Heaven

"Heaven, I'm in Heaven
When your hand beats so that I can hardly speak.
And I seem to find the happiness I seek
When we're out together spanking hand to cheek."

Today's song was brought to you by the letter S and then number 6.
And a combination of one very relaxed Eliane, some alcohol, a quiet(ish) street, and some lamposts to dance around.
The lesson I learnt was this: relaxing then drinking is a Bad Idea.

Spa Naughtiness

I'm off to the spa today with friends. Kinky friends. Now, I like my spa, and I'd like to continue being a member, but there are multiple ways that one could get one's membership revoked. So these are the things I won't be doing*:

• Using one of the particularly strong and well positioned jets in the jacuzzi to bring myself off.
• Leaving someone on guard outside the steam room while I get spanked in there.
• Sneaking into the boys sauna to do naughty things.
• Singing rude songs with my friends in the girls changing rooms.
• Being bent over the sun loungers for a spanking.
• Sneaking off into the gardens for a switching.
• Figuring out whether it's actually possible to remove ones bikini bottoms in the jacuzzi without being seen.
• Breaking off a piece of bamboo cane and threatening to use it on my friends.
  
  What other activities do you reckon could get me ejected?

* I may be telling a slight lie here, with regard to at least one of these!

A Welcome Return

I was sitting at my desk at work this week, actually *doing* some work. The two are not always guaranteed to be happening at the same time, you realise. Anyway, there I was, minding my own business, when all of a sudden I was overwhelmed by this burning desire to be spanked. Right there, right then. I've not had that feeling for quite a few weeks now, and I was so happy to experience it that I ran off to the toilets to do a happy dance. In a cubicle, you understand. I don't want my colleagues to think that I'm completely insane. (Though in all fairness they already DO think that!)
Having that feeling return was a big step for me. For the first year or so of my spanking journey it was a constant friend. I wasn't thinking "I need to be spanked NOW" every minute of the day, but often I would get that gut-churning longing and desire three or four times a week. To go from that to nothing was hard. The longing can be frustrating and tiresome, especially when you have no play lined up, but for me it's a sign that everything is functioning as it should be, kink wise. When it's not there for a while, you can't necessarily put your finger on what is missing, but you know that something is off kilter in your life.
So having that sudden longing return last week was a great feeling. I was overjoyed. It would have been nice if it had stayed for more than a few minutes, mind you, or popped in to say hi again in the week since it came back, but I will be happy about any and all cravings I have at the moment, no matter how fleeting!

Thar She Blows

No, not like that! What I'm referring to is the explosion that's bound to happen in my vicinity at some point in the next few weeks. Work is stressful, outside work is stressful, and I can feel this little volcano building up inside me that may well be going to blow at some point. An interesting side effect is that my capacity for mischief seems to be growing by the minute. Most of it destined for Lowewood in a few weeks. Of course, I'm not going to reveal my plottings here. I have been informed by the man himself that "Mr S has eyes everywhere Jemima", so I will keep schtum for now, for the good of my health.
This need for mischief poses an interesting problem for me. As I wrote about in my post on Saturday, I understand the consequences of misbehaving at Lowewood. I will get whacked. End of story. That in itself is not the problem. The problem is that I'm still not quite sure where I stand with regards to spanking at the moment. I've lost that horrible fear I had for a couple of weeks, and I've even had a couple of cravings. The fact of the matter is though that the way things are panning out at the moment, I won't have been spanked, apart from some gentle play at Nimhneach, for weeks. I actually I have no idea what I will be able to take at Lowewood, but I'm fairly sure it won't be the equivalent of what I'm going to earn if I carry out all my little plots. I do have the option of behaving, and not getting into trouble, but I think I've reached the stage where I do just need to let off some steam, or else the volcano really will explode.

Gah. The dilemma. Let off steam, pay the price, maybe have trouble coping with paying the price, OR, not let off steam, and well, who knows. I'm going to a spa for a day next weekend. Maybe that will help relax me and there won't be so much steam!

Competetive Subbing

There's been various posts on the subject of competitive subbing. by Jessica, EmmaJane and Graham among others. When I was first having a discussion about this with Jessica, I commented that I would ever "competitive sub" in that I would never look down on someone who wasn't "taking enough" in a scene.

This holds true, but I do my own particular brand of competitive subbing. With myself. I don't try and take more than anyone else (because I know I'll fail!) I don't even try and take things particularly stoically, if I'm not in the mood to. What I do try and do, though, is to compete with myself, If I take less than I have done previously, or don't take it as well as last time, I get very cross with myself. I berate myself for being a wimp, pathetic, and all manner of other things. Which is silly really, as so much affects how hard you can play each time that you should just take it for what it is and not beat yourself up if it didn't live up to the last time.

Easy in words. Not so easy in practice.

Limits and Consequences

Jemima has been plotting mischief this week. It's back to school time soon and one can't go back to school without having the odd joke or two lined up. So my brain has been working overtime. I delight in causing nice mischief nowadays, it's so much fun, but I've been wondering why I never, ever missed behaved in school. I think I've mentioned before quite how sickeningly good I was, and I think it was all to do with consequences. I suppose I was never really sure if I misbehaved at school as a child what the consequence would be. It would never have been physical, of course, but would I have got into trouble? Had detention? Been suspended? Or worst of all, would I have disappointed people? Would they have stopped liking me? Rejected me? All too horrible to contemplate for my childhood self. Nowadays, at Lowewood, things are a little simpler for Jemima. She understands the consequences. If she misbehaves, she gets whacked. Simple as that. Nobody is going to like her less, or reject her for making mischief. Of course, I'm not condoning CP for kids at all, it's just wrong. It would have terrified me as a child, but now, for me as Jemima, it liberates and allows me to release that naughty side without fear of "letting people down". I know where the line is, and I know the consequences of crossing it and that can make life lots of fun if I choose to step over the line!

Why We Have It Easy

It sometimes doesn't seem easy to be a submissive/bottom woman (I still have an issue with using the word submissive for myself, but let's assume for the purposes of this discussion that when I say per se, I don't mean submissive per se ;-) ).

Anyway, having wandered off the point, let's get back to it. It often seems hard to be a submissive woman, especially if you're looking for your Mr Kinky Right. When you fish in a small pool in the first place, it reduces the number of fish in there. On the other hand, if you're looking for play, it's not quite so hard. *Quality* play might be another thing altogether, mind you, but there's always people willing to play with you out there. And if you're new on various websites and obviously sub and female, it might feel like there's hundreds of them!

So yeah, life isn't easy for us, but if you're willing to make compromises, you can generally get to have some fun.

Think how much harder life must be if you're a male dom, or a submissive guy looking for play. There always seems to be more dom men than sub women, and we (as women) can therefore be picky, at least to a certain extent, about who we play with. After all as subs we have to put our safety first, so if you creep us out at all, we'll be off, checking out the next prospect.

Even harder still, must be the life of a sub man. There are many fewer dommes out there, and it seems to be a seller's market. I think that Pro-Dommes comprise the biggest part of the "pay for service" market. If you're a guy wanting to be spanked by a woman, you're only option may well be to pay for it, from what I can see. On the other hand, I'm not even sure there's any M/f professional Doms out there.

My message, after all this rambling, is as follows: if you're a sub woman feeling a bit down about life, the scene, and your lot, think on this. It could be worse. You could be sub guy!

50s Fantasy Fodder

I went to (yet another!) play this week. I am turning into a theatre addict, but hey, I could be addicted to worse things. This was, to be honest, a piece of fluff, though enjoyable fluff, but it was set in the 1950s and contained the following for me to ponder on at will later:

• A feisty, sparky 20-something heroine, prone to playing amusing little tricks on people, and in need of a good bottom warming, if you ask me.


• A crusty, but loveable guardian, with his ward's best interest at heart.


• A character called Birch.


• A 50s schoolgirl complete with boater, gymslip and satchel.


• A dashing but villainous man overpowering our heroine at one point.


• Some very nice furniture just made for using in spanking.

You see, once a perve, a perve forever... I can't switch off!

Nimhneach - After

First of all, a public service announcement. For those of you who don't know, Nimhneach, I am informed by those who know better than me, is pronounced Niv-Knock. End of public service announcement.
So, I played at Nimhneach :-D I wasn't sure whether I was going to or not, and I didn't for the first three or so hours. Eventually though, I plucked up the courage (i.e. got EmmaJane to do the dirty work for me!) and asked Master Retep if he would play with me. And very lovely he was too. We'd spent an hour or so chatting to him and his lovely wife, and I also knew that he'd read my blog posts about my head being in a funny place, so I was happy that we would be careful with me.
I know one should never say this about a Dom, but he was very sweet to me ;-) He kept checking I was OK, and kept everything on the right side of "the line" between bearable with the odd sting added in and "the other side" where there is more pain than not.
I couldn't have coped with being on the "pain" side of the line and Master Retep did a very good job of giving me a lovely spanking with his strap and flogger. The effect was to remind me why I like being spanked in the first place, or at least one element of why I like it: the bending over and feeling that sensation. In fact, I probably got more spacey than I've ever been in a club before. I don't know whether it was because I was lying on a comfy couch, or whether the flogging took me there or what, but I was actually really rather floaty and spaced out when I stood up, which I hadn't expected at all. It was nice!
So thanks, Master Retep, for reminding me that despite my mini meltdown, I'm still a spanko at heart.

The Hair Metaphor, Extended

A while ago, I wrote about my hair, and how it used to be dead straight, but had developed a kink over the past few years.
Sitting on the flight over to Dublin, I realised that I could extend the metaphor. The curl/wave/kink in my hair is a fragile thing. Do the wrong thing and I can lose it. For instance, sitting in my seat on the plane, I realised the back of my hair was caught behind me, and I was trapping it, hard, between my back and the seat. This would have resulted, fairly quickly, in the kink being pulled out of it.
Maybe this is what I've been doing over the past few months? I've been pulling too hard on my new-found kink and it's a bit more delicate than I realise? Maybe I need to slow down a bit, stop pulling quite so hard and let my kink bounce back once in a while?

Oh, sorry, by the way, if you're waiting to hear about Nimhneach. I'm sure I'll get round to writing about it sometime soon ;-)

Nimhneach - Before!

I'm writing this instead of doing what I should be doing, which is finishing packing to get ready to go to Ireland and see EmmaJane and go to Nimhneach. In all fairness, I'm half packed, but unless I want to spend my weekend wandering around Dublin in an unfeasibly short tartan skirt, I ought to put some other clothes in my bag as well!
I'm rather excited about my trip. I've not seen EJ for two months, so even if we were sitting inside the whole weekend doing absolutely nothing, it would be lovely, but the fact that I get to meet the lovely and supportive Lollipop, plus lots of Irish kinksters, is a rather yummy added bonus.
Of course, there is the big question in my mind. Will I play? To be honest, I really don't know.
I'm really not sure where my head is, and even if it is getting back to normal, I tend to find spanking in clubs hurts more anyway. Rebecca thinks that this is because clubs tend to be quite hot, and therefore you're slightly clammy and it all stings a bit more than normal. She's probably right as well. As for where my head is, well, I'm no longer cringing in fear at the thought of anything implement related, but I'm not yet anywhere near standing up and shouting "Oh yes, me please!" On the other hand, I did have two very hot spanking related dreams last night. I think I woke up both times before the actual spanking, but I'd certainly been turned on by the anticipation. That's a good thing, right? Hopefully my conscious will catch up with my subconscious sometime soon!

1362

Reason why I could never be a top, number one thousand three hundred and sixty two...

Two days in a row of very good theatre, one show featuring mentions of riding crops and random cane wielding, the other featuring a character who seemed to have misplaced her skirt, but that's by the by. The point of this short, and frankly mostly pointless post, is to comment on the fact that when you go to see very good theatre, you clap. Lots. Hard.

Lots of hard clapping makes my hands hurt. Lots. So, to add to the other 1361 reasons why I could never be a top, we have 1362: my hands are really wimpy and it would hurt too much to spank someone. The realisation that spanking someone by hand must hurt also gives me a sneaking admiration for tops. But don't tell any of them I said that.

Kill Or Cure?

Emma Jane's post today was a heartfelt and considered one about hugs/contact after scenes, and the fact that she sometimes needs to be left alone. The main thing that struck me about the post though, was how painful the strapping/paddling she received was.
"The strap was thin but wide and it HURT so badly. I cried from the first stroke. Not silent tears either, but noisy gulping cries. I don't know how many I got but enough to be truly sobbing by the time he switched to the wooden paddle."
Previously when reading this, I would have thought that it sounded extremely painful, but secretly rather hot. In my present frame of mind, it just sounds painfully scary, and makes me feel a bit sick.
And speaking of sick, I'm getting sick and tired of feeling like this. What's the solution? I'm wondering whether I just need to get on with it, and get a caning/strapping/whatever instead of gradually building things up in my head to be something more than they are. You know, some type of kill or cure scenario. My worry is that it might kill rather than cure.

Car Registrations

So, my friends, if you are lucky and have some money to throw about in the current downturn, how about purchasing a UK registration plate?

The DVLA have the following on sale:

SP57 ANK at £785
F1 LOG, only £1275 to you, sir!
G9 BOT, £390
ST05 RAP, £245
AM51 DOM, £245
AM51 TOP, £245

Or, the best, in my opinion - how about His N Hers?
CA02 NED
CA02 NER
£245 each?

Wonky Kink

I think something's gone a bit wonky with my kink... I've never been much of a pain fiend, but at the moment, the thought of any pain at all is really a bit of a turn off. I played on Wednesday, and it was very nice, but very, very gentle in comparison to what I normally take, and it lasted about half the length that it normally does before I burst into tears, and needed a big hug. The threat of anything scarier than a (fairly light) hairbrush or slipper that night would have not been appreciated.
I suspected that my pain threshold might be low - I had been ill all the week before, and things like that do have an impact. But that low?!
What I don't understand, though, is that I've lost all desire for anything harder than a hand spanking. The thought of canes, straps, belts, even floggers, makes me feel slightly sick. I know I often don't enjoy some of those (canes!) in the moment, but I still fantasise about them, and want them, even if I know it's going to be excruciating. I wish I could start doing that again. Stupid wonky kink.

Interesting Training Course

I was in a training course the other day, and had to leave for an hour or so to go to another meeting.When I walked back into the training room, I was rather surprised to find "Top Dom" and "Sub Dom" written on the board.I suspect I didn't miss much in that hour, but boy I had fun guessing what I MIGHT have missed...!

Birched On The Bus

This weekend I spent a day with friends in one of England's many touristy towns. Towards the end of the day we were tired and shopped and sightseed (it's a word!) out, and decided to take the double-decker open top sightseeing bus. Which is how I got birched.
The bus was barrelling along a road at about 30 miles an hour when it came up to a patch of low hanging trees. It didn't slow down, and though I ducked enough to avoid most of branches, a VERY low hanging weeping willow managed to catch me pretty hard on the shoulder and arm. It was very whippy, and left a mark dammit.
So that, ladies and gentleman, is how I got birched on the bus.
I hope you weren't expecting anything naughtier?!

A Vanilla-Spanko Dictionary?

I've talked before how I've been very lucky that the vanilla friends I've told about my kink fall into three categories: already kinky, interested, or at the very least accepting. The kinky and the interested ones often want to know about what I'm actually up to. Those conversations with the kinky folk tend to be easy as they know what I'm talking about, but I'm finding with the vanilla folk it gets a bit trickier. I'll be gaily wittering on about straps and birches and OTK, only to encounter blank looks, at which point I have to stop to explain what the hell it is I'm talking about.
I'm thinking of solving this problem by creating a vanilla - spanko dictionary. It would have commonly used spanko terms with an explanation of what they are.
For example:

"birch" - you know those bunches of decorative twigs that people have in their house? Or maybe a load of young tree branches cut down and tied together? Yup, a bit like that. And yes, it does hurt (or so I'm told!)

Then I could just hand this over to my vanilla friends, they could do some study, and conversations would be much more straight forward.

Sixth Form Assembly

I stumbled across this article from Time Magazine in 1948.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,853573,00.html
Apparently a school invited a cane manufacturer in to give them a talk, and then the pupils proceeded to set on him and "give him a taste of his own medicine with his worst cane, all with the approval of the headmaster. (It was a progressive school).
Of course I'm imagining a slightly different scenario. Cane maker gets invited into Sixth Form assembly to give lecture, half the Upper Sixth proceed to set upon the gentleman, wrestle him to the ground and cane him with his own implement. Head of Sixth Form is distinctly unimpressed, and orders all the culprits to the headmaster, where they receive the six of the best they inflicted on the cane maker from the headmaster, and then from the cane maker himself, all using the thick dragon cane he had showed them during assembly, saying that it was his most severe implement.

Boarding School Fantasies

I *loved* boarding school books. Still do if I'm being honest. Some of it was about the potential (very rarely realised) for spanking, but mostly it was just about the whole world. The idea of being sent of on a train to boarding school, hockey or lacrosse stick in hand, to share a dormitory with other girls, live the daily rituals of meals, prayers, uniform, lessons, games, time in the common room, thrilled me to bits. There was just something about the rituals associated with boarding school that I loved the idea of. A mysterious world full of special rites of passage and vocabulary that the new girl had to learn. I mean, what exactly was a Middle?! I also enjoyed series of books - seeing characters progress over the years from shy and timid first years, new to their houses, with crushes on prefects, to being those responsible and "elderly" prefects was always a joy. I longed to be one of those girls, part of that world. Of course, the reality is I would have hated it. Sharing a room constantly with people? Bathing in a few inches of water? Hearty runs around the hockey field? I would have been the worst boarding school girl ever. Didn't stop me loving the dream though.
If I recall rightly, my introduction to the world of boarding school books was probably Enid Blyton's St Clare's, and the infinitely superior Mallory Towers series. For some reason I think the Naughtiest Girl books mostly passed me by, I certainly don't have any real memories of them.
I loved the Antonia Forest books about the Marlow family, consisting of six sisters (and probably some brothers, though I was never much interested in them in boarding school books!), and focusing on the youngest two, twins Nicola and Lawrie's trials and tribulations and they followed their successful elder sisters to school. I also discovered the Trebizon books, by Anne Digby which I enjoyed, though they were much more contemporary than most of my previous reading. All of these were series consisting of between about 6 and 10 books.
My holy grail, however, was just around the corner, for I was about to discover an author who gladdened the heart of any serial lover: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, the author of 58 Chalet School books. Yes, you read that right. 58! This series follows a school from its founding, with 3 pupils, through to the eldest daughters of the original first pupil leaving school. The books would never be classed as great literature, or even as particularly well written, but the appeal for me was the consistency of the characters through the years, both in terms of their personality traits, and their presence in the series. The consistency of the world as well - the "ideals" of the Chalet School and its traditions stayed the same through all the books. No, they may not have been well written, but the universe that Brent-Dyer created was an intriguing and enticing one for any young boarding school series fan.
So while my primary motivator for reading boarding school books was not the spanking references, I can't help feeling that years (and I do mean years, most of those books are still sitting in storage!) of indoctrination have left me with a taste for a certain type of school girl role play (and of course sadly departed boarding school blogs!)

The stories your parents tell you...

There's a couple of things that I never eat, which is all the fault of my parents. One is chewing gum. This is because my mother used to tell me that if you swallowed chewing gum, it would curl up in your insides and you'd die. So my 8 year old brain believed this (I was gullible, I still am!), and I have never, ever, eaten chewing gum. When the ice cream van came round, I used to be too scared to get those ice cream tubs which had a ball of bubblegum at the bottom, in case I ate it by accident and died... it wasn't nice being scared of the ice cream van.

I also hate peanuts. My parents had a friend who worked in a hospital who used to tell horror stories about having to treat children who had choked on peanuts. I think the moral of the story was supposed to be 'chew your food', but the message that I received was 'peanuts are bad and evil'. So, again, I still don't eat peanuts.

Now if someone had just told me a horror story about chocolate when I was a kid, life would be so much simpler now!! Yeah, I know, I know, I could try spanking to put me off chocolate ;-)