Back from Spain

Hi! It’s been a little while I know but I’m back! And I’m full of new ideas, though most will have to go on the back burner for the time being while I put the finishing touches to the book. One idea that won’t have to wait too long though is an entire new subsection to be added to the blog list in the sidebar – of which more next time.

As regards my last posting, way back on Tuesday 19th of April, an anonymous contributor has commented on the punishment of a girl’s hands that is touched upon in the extract I presented then. Well, I have tried to include a little variation into the depictions of the corporal punishment aspects of the tale this time around in the new volume. I have not neglected, though, the inclusion of a modicum of imaginative (I hope) psychological torment and punishment and subtle (and not so subtle) coercion. After all; we need some sort of plausible explanation of how a late teen might be placed back in school uniform and be found on a warm summer’s afternoon crammed into a cramped school desk in a stuffy attic room fastidiously copying out lines from a blackboard in her finest copperplate hand or another might be found in a tortuously quiet ‘seclusion room’ situated in the behavioural psychology research unit of a private mental hospital, the cane lines throbbing across her behind her only company.

Even on holiday the imagination never lets up on me. While in Spain I photographed a (perfectly innocent) iron cage-like structure encasing the shuttered window of an old house. It is a common enough sight around the Marbella / Costa del Sol area and barely noteworthy to most I imagine, but in me a thousand fantasy-born scenarios open up (well, perhaps not a thousand). For instance in my minds eye I see the shutters drawn back and white knuckled hands gripping the bars, the pretty yet pale sun-denied face staring out beseechingly framed by blond curls tied in ribbons and atop the tight stiff shirt-like collar of a severe button-through green and white striped dress, perhaps some sort of identifying crest on its breast pocket. Behind, hidden in the shadows there is a female figure, a glimpse of a nurse’s starched apron, the momentary glint of a polished filigree belt buckle and the yellow flash of a length of rattan illuminated in a stray beam of sunlight. Or perhaps the young lady is in her pyjamas, despite it being mid-afternoon, the light catching and reflecting off the glassy transparent plastic buttons of an institutionally ugly and ill fitting striped flannelette garment such an attractive girl would never be seen dead in.

Well, as I say I couldn’t resist the shot, which I’ll show you in a couple of days or so, and I hope to try use it at some later date as a basis for a little artwork aimed at recreating some part of my mental processes.

Talking of oblique ambiguous yet imagination-stimulating imagery: An anonymous character sent me this thought-provoking pic (top) just before I went to Spain. I had hoped to share it with you while I was away but couldn’t find a WiFi hotspot where I was staying – not a free one at any rate. It’s what it doesn’t say that says so much. The second pic has been around on my hard drive for ages and I just couldn’t resist it – not sure if it is one of our good friend, Snooze’s, or not? As for my trip to Espana: It was a hoot... not! Although it did get much better later. We left a sunny and warmer-than-average Gatwick in the UK only to emerge under a dull grey and damp Spanish sky (chilly too!!!). Then after several (cold) showers, a couple of days later there came a thunderstorm and a deluge worthy of the film 'The Day After Tomorrow' or some such worthy and 'environmentally aware' film. Then came sunny spells and finally a couple of days or so of blue skys and sunburn.