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!  

Brighton Shock

It was the early nineteen-sixties, and the world seemed on some sort of cusp.  In some ways it was still a time of innocence and modesty.  In other ways it was the start of the modern era, the first of the supermarkets just beginning to creep on to the high street, even in the more rural regions of the country.  Perhaps that was it more than anything else, the way the shape of the high street seemed to change overnight, or at least the shape of the shop fronts.  There were modern flat-fronted shop windows appearing everywhere and the papers crowed on about the space-race and 'The Bomb' but there was also still the cry of the rag and bone man and the coal still came on the back of a horse-drawn wagon in huge black sacks.

Man was working towards a quest for the moon, while in the distance on a hot summer's night with the windows open one could still hear the rushing sound of engines letting off steam over on the railway.  There were nuclear power stations and there were gas lamps still visible in the local family-owned department store, strange glass amber and white affaires like upside-down sombreros with a pair of rust-coloured chains dangling, one each side, apparently provided to adjust the light.  There was television in practically every home and telephones in many, even if only on a shared 'party line', but likely a coal fire burning in the grate ignited on the crumpled remains of the previous night's news and a network of sticks.

Jet airliners had begun to roar overhead but still infrequently enough to prompt the inquisitive child to query “what  is wrong with that 'planes engines, mum?” while closer to home smog still ruled the early morning winter streets, the dense smoke-grey mist turned amber by the sodium streetlamps keeping that same child from school lest his asthmatic lungs should pay the price.   The British Motor Corporation' s mini car was already swamping the tarmac but In the shop windows that other 'mini' had yet to grace the manikins, Playtex were only just beginning to promise that '18 hours of comfort' while the hangover from Dior's new look of 1947 could still be seen everywhere young women were employed to serve the public.  Stockings were still de rigueur while in the workplace manmade fibres ruled the roost. Hardy Amies was designing for Sainsburys using nylon for staff dresses, despite the fact that cheese, ham, butter and any other fat-based grocery product of the ilk would 'dissolve' in to the fabric causing permanent staining, and the women and young girls in Marks and Spencer’s wore charmingly sweaty powder blue dresses in 'Bri-Nylon' with dark blue buttons down the front and tight blue plastic belts threaded through the belt loops.  There was even a gold metallic broach that came with the outfit with the letters 'M' and 'S' entwined with the ampersand '&' in a sort of monogram arrangement  which one day - in a dyslexic manner, in a particularly dyslexic brain -  would come to mean something different entirely.  

Or so I wrote recently in the opening section of the new book I'm working on.  You may also recall I'm still hanging around in Brighton on the Angle-land south coast.  And if you're really paying attention you may know I have taken a shine to a certain blue-streaked blond-haired barmaid in the Brighton North Street Wetherspoons (it's a pub chain here in the UK, you non-believers).  Well she's pierced in all sorts of places, a ring through the lip, another through the nose – you get the picture?  It's not my scene, all that piercing malarkey, but the folksy country accent sort of is... Hmmm... what's that all about?  Who knows?

Anyway, I digress (don't I always) the thing is (and I don't expect you to believe this, not the later bit anyway)  is that down here in Brighton a couple of years ago I developed something of a shine for a young thing that could almost be this barmaid's twin – right down to the blue-streaked blond locks, the piercings, everything...  She owned a vintage clothing / bric-a-brac shop and had done since it was a start-up business she'd created on leaving school so she was a smite younger than one would have thought for a young business women.  Oh God, I digress again... I originally went in – as I remember it  - because she had a box of vinyl on the counter and I was looking for a synthesiser thing by one Walter Carlos.

I'm digressing yet again, but that's hardly surprising considering the turn of events (which you'll understand in a moment – but I really don't expect you to believe).   How to put this?   How best to put this across?  Well, remember my recollection outlined above – about the Marks and Spencer’s shop assistant uniforms?   Perhaps that's not the best place to start... Hmmm?  Ok!  Look, I walked in to that same shop this morning, some two years or so on from the last time.  From the outside it looked the same – the same  sort of stuff in the window, bakelite 'phones, old radios, a couple of ferns for decoration, a manikin in a fitted floral dress, that sort of thing, even the seventies-style script flowing across the window in gold paint and repeated on the cornflower-blue board above.  It was on the Inside where the shock was lurking.  Ok, so the shop assistant had changed – the new proprietor as it turned out.  The girl now behind the counter was a tall angular-featured mop-headed  thing in navy blue trousers and a waistcoat and with more than a hint of masculinity to the cut of her jib.  The previous assistant, in addition to all the piercings and blue streaks and stuff, had been little, fluffy and feminine  and perhaps just a little... well, tubby, to be honest.   But she had had this subtly submissive thing going on, and that I guess I had picked up on.

This new one, though, was very different; this one was quite frankly, aggressive, a bit of a dyke, the archetypal Brighton dungaree-wearing lesbo you could say – and you wouldn't be far wrong!  Well, ownership changes and shops change hands – and in this day and age that shouldn't be so much of a surprise; the real surprise these days is actually the enterprise having survived at all, in any form.  So, ok, that was a surprise in itself, that the business was still there and hadn't succumbed to having changed into a charity shop.  But imagine my shock at spotting my petite yet now not so tubby would-be-squeeze out back.  Well, obviously that wasn't the shock since at that moment I had no idea that the business might have changed hands, so why shouldn't she be out back with dustpan and brush cleaning the lino?  

But surely she'd have the employee out there dealing with that sort of menial task?  You'd think so, but as I say, it was the other one who was now the proprietor.  But that still isn't the shock – and you couldn't make it up – as I said, it was a vintage shop and God only knows how they came about gathering half their stock but... they'd got their hands on one of those 1960s Marks and Spencer’s staff uniform dresses... and that was what the girl had on - and through some miracle it fitted to perfection, tight blue plastic belt and all!

But as I said, she had changed, and not just in stature.  The shoulder-length straggly blond hair randomly streaked in light blue had become a neat, short brown side-parted boyish job that was largely covered by a light blue nylon head scarf, clearly chosen to match the dress.  The piercings were gone, or at least the silver rings that had adorned them.  A waist apron had been added – nothing to do with the original Marks and Spencer’s uniform but of the right shade of blue – and what at first sight was the original metal 'M & S' broach was pinned on the breast pocket.  On closer inspection the latter turned out to actually spell out the new proprietor’s name, but in the style of the original company monogram.      The latter detail was clearly intended to put the finishing touch on what was obviously intended to be the spur of the younger girl and ex-proprietor’s humiliation.  The only detail that detracted from being transported straight back to some half-forgotten childhood memory was that the original knee-length skirt (calf-length? I can't remember) had been shortened to some point, which while longer than the mid-thigh of common fantasy, was certainly way above the knee.  The skirt was flared more than I recall also, but I think by the inclusion of a petticoat or slip worn beneath and while I have no idea what footwear M & S employees wore in the 'sixties  my nylon clad shop assistant was teetering around on a pair of powder-blue high heels that were clearly 'difficult' and a perfect match for the dress – so God only knows where they had come from!

I had been trolling through yet another box of old vinyl disks and trying not to look, but obviously not that well for at least two reasons:

One:  The sheer level of detail I managed to pick up on.

Two:  The fact that having plucked out a copy of Walter Carlos' 'Well Tempered Synthesiser'  (an album I have been looking for years, incidentally)  the tall lean masculine-looking one took clear pleasure in summoning her chum from the rear room to serve me, tossing her tousled head and miming some problem she was apparently having with the cash register...  And then... get this – and its no word of a lie... indicating the younger girl in the vintage faux Marks and Spencer’s staff uniform (who incidentally was blushing royally – and God, how much do I love that?) she suddenly said: “...and do you like the staff uniform?”

Perhaps if I hadn't had a beer or two I'd have nodded and said little – perhaps most would!  As it was, though,  I blurted out everything I knew about the origin of the dress – to the very obvious delight of the taller, butch-looking woman and the equally obvious chagrin of the girl wearing the dress.  I also recounted something of my memories of having  been in the shop some years previously and of the girl's appearance at that time and how it had now changed – meaning the hair and the piercings rather than the apron and headscarf and the rest.  Before I knew it I found myself discussing the girl with the woman as if she wasn't there (the girl that is, not the tall butch woman – I'm not loosing my marbles; I hope!).  Angela, as it turned out the previous proprietor was called was despatched to “finish cleaning the stockroom!”  I was treated to the comment, as 'Angela'  scuttled away, regarding the hair and piercings of:  “...of course, I wouldn’t stand for it – I'm not having anyone working in MY shop looking like a freak!”

I mentioned the uniform again and my childhood memories of Marks and Spencer’s  and my surprise at seeing one of those dresses again and in an unnecessarily (I thought) loud voice (Australian, for what it's worth)  she announced that 'Angela'   “...wears what ever I damn well tell her to - and that's her uniform and that's all she wears nowadays!”  Then glancing out the back door to where 'Angela' was busy sweeping in her dress and apron she called out  “...and there's no more pubs and clubs now I'm in charge, is there, hun!”  Then looking back at me she said:  “...but who'd want to go out dressed like that?”  and then laughed.  As I said; you couldn't make it up – and I haven't... honest... but it's the sort of stuff that i would!  And now I don't have to!

And Another Thing

At the summit of the steps a landing decorated in mosaic vines leaves and bunches of grapes sheltered under the anonymity of a porch awning supported by mock Doric pillars made of Portland stone in common with the façade in general.  But then that was the norm for this curved terrace of fine upstanding houses.  

The road was not actually called a crescent - in that it did not actually include the word ‘crescent’ within its name – but a crescent it surely was, by any description.  Indeed, in some ways there was little to distinguish this house from any other of the multi-story Georgian or early Regency townhouses that went to make up the crescent, other than this particular house possessed what amounted to an extra story.  This addition was a later afterthought that would not have seen light of day had it been mooted in the modern era of ‘conservation areas’ and ‘listed buildings’ and planning committees.  

As it was, the line of three wood-surround dormer windows extending out from the sloping grey slate roof had been an ill advised late-ninetieth centaury addition.  And even then, back in that era, more than one palm had had to be greased with silver, or so the story went.  The age-darkened iron bars covering the front of each must have looked every bit as incongruous then as they did in the present and surely had never been as obviously justifiable as those covering the basement level windows.  But if questions had ever been raised, then those misgivings too had presumably been eased in a similar manner, for that jail-house style adaptation had clearly survived all criticism to that very day.  

Once upon a time, perhaps fifty or sixty years previously, a pretty snub-nosed worried little face might have momentarily appeared at one of those windows, ghostly pale, her sun-starved complexion like porridge, the flounced white pinafore over the sailor-suit style school dress at odds with her teenaged years.  Maybe she would have glanced urgently about with nervous watery blue eyes, her pig-tailed head twisting this way and that as if desperate to take in as much detail as possible of the world beyond, perhaps committing to memory the broad-leafed London Plane trees, the orange-grey scudding clouds, the smoke from the earthenware chimneypots, the cluster of pigeons foraging around the granite kerbside and the gutter and all the rest most would take for granted, if not disregard.  

Perhaps a gaunt thin-lipped face would have appeared behind her from the shadows topped by a no-nonsense bun and riding above the stiff white collar of a dense black heavyweight satin dress, a silver fob watch pined glinting to the breast.  A thin yet firm hand emerging from a tight-buttoned starched white cuff might well have appeared on the sad-faced waif’s shoulder, meaning to turn her about.  And perhaps, just perhaps - if the window, opening inwards, happened to be ajar – two sets of slender white-knuckled fingers might have momentarily tightened around two of those vertical, blackened, iron bars, transiently resisting being turned away, before surrendering to the weight of the uniformed woman’s authority as much as to her physical strength.   

Then, if the window had indeed been left ajar, after a justifiable pause there might have wafted from up there along the roofline the sounds of sharp-tongued scolding – and of soft-spoken crest-fallen apology.  Then maybe there would have come the scraping of a chair and the squeaking opening of a particularly stiff drawer, then perhaps a series of hissing, swooping and swishing sounds - culminating in one terminating in an almighty sharp crack like a showman’s whip or a starting pistol going off… and a girl’s high-pitched scream.   Then another… and another… and another… A never – ending sequence of nerve-stretching angst spaced out perhaps five seconds apart.  

Then the window might have been slammed shut.  But it might well have been that the words and intentions would still have reached the outside, if all were quiet enough:  

“If the street out there is too distracting for you to concentrate, we’ll just have to do something about it.  We’ll have the shutters closed from now on, and a nice big heavy padlock to make sure you don’t fiddle with them – and we’ll have the curtains pulled across I think; it’s bright enough in here for you with the gaslight on.” 

What could a girl of Alison’s age and background know of such ghosts and memories - or any others living thereabouts - now that so much time had passed?  After all, such goings-on were hardly likely to have been documented - and all there was to show for such conjecture now was the glassy blank black empty look given those high attic windows by the fact that behind those panes, very solid, very heavy, hinged shutters were to this day padlocked across.