Aversion Therapy (2)

 

Aversion Therapy (1)

 

The Perils Of Beverley (1)

 

:Psychological Punishment Techniques (2): Her 18th Birthday Present Is A pair Of Special Goggles

 

Psychological Punishment And Behavioral Modification Techniques (1)

 

The Use of Leg Spreaders In Punishment Bondage

 

Careful What You Volunteer For, Honey

 

More Than One Way To Break The Heiress

 To those who have left comments and seen no response: Please accept my appolegies; Iv'e been extremely busy with certain relationship issues of late but I'll be hard at it later today

Here we see (parden the pun) how opaque lenses can be added or removed from the 'Blind Girl Goggles' for total blindness or conventional lenses to create various levels of shortsightedness and so help to develop dependency  on her 'carers'

The Kidnapped: Feeding Time (1)

 

BEFORE AND AFTER 2...FROM DEBUTANTE TO DETAINEE

 A debutante and queen of the ball, surrounded by friends and admirers....

...but that was before governess Frobisher was hired, to help curb the gir'rls excesses... Six months later Miss Frobisher had the young vivasious heiress addmitted to this place...

...Security is the tightest imaginable, discipline second to none, contact of any kind with the outside worl none existant.  Another six months have passed, those ball gowns and fancy designer clothing are a fading memory.. She is now quiet, insular and and increasingly passive

BEFORE AND AFTER...AFTER

I originaly created this by accident. It is a screen captuered still image taken from an animation I was trying to create show two, 'before and after', type images running side by side - one with the girl in her luxurious satin ball gown kneeling while being shouted at by her new governess and the second showing the same girl some months later locked away in a small private secure psychiatric institution.  The AI  mostly failed to deliver but did occasionaly come up with some interesting things

 I  think the pyjamas or nightdresses look wonderfuly drab and demoralising, dirty, and quite possibly smelly

 

Some Interesting (I'm Hoping) Imagination Fodder

 

Institutional and Domestic Discipline: An Illustrated Collaboration 3 – Further Evolution

I have to rush out today – I am off to Eastbourne on the sunny Sussex coast where my mother is enjoying a few days in a guest house. I am going to be there later today and will probably (hopefully) spend the afternoon outside a bar at the end of Eastbourne pier writing in the sun - and it is blazingly sunny here in London at the moment, so I’m quite optimistic. This evening, I hope, will find me ensconced in the Eastbourne Wetherspoons pub; come and say hello if you are an Eastbourne type, appreciate a good ale and happen to be in the vicinity. Tomorrow I may visit Brighton or Hastings. I am taking my trusty bike and hope to tour around a bit up and down the south coast, visiting Wetherspoons branches and of course writing if and when inspired – I am taking my netbook computer with me. I next expect to be back home at my desk on Tuesday 8th June (next Tuesday) but WiFi internet connections willing, I may update the blog while on the move and hopefully I will still be able to view my emails – so don’t be shy, write today.

Talking off inspiration: if you remember the piece I posted recently regarding my collaboration with the Stateside computer artist, ‘Snooze’ and the evolution of a particular illustration I demonstrated as an example of the sort of thing we have been developing you will probably be interested with this, the latest incarnation of that art work - compare and contrast with the earlier renditions posted elsewhere. There are many more scenes we are working on – some far more complex and detailed - but it would spoil the fun to give any further inkling of these – you’ll just have to wait until the new book gets finished, or more specifically, the illustrated version of it.

In the present illustration the girl has just failed a written imposition set by the section psychiatrist – a most formidable, yet exceedingly clever - woman and has had her institutional pyjama bottoms taken of her in preparation for correction. The view through the door tells the viewer that this private little prison is in fact a tiny secure anteroom leading directly off of a more conventionally furnished consultation room - the regulation hospital bed provided for the inmate with its integral restraints is behind the view and so not in evidence. The white outer door beyond the bars both provides the psychiatrist’s office with the appearance one might expect, when closed, while also increasing the hapless girl’s isolation by removing from her the stimulation of the external view and providing for a high degree of soundproofing. The thick but supple leather belt carried, doubled-over, in the hospital sister’s hand, has a special relevance to the poor girl – it is something destined to make the up-coming correction all the more intolerable for the girl once the realisation sinks in! As always - all comments, ideas and what have you, will be gratefully received - bye for now!

Institutional and Domestic Discipline: An Illustrative Collaboration 2 - Evolution of an Image

Those of you who have been following this blog over the last few weeks will now that I'm now involved in a collaboration with a digital artist or illustrator the aim being to provide an illustrated version of the new volume (see Institutional and Domestic Discipline: An Illustrative Collaboration, Wednesday, 28 April 2010 - just click to view). I was just thinking the other day that some of you may be interested as to how things were progressing on the illustration front so I thought I would put together an example of the evolution of such an illustration. Of course you will understand that this particular piece of art work is presently very much a work in progress but it should be sufficient for you to get the idea without giving too much away as regards the storyline. In the context of the latter, one thing I can tell you - so as to set the scene without providing too much of a spoiler (I hope) is that one of our three hapless heroines, having now come under the personal care of an institution’s somewhat domineering section psychiatrist - a rather overbearing woman with questionable ethics and even more questionable aims - finds herself incarcerated in a claustrophobic, secure and isolated little cell-like anteroom leading directly off from the good doctor’s consultation room, dressed 24/7 in institutional green striped pyjamas, denied any human contact other than with the doctor herself and subject to stringent discipline and corporal punishment for the slightest fault.

Generally speaking I have been restricting myself to writing the text and generating ideas (although of course ideas flow both ways thus nurturing yet more branches and avenues to explore). In the development of this particular image, my collaborator has sent me the three-dimensional artwork shown in the first couple of examples but then I've taken the liberty of attempting to change the background colour to better fit the narrative - which to be honest I cocked up to some extent, obliging me to digitally repair the kneeling nurses hairdo (badly) - and added in the girl’s room’s barred security door and her nemesis, Matron, approaching outside in the doctor's consultation room, purely as an experiment to see how it might add atmosphere. In the first image the girl is of course naked and unblemished, free from any evidence of prior correction. In the second and third images she has on her institutional shapeless and baggy pyjama jacket and a healthy red blush is apparent colouring her behind.

The nurse came from an old scanned catalogue illustration and is supposed to represent the stern hospital matron placed in charge of the hapless young subject. Although in this version she is carrying a cane, in the storyline it is a folded leather belt that is put to use; but I didn't have a suitable strap / belt picture to hand and has always being full of enthusiasm and having little patience I was in a hurry to try the idea out. The final version, if it indeed it is decided to go ahead and include the bars and Matron approaching from outside, will have her carrying the leather belt or strap. The idea is that the nurses outside the girl's cell in the doctors consultation room (obviously) and as she is more distant she does not have to have such a high degree of 3D-ism. In the storyline the bars of course painted white but are not too sure how well this will appear in the final image and is something I have yet to experiment with.

.....

The image of the nurse is actually a horizontally-mirrored version of the original photograph for reasons of perspective and so I first of all shifted the nurses’ fob watch in the original to her right hand side so that it would actually appear on her left in the final shot, as it should. I was especially keen to allow her belt buckle, trim around the collar and fob watch to be seen as I think these details all add to the sense of authority I intended her image to engender. In the final version, if used as a concept a freshly constructed nurse image will be used

The bars themselves came from the original version of those that I used on the book covers of INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 and INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 and I used an image shearing facility on a Linux-based image processing application called ‘The Gimp’ called to simply pull them into shape to fit the perspective of the 3-D image as judged by eye (there is also a 'perspective' tool available on ‘The Gimp’ but that doesn't seem to work so well - at least not in my hands, LOL).

I have since fed back the results of my manipulation to my collaborator who has now sent me a version re-coloured to suit the narrative but minus the mess that I made of it. This latter modification is of course based on the original art work, so next one or the other of us will add in the extra detail as in my experimental changes, such as the external view and matron outside (always assuming of course that we decide to continue down that route). Any opinions / comments will as always be gratefully received. With external nurse / bars or without? Which should it be - that sort of thing. One thing that I should point out - and that I have pointed out before - is that the institutional aspect is balanced by the domestic discipline aspect in the final work and even a little ecclesiastical discipline: It turns out that one of my characters may - or may not (depending on who you believe - and even the subject herself is uncertain as to how much is memory how much is delusion) have suffered expiation (both sexual and otherwise )and physical chastisement under the guise of ecclesiastical care in a church-run home for wayward young women. This of course came to light during the events unfolding in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 but in the new volume we learn more of her trials and tribulations and perhaps discover the truth.

News, Views and Prison-Bar Blues

Do you remember the exciting news I said I was going to share with you? Well, last week I signed an agreement with an online electronic publisher which should result in INSTITUTIONALISED volume 1 becoming available in the various ebook formats, including Kindle, iphone, ipad and the rest! In addition it is likely to become more widely distributed and therefore more visible to search engines and thus to potential readers. Regular readers of this blog will be all too familiar with my bemoaning my poor choice of title which has led to the book's existence being well nigh impervious to disclosure by way of the usual array of spanking / discipline / uniform fetish / clinical-institutional bondage and restraint - type keywords. It's far too soon to say any more, but I'll keep you posted. If all goes well, both INSTITUTIONALISED volume 2 and the new volume, when I finally get the thing finished, may well follow suite - of course depending on their suitability as judged by the publisher. As for the new volume: it's been gradually evolving from a quick, short piece - designed both to utilise previously written material that wasn't finished in time for inclusion in the first two volumes and to fill in the gaps in the story arc so as to pave the way for volume 3 – to masterwork of near epic proportions. As for the latest on volume 2: Thanks to a little help from Lulu (at last) it has now been assigned one of my block of ten ISBNs and so later today I shall be submitting it for inclusion in Google's Book Search scheme, including all the modifications I have made to it with the aim of so called ‘search engine optimisation. One proviso is that I’ll am apparently going to have to modify the back cover to include the ISBN. If I am going to do that I may take the opportunity to change the background colour to match that of the front cover and spine . I'll see how much work it is going to entail offset against what is a minor cosmetic advantage at best – it all depends on whether I still have the background available as a separate layer.

Now for some other news: I have just added a link to a guy called Doug Adams’ home page in the ‘Useful Resources’ list (see right hand side bar or click on ‘Doug Adams’ home page’, above highlighted in blue – I hope ). Look in the left hand side bar in his index page for a list of content, including articles on all sorts of fetish-related subjects, many of which have relevance - either directly or indirectly – to my present project or at least are potentially inspirational. Scroll to the bottom and you will also find a free image gallery, which again I have found inspirational.

I have also added two new blogs I came across just now while searching for more inspiration for the new volume to the blog list (situated in the right hand side bar, if you're new here). Schoolgirl Spanking Stories does exactly what it says on the tin – click on blog name to visit or check side bar.

The second, Pandora Blake's blog, is written by, and deals with, the star of many short films revolving around our favourite genre – which is my excuse to present a little promo film (moving content no less!) from those master's of the Institutional / prison punishment scene – Bars and Stripes! (See window immediately above, click on arrow to play) I have mentioned their work previously - well before my recent signing to their affiliate program – as they are one of only a few purveyors of such material that regularly feature my all time favourite scenario: The smartly uniformed nurse, ward sister or matron – all tight-belted blue polyester, cambric or cotton and starched white apron - wielding a cane or strap across the defenceless chubby backside of some young female incorrigible miscreant against the backdrop of a secure institution. Enough already – it's getting all too exciting…Bye for now – I have to go close the curtains!

Institutional and Domestic Discipline: An Illustrative Collaboration

Hands up who would like to see an illustrated version of the new volume when it appears. Over the last couple weeks or so I have been developing a collaborative project with a guy from across the pond who works with 3-D rendering - and who is on a similar wavelength, to boot - with an eye to doing just that. Actually you have met him and his work before in the blog entry dated the 17th April 2010 entitled Another Day, Another Barred Window (click to view) under the name of ‘Snoozz’. It's still early days in the creative process yet, but it's an exciting concept I'm sure you will agree - even so I thought it would be interesting to garner opinion; so let me know what you think! It is ‘Snoozz’ we have to thank for today's pictorial offering (above left). Although representing just one scene, in what is a fairly complex storyline, I feel that it really embodies that all-important sense of oppression and the feeling that here is a buried, private and secluded little world outside the reach of conventional society and beyond the control of meddling ethics committees, busybody social workers and the rest. Quite wonderful! To see more of this guy's work click here.

While on the subject of illustration: the pic on the bottom right is something I pinched from a site I am affiliated to (see bottom of page) and that I think illustrates beautifully a scene I've been working on for the new volume which harks back to an earlier period when one of our characters, prior to being brought to the clinic, had first gone to live with her aunt - a strict, overbearing ex psychiatric nurse who begins to dominate her from day one.

Actually, now that I come to think about it; an opinion poll is something I have yet to do. I've never really been that excited about the idea, simply because there have been so many others carried out in the past on the various other websites, blogs and forums etc that populate the spanking world. Nevertheless it would be interesting to know, for example, which implements my readership prefer to imagine used, what types of scenario are favoured or which fetishes people think might work within the story arc of the series or would like to see included in some manner. At the end of the day this blog has never been entirely about spanking nor is it purely about BDSM in the conventional sense. With that in mind, perhaps a poll or questionnaire could work, if it were presented in a new non-stereotypical way and the questions were structured in such a way as to reflect both the spirit of the books and gain inspiration while stimulating the imagination of the participants.

Towards the end of last week I managed to acquire a chest infection - well to make matters worse while away this past weekend it developed into some sort of full-blown chest complaint, making it difficult to breathe. I have asthma and to be honest it is quite common for a simple cold to develop into a breathing problem - sometimes a sneeze will set off on asthma attack; which is fine if I have an inhaler to hand, which quickly sorts it out. On other occasions - and this looks to be one of them - a secondary infection sets in a whole thing becomes problematic until I can get my hands on some antibiotics. Those of you who regularly followed my ramblings will already know that I rely to a great extent on voice recognition software to dictate my work into the computer as I am as dyslexic as hell, easily distracted and incredibly slow at typing (not in any particular order of importance). Well, in addition to making me nauseous, I'm sure you can imagine how fits of uncontrollable coughing not to mention a blocked nose and wheezing can play havoc with voice dictation software - all sorts of gobbledygook results unless I quickly turn off microphone. To make matters worse the wheezing and blocked nose, together, seem to have affected the character of my voice so that more than ever this perverse little software package seems to be deliberately working against me - and I've often thought that it deliberately misunderstands me in any case… this computer hates me, I am sure of it! Bye for now!

Some Pyjama Musings, a New Album & More Paula Meadows Artworks Added

Hi folks! It's a wonderfully sunny day here in London and despite feeling a little worse for wear, having spent the majority of yesterday afternoon and evening in the pub, nevertheless I am in high spirits. At the weekend I attended an antiques fair in Bushy, a little town in Hertfordshire just to the north-west of London where of all things I purchased an old Ponting's holiday camp brochure dating from 1975, partly for its nostalgia value but also with one eye to the provision of blog content. I had intended to put aside a little time today to get on with some scanning in any case and the fruit of my labours as regards the aforementioned purchase can be viewed in a PicassaWeb album that I have created specifically for it under the general banner of Women's Nylon Overalls and Uniforms Catalogue Scans and imaginatively entitled 'Pontins Girls'. To be truthful some of the pictures were rather small and could do with enhancing but are interesting nevertheless, if nothing else than for the observation of how surprisingly like nurses uniforms some of the restaurant-staff serving uniforms are. There are couple of actual nurses pictured as well, one of which - a woman dressed in what appears to be a navy-blue hospital sister's uniform - quite readily evokes the image I have in my mind of the woman under whose cane the delectably chubby bottoms of young Lavinia and Susan dance in my first two volumes. While it was at it, I also added 14 more pictures to the 'Art by Lynn Paula Russell' (Paula Meadows, as was) album, listed under 'Spanking Artwork Albums'. I can't guarantee that there are no duplicates but I have done my best to check. Both of these albums may be found under the relevant headings in the right-hand sidebar.

The other reason I'm in such a good mood today is that the writing of the new volume has been coming along swimmingly now that I am finally free of niggling computer problems (touch wood!). Of course new ideas and plot directions necessarily leads to further research, which in itself often turns up little gems of inspiration that in turn can redirects and further inform the story arc.

One of the pieces I been working on recently revolves around a girl undergoing a series of interviews involving batteries of psychological tests and assessments and in-depth questioning that more rightly might be described as interrogation. No longer a guest of the institution of her own volition, she finds the goalposts have now moved somewhat. She can no longer harbour any hope of being able to just walk away from the place, nor can she necessarily rely on those on the outside that know of her whereabouts intervening, few that they might be - indeed it seems that one or more parties have a vested interest in her remaining just where she is. And despite having now become officially, on paper at least, an actual in-patient rather than a volunteer behavioural research candidate, she is still very much embedded in the experiment, living eating and sleeping in the narrow confines of a self-contained sealed off section of the behavioural research unit initially set up on grounds approximating to a rather strict old-fashioned girl’s boarding school but having now morphed into something closer to a Victorian reformatory.

Obviously the girl realises that the only person that is going to get her out is herself and that the only way she can achieve that is ironically by going along docilely with the regime. She knows that her ‘case’ will be reviewed and that at that time she will have the opportunity to convince a panel of independent doctors of her suitability for release back into society. The trouble is, she knows too that her ‘case’ is not scheduled for review for nearly two years and that even then, should the reports received by the panel in the meantime not warrant it, she might not be invited to physically attend her own hearing. If she should give the staff sufficient cause to write ill of her, she could easily find her review date put off for another year or even longer - and even then she might not get the chance to speak for herself, not unless medical reports regarding her psychological state warranted it.

She also knows she has only herself to blame: Presented with what apparently was the perfect opportunity to blow the whistle, be free of the place and, she thought, potentially claim substantial damages in recompense for her ill treatment she had been naïve enough to blurt out the whole story. Only later did it occur to her how absurd her allegations would appear, out of context and in the absence of concrete evidence - especially when contradicted by a renown and well respected authority. It was hardly surprising that a swift provisional diagnosis of delusion was agreed upon. After all, who would take seriously a tale of a behavioural research unit buried deep within the bowels of a world renown private sanatorium’s secure psychiatric wing wherein young women were routinely incarcerated in prison-like cells and made to work in a sweatshop or - even more absurdly, surely – kept in an environment approximating to the strictest of convent boarding schools, subject corporal punishment and dressed in the most restrictive, juvenile, anachronistic and humiliating school uniform one could imagine?

Now she has to be careful; she is well aware that her every move is being scrutinised in the tiniest detail and report cards duly made out. If she rebels, then that could be held up as evidence of ‘behavioural disturbance’ – not to mention earning her a good few strokes of the matron’s supple cane across her bared bottom. If she submits, on the other hand, she risks becoming as subjugated and institutionalised as the other girls around her, the other ‘long-term subjects’ that she has in the past secretly despised for their ‘weakness’. Therein lays her quandary. But there is worse, in that the section psychiatrist seems to have taken it on her self to thoroughly investigate the girl’s case to her own satisfaction. The woman seems anything but impartial, digging deep into the girl’s background, and apparently determined to extract any and every morsel that might conceivably be evident of the diagnosis. Our tender heroine is summoned to the doctor’s office each and every day; the tedium of the schoolroom swapped for anything from one to four hours for the equally tedious process of incessant and repetitive questioning and probing, much of it on a highly personal level. Given the potential consequences the girl is of course guarded, but halve-truths and fabrications are daily being teased from the rest and absolute refusal to cooperate is not an option - the woman keeps a supple length of rattan by her desk and has no qualms about employing it.

So now we get to the point that has had me hunting about the ‘web’. It seems to me that the good doctor might consider the girl being removed from and returned to the schoolroom each day as being too disruptive. There is a small windowless anteroom, little more than a large walk-in cupboard, leading directly off from her office and equipped with a hospital bed and the idea occurs that she might remove the girl from the usual day-to-day hub-bub of the unit for the foreseeable future, at least until she is satisfied with the outcome. That room and the doctor’s office is going to be the limit of the girl’s universe from now on and given that she is not going to be mixing with the other ‘schoolroom section’ inmates I thought it likely that the school uniform would for the time being no longer be a part of her wardrobe. But how should she be attired? The thought struck me that pyjamas could be the solution, backed up on occasion by the addition of a straight jacket. What could be more apt or make the girl feel more like a mental patient than baggy, ill-fitting institutional flanelete pyjamas in a wide green and white striped pattern. In this scenario I imagine her as becoming the doctor’s own private prisoner, a sort of pet project that the woman can work on at her own convenience. I can envisage the girl being led in front of the psychiatrist’s desk, obliged to hold up her pyjama bottoms with her hands to prevent their slipping down, her wrists linked by cuffs and her ankles hobbled in restraints – how demoralising!

With all that in mind I have been looking around for a little ‘girl-spanked-in-pyjamas’ type inspiration. And as always, Google came up trumps a s witnessed by this little collection and a few links that I will share with you shortly.

Before I go I have to say how surprised – and delighted - I have been by the amount of response generated by my last posting. While quite obviously (well at least I think it obvious) this blog has little to do with cross-dressing and TG nevertheless I am sure that the link to Fictionmania kindly provided by ‘Anonymous’ (he gets every where, this ‘Anonymous’ chap) will be of interest to many, thus I have added it to the ‘Useful Resources’ listing in the right-hand sidebar. Another (I assume) Mr ‘Anonymous’ seemed able to read my mind when, referring to the gym suit idea, he suggested a lining of satin and mentioned PVC – I had just written a bare-bones description involving satin-lined serge with an integral rubber layer. I am going to be taking his advice, though, and investigate the possibilities inherent in 1960s and 70s designs before committing myself to one design or another.

The Demise of a Well Loved Machine?

What a crap day it has been so far today. Towards the end of last week I had reason again to visit 'the coast', which, together with gym sessions and driving lessons (car driving – yes, at my age I have yet to learn to drive), pretty much swallowed up my time. This morning, though, for the first time in ages I awoke at home (my home) – and with the day ahead totally free. Not only that but I both awoke at a reasonable time and fired-up with a burning enthusiasm to get on with writing - You may remember that recently I told you how I had come up with some interesting ideas, well now they have had time to ferment! So, picture the scene; I am sitting in front of my dual-screen work setup, microphone poised at my lips (I use voice recognition and dictation) and hands quivering in anticipation hovering over the key board. The computer boots up (takes just a few seconds – it uses two 10,000 RPM Raptors configured in RAID zero, for the technically-minded) and I duly log on to my account. Google pops up, my work folder opens, the voice recognition stuff loads and I lean back with my mug of tea, reading through my emails – all is as expected, all is right with the world and I am raring to go. But what is this? What is this strangely-pungent smell, somewhere between toilet disinfectant and singed hair? Having checked my barnet (Barnet fair – hair, get it?) and found it free of evidence of indigenous slash and burn agricultural activity and having felt an ominous tinge of familiarity tickling the back of my mind, I lean forward, tentatively sniffing at the keyboard, mouse and their environs...Yes...My suspicions are confirmed. The worrying fragrance is stronger here – actually it is becoming stronger throughout the room, almost eye-watering in fact – but it is definitely stronger here. Now that I come to think about it, I know that smell from somewhere – from the days I worked as an electronic engineer – it is the odor of stressed-out electronic componentry giving up the ghost...But this is a veritable funeral pyre!...And it is coming from the rear of the computer desk – I can see the smoke now!!! I reach for the off button but the reaper beats me to it – the screens go blank, the fans fall silent, the hard drives run down and brain-death is declared. For a few dumbfounded moments there is silence, then....Bang!!! A loud metallic concussion issues from the computer's backside – these things can happen to us all at the moment of our demise I understand.

To cut a long story short; upon undertaking the necessary postmortem examination I found encouragement in the observation that the odor of decay was strongest around the region of the heart (power supply). Upon opening up said organ I was further gladdened to find evidence of blackening and a splattering of the contents of one of the electrolytic capacitors. This is not to say that the patient is retrievable of course; the chances of resurrection depend a lot upon the strength of its immune system, ie whether or not the motherboard's over-voltage, chip set overheating, CPU over-temperature detection and shutdown measures stepped in fast enough. In the absence of visual evidence, the only way to find out for sure is by substitution. Accordingly I have just purchased what I believe to be a correctly tissue-matched transplant replacement.

Despite this drawback, I am determined not to let my enthusiasm become too dampened. To that end I have decided to do a little work on my notebook machine in a local coffee bar before returning, so that at least I have got something done toward getting the new volume out. Meanwhile the project I have been trying to get underway to scan and share my spanking / discipline magazine and book collection (and other related collections) has once again been delayed as has anything else requiring scanning / printing. To top it all, I have quite a lot of stuff on the main machine that is not backed up (and that is despite my forever harking on to anybody within earshot of the need to always back things up). Saying that, all work to do with my books has been backed up on DVDs or resides on more than one machine, other than the work I recently did on the cover art for the new book, but that was only tentatively trying out a few ideas and amounted to just a couple of hours work at most. There is quite a lot of downloaded research, source materials and pictures on the hard drives, though, that has not been backed up. As the drives are RAID zero and the data shared between them, this means that if the motherboard is indeed kaput, then retrieving all that stuff will have to wait for me to put together what amounts to a new machine. Meanwhile, for the chap who requested pictures of women carrying or using the tawse and for all those that appreciate the image of the strict nurse / governess figure, here are a few pics originating from our sponsors (ho, ho!) (see bottom of page or right sidebar) Sorry they are so small but they are just thumbnails that I have pinched off of one of their email newsletters. Ordinarily I would re-size / enhance them for your further delectation, but...Well you know the problem...Actually the last one is from elsewhere (though I'm not so sure from exactly where - it was sent to me) and not so small - think of it as a bonus. Cheers and beers!