blog and the website become no-go areas:  There are just too many judgemental pairs of eyes keenly looking over one’s shoulder nowadays if using public WiFi connections – and a surprisingly large number of WiFI points here in London block access to adult sites too.

Then it took eons to get them on the phone – and when I DID get their (not so) technical support team on the blower, they went around and around and around chasing non-existent line faults:  “…Yes mate… it’s yer phone line mate, yer line’s down.”  “Err… I’m talking to you on it?….” says I, tagging a fashionable Aussie-style upward inflection on to the end of my sentence to underline the irony of it all.   

You see, for once my often crackly phone line – the cause of a many a day’s snail-paced Internet connection, and part of the impetuous propelling me into going for optical in the first place – was as clear as the proverbial bell; I could hear the boogies rattling up the guy’s nose. 

On a different tack:  I wonder if anyone remembers this title (right) from the late 70s / early 80s?  It was the first magazine of its kind I remember beginning the use of the term 'college uniform', which was pretty meaningless here in the UK at the time.  And of course, typically, in searching that pic out I just came across this one (top left) which could have come straight from a scene in the last book I completed, earlier this year (ALICE UNDER DISCIPLINE BOOK 2).  God only knows where I've downloaded it from, but if I'd stumbled over it towards the end of last year it would have gone a long way in influencing that particular book - it certainly does a good job in illustrating the spirit of the book, that sort of pseudo-legitimised feeling, I was trying to put across.  Yeah I know the placing and ordering of today's pics is a little counter-intuitive, but the picture with the nun in it looks more exciting - and I have always loved those rear-fastening hospital examination gowns which tie with bows up the back, which is what those two pentitants' punishment or chastisement smocks remind me of!   

A Private Asylum Detainee: A Look Back to an Earlier Stage

To reiterate a reply I have just made to a reader’s comment: While it is my basic ideas which have been the inspiration for much of Angela's 3D art I’ve shown here, she then often interprets those ideas in various ways which on occasion has sent the story line down an unexpected avenue.

The current set I have been working on - THE DIRTY ROOM - is a case in point.  True, I wanted a time-worn institutional background, but the concept of a 'dirty room' intentionally left in the state it had been found when reopening the old disused Victorian asylum section, was Angela's.  And I love it - and so I've run with it, to see where it will lead. 

Today's offering Angela made for me based on changes I'd made to some of her earlier images. I have added a second padlock (at the rear of the straitjacket, cobwebs, and of course the think bubbles and all the text.  It is not my intention to showcase anything like the whole set here, as the aim is to publish the entire tale in comic book form, but a little taster now and then should signpost the way things are progressing and hence this will be the last of this particular set I shall publish. I have also changed the image (16th May) to reflect one or two subtle changes I made earlier this morning. Just click to enlarge.

I can honestly say I have never actually met Angela Fox, by the way (although I HAVE met somebody who knows her rather well!).

A Private Asylum Detainee - Latest Developments: An Update

Many apologies if you've written to me recently by email and not yet received a reply; I'm slowly but surly catching up on my emails and I'm sure I'll be getting to yours soon.

The problem has partly been various family obligations cropping up, but also because I have been burying myself to such an extent in the production of mine and Angela Fox's joint comic book project, loosely based around certain ideas originally developed within my INSTITUTIONALISED series.  As you probably know, Angela Fox originally produced a series of computer generated 3D images based around INSTITUTIONALISED Volume 3 with the idea of jointly producing an illustrated version.  That idea was stillborn for one reason or another, but I'd kept the artwork and later began annotating, adapting and adding speech bubbles, partly as a natural development which grew from the need to add a few words of explanation while publishing some of the images on Deviant Art and also my new website (Beyond The Barred Window - link available in the right hand sidebar).

More recently Angela Fox and I have again been collaborating on a whole new fresh approach, involving the production of several sets of brand new images, which I am presently working my way through, adding various embellishments, cropping and recombining, in addition to annotating and adding speech and thought bubbles and filling with text.  Some early attempts you'll have already seen in these pages, based on my adaptations of sections taken from those earlier images, but today I thought some of you might appreciate a little teaser based around a couple of Angela's more recent creations.  These are taken from the centre of a particular set and hopefully give a taste of the story direction without giving too much of the game away.  The first actually consists of sections taken from no less than three different Angela Fox originals, along with a couple of elements pinched off the web, which I have put together and to which I have then added all manner of shadow and lighting effects etc.  The second follows straight on from the first image and consists of an annotated cropped section taken from another of Angela's creations, the full sized version of which is used elsewhere in the sequence, suitably annotated.  I must say, I totally underestimated the work involved in story telling through speech bubbles!!!  But I'm having a ball - and I think Angela is too!!!  (Angela Fox also writes books and novels in her own right and a link to her work can be found over in the sidebar on the right).

Spanking Machines: Comment and Reply

In response to my previous posting on spanking machines an anonymous contributor wrote “I can imagine the girls being made to gin cotton, or shuck corn… and if their bucket did not fill up to a satisfactory weight every 10 minutes or so the spanking machine would be triggered.”  This set me to thinking… And the thing is it could have worked, and within a Victorian setting too!

Steam power distributed throughout the workroom or shed by a system of belts and pulleys from a distantly-mounted engine to run other machinery could also have been siphoned from to run the spanking devices.  A simple mechanical linkage running from a metal hopper mounted in front of each girl could then have been put to use to trigger the spanking when necessary.  And there wouldn’t even have been a need for any kind of potentially complicated timing device – not if the product of the girl’s sweat had been continually whisked away, flowing out from the base of the hopper beneath the work bench.

Simply put; if the girl’s work rate did not equal the rate of emptying or outflow of the hopper inset within the bench top, the resultant fall in weight of the material buffered within the hopper at any one time (preset by a weight balance mechanism) would have triggered the punishment, and a bell to sound.  On the other hand, should the detainee girl’s work rate have exceeded the preset outflow rate by some preset margin at any one time then the corresponding build-up of material - again detected by weight – would have caused a ratcheted trap, flap or valve mounted at the hopper’s outflow point to open up further, thus automatically resetting the girl’s work quota for the day (a consequence again associated with a bell sounding, albeit of a different pitch).  The number of the latter occurrences, noted by the overseer, could then have been used to estimate and modify the preset quota for the next day, and all those days following, from then on!

Now imagine that as a result of a single girl actually managing to exceed her (very demanding for most) quota by some preset amount all outflow rates of all hoppers were to be instantaneously increased in concert - i.e. that the hopper outflow-governing mechanisms were mechanically coupled together in some manner – so that all detainees would, from that point on, be obliged to work faster.  Then ponder for a moment on how the identity of such an over-industrious lass might have been made known to all - including her hard-pressed compatriots - by the automatic, mechanised ringing of an overhead bell at her position.  Whether driven by the misguided urge to gain favouritism with her supervisors, purely through the happenstance of having been gifted with particularly dextrous hands or through the sheer dread of the cane repeatedly slashing across her buttocks, driven by a series of cams mounted beneath her open-bottomed seat, doesn’t matter; just imagine the psychological effects on the girl concerned of having earned the ire of her fellow detainees... A deliciously teetering balance between two punitive extremes is thus established, a wearing and psychologically demanding tightrope which must be trod day after endless day!  So imagine the consequences if our unwitting or unwilling captain of industry were also to be seen to be rewarded in some way, perhaps through receiving increased rations for a few days, a temporary alleviation of the usually monotonous dietary régime through the addition of a few tasty sweetmeats or  other titbits or – god forbid – a temporary (and necessarily obvious) reduction in her own work quota at the expense of all those around her whose quotas will have been permanently raised as a result!  It is through the application of such contradictory carrot-and-stick mechanisms such as this (and others) that the astute overseers and governors of the institution might, if they really knew what they were doing, set up a conflicting mindset within the individual – psychologically isolating each within her own little imprisoning shell - while simultaneously encouraging a culture of distrust within their cadre of detainees – “divide and conquer”.       

Anyway, that’s what I think.  How about you?

By the way; anyone seen the new-look website yet?  It has been flagged up to me that the direct link from the posting was not working (thanks for that ‘The Non-Victorian Girl’! (who I sort of think of as looking a bit like ‘Abby’ out of the TV show, NCIS, for some reason!) Yup! Nested brackets, no less – strictly speaking, parentheses).  Well, I don’t know what went wrong, but it’s fixed now!