Boris and the Spanking Ban

When the UK Government introduced 'Support Bubbles' in England on June 13th, the Daily Mail ran the headline "BORIS LIFTS SEX BAN".

It wasn't classy, but it wasn't wrong exactly. The Support Bubbles were to intended to ease the isolation for single adult households who hadn't been able to so much as shake hands with another adult in three months.

And it, of course, meant that couples who didn't live together could finally get together and touch one another genitals, provided that at at least one of them didn't live with any other adults.

Since the fourth of July and the pubs reopening and everything, then suddenly we're all allowed to fraternise with one another (well, with one other household at at time) indoors, in pubs, in hotel rooms and in well-sanitised brothels (possibly).

You're still not supposed to touch one another though. This is rather pertinent to my situation. Gentleman friend and I couldn't bubble up due to the existence of adult children and elderly parents in our respective households.

The Poetry of Chris Whitty pic.twitter.com/Vn4VwiKmgL

— Darren Dutton (@Darren_Dutton) June 11, 2020

Thanks to @Darren_Dutton, every time I say the word 'bubble' now, I think of this.

It's been FOUR FUCKING MONTHS since we've seen one another. Well, four NOT-fucking months. That's rather the point.

We're going to spend this weekend together in a hotel. And, you know what? There will be touching. All the touching.

I've been patient, I've been good since the middle of March. I am observing strict social distancing and not-leaving-the-house-unless-it's-really-necessary rules in every other regard.

But right now, I really really need to have my bottom spanked by someone who loves me. And in less than twenty-four hours, that's exactly what's going to happen.

I just hope Boris understands.

Should I spunk a hundred quid on a bluetooth vibrator?

Gentleman friend and I are still undertaking an extended break from one another. It's been two months since we've engaged in any of the that hanging out together, cuddling, kissing and spanking business that used to take up quite a lot of our weekends. 

This is what my social calendar looks like right now.

It's just the way it is. And I don't want to moan about it. Well, actually, I do want to moan about it quite a lot. But, you know, it's hardly a unique situation. Non-cohabiting couples up and down the country are currently finding themselves negotiating a long distance relationship that they weren't expecting.

In the last week, my thoughts have turned to long-distance sex toys. The world has the technology, it turns out, to control one another's orgasms through a smartphone app. It's like living in the actual future.

The vibrator that I am very, very close to purchasing is this one:

Vibease Smart Massager

"Stay intimate with your partner from anywhere! Sync the vibration with your favourite erotic audiobooks! Waterproof for fun moments in the shower!" This is a thing I need in my life (and my knickers), right?

Well, there are a couple of things still holding me back from clicking the 'purchase' button.

Firstly, the cost. I'm not going to get much change from £100 which is definitely at the pricier end of "things I fancy just for the hell of it". It's a reasonable investment, I suppose, if I knew I was going to get my money's worth. But that brings me onto point number two which is that Gentleman Friend and I aren't currently doing any kind of mutual long distance masturbation at all.

Our text and phone conversations are at least 80% smutty talk and we've done a couple of naked video calls. But we've not actually done any wanking together. And I think that maybe before I spend the best part of a days wages on a pretty new toy, we should explore the much cheaper masturbatory aids on offer. Like, well, him just telling me over the phone to pleasure myself and then me doing it. 

It's nice that this lady has taken her Vibease out to show it the garden.

I'm not sure why we haven't. Embarrassment is probably part of it. Which is odd because when we meet in the real world, we're absolutely shameless. I think the fact that my libido has plummeted since lockdown is a large factor. Wanking isn't really happening in my life at all at the moment. It isn't something that it occurs to me to do during my alone time. This is a new thing. Normally, I'm quite the fan of quality me time.

There is, of course, a compelling counter-argument to me telling myself that I shouldn't buy a masturbatory aid because I'm not masturbating enough. Maybe a "smart massager" is exactly what I need to rekindle my wanking habits. Maybe my clitoris is feeling a bit bored and jaded and a Barbie pink silicon friend would perk it right up. Especially if Gentleman Friend was taking charge of the controls. He is usually far more thorough with regards to my pleasure than I am.

I am not sure what is going on here. Has it escaped? Is it making a bid for freedom?

So am I going to buy it? Maybe, yes, no, possibly, definitely, probably not... Decision-making is not really my forte at the moment.

I think I will spend the evening, adding the Vibease to my shopping cart, then changing my mind and removing it and then putting it back in five minutes later.

Hey, at least doing that will pass the time.

Spankless in Surrey

It's thirty six days since I went further than my front garden and I'm fine. You know, the way Ross Geller was totally fine.


It's thirty-seven days since I saw my lovely Gentleman Friend. I'm isolating over here with my elderly parents and he's isolating over there with his grown-up sons and, once again, it's totally fine.

We've been doing whatever it is we do for over three years now. We don't live together and, except for when we've been on holiday, we usually see each other about three times a week. So each individual day is OK because it's just a day when I'm not seeing him.

But after a month, the cumulative effect of not seeing the man I am in love with is starting to take its toll.  It's not just the lack of sex and spanking although, obviously, there is a lack of sex and spanking. I am a regular reader of Girl on the Net's excellent blog but I may have to ban myself from reading it for a bit because it's hard to read about someone getting thoroughly fucked and enthusiastically beaten when you're not getting any of that sort of attention yourself.

"Do you know how lucky you are isolating with your partner, Girl on the Net?" I want to shout at her. "A damn hard spanking would do wonders for my anxiety right now!"

At least Girl on the Net gets to take her mind off the craziness that is the world right now for a bit.

I'm sure she does know how lucky she is. Just as I appreciate how lucky I am. This may be the longest I've gone without a spanking since early 2017 but, you know what, I am lucky that I have a lovely man in my life who - were current circumstances different from what they are - would be more than happy to bend me over and do all manner of deliciously naughty BDSM things to me.

I have joked that he is currently on furlough as my boyfriend. He has pointed out that it's not like either one of us are going to meet anyone else for the next few months. We are a pair of fucking romantics, clearly.

We chat, we message, we send stupid memes to one another. We are making a lot of plans for the future. Most of these plans feature my arse.

But like I said, it's not primarily the sex or the spanking that I am missing right now. Even though he is very good at both those things.

My most explicit fantasy about him right now, involves him coming round with chips from the Happy Fish Bar down the road and then us snuggling on the sofa with the cats and watching Death in Paradise.

A few weeks ago, that was just a regular Friday night, now it's the stuff that my wildest dreams are made of.

Ooh yeah, baby. Give it to me.

Splendid Isolation

We are living, as the apocryphal Chinese curse says, in interesting times. "Interesting" as in simultaneously terrifying and really quite boring. Because, it turns out, that the heroic thing to do in the Covid-19 crisis is to stay home and not get up to much.

I live with both my elderly parents so I am taking this social distancing shit seriously. The limitations I am imposing on my movements are getting revised on a daily basis. Only a couple of days ago, I believed that seeing my boyfriend and going to AA meetings (I am a recovering alcoholic) were 'essential'. Now I'm of the opinion that they're probably not.

I am staying holed up away from the outside world for as long as I have to because right now 'over-reaction' is not a word in my vocabulary. If, a few months down the line, we can look back on this and say that we all over-reacted, well, that's the best possible outcome.

And luckily the shops hadn't totally run out of face masks.

But it's all under constant review, as I said, my primary motivation here is the well-being of my parents. But I do have to accept that if too much isolation means I end up bonkers and/or drunk then that's not a great outcome for my parents either.

I am in an incredibly fortunate position. I work as a software developer and working from home is not even slightly a problem. I live in a nice house with amazing cats, books to write, and enough tea to see me through any crisis. (Happily, I have been inadvertently stockpiling tea for years.)

I know that not everybody is so lucky. But, right now, just staying put seems like the best thing I can do for everyone.

There's no real point to this post but it seemed weird to be posting spanky stuff without at least acknowledging the Corona threat.

Normal spanky spank stuff will resume from tomorrow with not one, but two five star book reviews for me to get excited about.

Any real-life spank stuff is off the menu for a while. I am going to cancel a booking boyfriend and I have for a BDSM dungeon for my birthday next week. It's a shame because, let's face it BDSM places are always the most scrupulously anti-bacced places you can go to. But sadly, it's not something that even I can claim is 'essential'.

So my spank life will be a virtual one. I have a whole host of books on my 'to read' pile and I'm looking forward to working my way through them.

TP Dungeon - So long and thanks for all the spanks

At the end of this month, TP Dungeon in Staffordshire will be closing its (anonymous-looking) doors for the last time. This is a sad time for me and Gentleman Friend as we have spent many happy hours there in the eighteen months since we discovered it.

I could say that TP Dungeon is the best BDSM play space that I have ever been to but that's because it's the only one of its type that I've been to.

House rules always adhered to

I've been to clubs a few times where a pub rents out its space to a BDSM group for a night who ship in all manner of lovely equipment in for a night and charge a (usually nominal) entrance fee. Sometimes they even include a buffet. But TP was the first time, I'd hired out a space for my Dom's and my exclusive use. It turns out that I much prefer doing it that way. Having other people there didn't really do anything for me. I'm not into to whole exhibitionism/voyeur thing and I really don't like having to wait my turn for the spanking bench.

TP was a lovely space with a full compliment of kinky furniture - cages, stocks, rope scaffold, sex swing, St Andrews Cross and, of course, a spanking bench. Not to mention sofas and a kitchenette which is essential as tea-drinking plays a very important role in my aftercare. Bookable slots were for four hours and the place had a lovely, non-seedy vibe. We enjoyed the first time so much that we repeated the experience. A lot.

Never underestimate the importance of tea. In everything.

The spanking bench (or 'Benchy' as I affectionately call it) was by far and away my favourite thing there. On one of our repeat visits, I flung myself fully-clothed over the bench as soon as we arrived, hugged it and declared "Hello, old friend!"


I would say that some of the happiest times of my life were spent over that bench, but, you know, I'm not always happy at the time. Sometimes I'm actually very cross.  It's a strange sort of cognitive dissonance. My brain can react to spanking with "Ow, you bastard, that really hurt!" as though this wasn't something that I'd asked for and discussed in lengthy and excitable detail beforehand.

I do love it really of course and that particular bench holds many fond memories for me. All those memories involve being strapped down by Gentleman Friend and being repeatedly hit on the bottom with a variety of implements so they do rather merge together.

Benchy - a dear friend

And now me and Benchy will never see one another again. I have to move on with my life and start seeing other BDSM equipment. It's all part of being a grown-up, I suppose.

It's actually a bit exciting. I have enjoyed researching new dungeons although for the most part they are a lot more expensive than TP Dungeon which was insanely reasonably priced. (Yes, 'insane reasonableness' is a thing.)

I've already, due to the prices, rejected a lot of London dungeons. (BDSM dungeons that is, not The London Dungeon which is a totally different thing altogether.) You need to head to the sticks if you want to get more for your BDSM buck.

Happily there are quite a few places to choose from. The Secret Dungeon in Buckinghamshire has a hot tub. The Fetish Studio in Berkshire has its own garden with a whipping post and stocks! It's all out there

Gentleman Friend is terribly keen to try out the new places we've found. I suppose it will be nice for him to swing his arm in a new environment. He did, though, refuse to consider my entirely reasonable suggestion that he set up his own Dungeon-For-Hire.

He's retired! He has the time! Possibly. It's probably quite a lucrative little business and, honestly, I'm not just trying to persuade him because I would plan to spend every single minute that wasn't hired out to someone else, making full use of the spank stuff. OK, maybe a little bit.

I am keen to hear any private dungeon recommendations from fellow spankos. We'll probably be sticking to the UK for now but, who knows,  maybe if I spot a spanking bench I really like the look of, we could fly off to New York or Amsterdam or Guayaquil to meet it.

TP endorsed by fictional swingers, Jacqueline and Donald from TV series 'Benidorm' so beat that.

If you're reading this Benchy, I'm sorry if that seems a bit heartless but, you know, a girl's got to move on with her life.

Entwined: The Art of Rope Bondage

Last night my Gentleman Friend and I went to a salon at Coco de Mer in London called "Entwined: The Art of Rope Bondage".

In a rather blatant example of buying gifts for people that you really want yourself, the tickets for the event had been a present from me to Gentleman Friend for his birthday. But, you know, I didn't buy it just for me. He did seem pretty happy about the whole thing.

Coco de Mer is a sophisticated, swanky - and some might say outrageously overpriced - sex shop in Monmouth Street near Covent Garden in London. They run several of these workshops each month and they call them 'salons' because they are fancy and a bit french.

The name Coco de Mer translates as "Sea Coconut". Which is something that looks like this.

I'm now intrigued by how some of these salons work because ours was very much a hands-on affair. Our instructor, Mistress Scarlet, showed us how to do something and then all the attendees had a go. I don't think the same model is appropriate for, say, "Back Door Bliss: An Anal Masterclass".

Entwined was very much aimed at beginner-level rope enthusiasts. And while Gentleman Friend and I aren't quite beginners, we were very happy to be instructed at beginner level. I really do like being tied up with rope. I've dabbled a bit in Shibari and the like over the years. I like all kinds of bondage - there's a nice assortment of cuffs and other restraints in the toy bag - but rope is in a classy league of its own. For a start, it takes real skill to do it. It takes effort and time to learn. And of course it looks so darn pretty. There is a certain amount of creativity required and there's also something reassuringly geeky about it.

It's a skill which is eminently well-suited to Gentleman Friend who is practical, methodical and very good with his hands. (And not just in that way, you filthy devils.) He is also a man who likes to do things properly. And that's what the evening at Coco de Mer was all about - being taught to do a few basic ties properly so that we can take what we've learnt and build on it.

I say 'we', Gentleman Friend was doing all the work here. There were five or six other couples in attendance and most of them were very democratically taking it in turns to ties one another up. We didn't do this. There is no point in me learning to do the tying. Not because I wouldn't be able to do it - although, honestly, I am cack-handed to the point of probably being dyspraxic - but because Gentleman Friend is my Dom and I am his submissive. He does the tying and I get tied up. He gives the orders and I try to obey. He gives the spankings and I get the bruised arse and a grin like the Cheshire Cat. We are very comfortable in our roles. (Emotionally comfortable, I mean. Sometimes I am not physically comfortable at all.)

Swanky place. Swanky tickets.

I do always feel like I get the better end of the deal because I would, wouldn't I? I have to accept that Gentleman Friend and I are wired differently and that's what makes it so wonderful. Personally, I would be utterly bored if I was spanking somebody's arse for several hours but Gentleman Friend does it quite happily - if a little sternly.

So there was no taking turns when it came to trying out the rope ties at Entwined. Instead, I got to just enjoy being tied up in several different ways while Gentleman Friend busied himself with ensuring that the knots were well executed, secure and didn't restrict any bits of me they shouldn't be restricting.

We were shown a single column, a double column and a basic harness and then a few different ways that all three could be combined.

At the salon in my simple harness.

Mistress Scarlet was a great teacher - delightfully down to earth and funny. She had brought along one of her submissives, "Boy", to be tied up and I loved all her comments about how she is rough with her boys and how she expects them to behave.

The session was two hours long; it was well-structured and the time flew by. At £90 a ticket, it certainly wasn't cheap but as well as Mistress Scarlet's instruction, you're also getting a classy setting, seemingly limitless drinks and the wonderfully attentive staff at Coco de Mer.

The salon price also includes 20% off any purchases that you make in the shop that evening. But because the prices are insanely expensive (over £200 for a flogger, for example),  Gentleman Friend and I did not take advantage of this offer.

Besides, we already have our own rope. And after this very instructive evening, we have become very enthusiastic about using it.

I hope Mistress Scarlet would be pleased with us.

I'm back!

It's been a while but I'm back, ready to dust the cobwebs off this site and get it back in shipshape spanking order.

Or hide the dust at any rate

Stay tuned for exciting spanky spankness. You know you want it.

The Flappiness of Floggers

Flappy

Not surprisingly, when I meet other kinksters, the conversation often turns to the subject of favourite and least favourite spanking implements. It's a tricky one to answer. It's only been a year and a half since spanking became something that actually happened in my life (rather than something that I just thought about obsessively) and the the novelty really hasn't come close to wearing off yet. I am still surprised and delighted that people are prepared to spend time spanking me with anything at all. Not least because as a non-switchy type, I have no idea what they're getting out of it. I would be bored after five minutes. Yet I seem to have found a bunch of people who have not only been happy to spend hours using a whole load of different spanky toys on my arse but also seem to be enjoying themselves. Although I can't believe that they're having as much fun as I am.

This is pretty much how I look post-spanking.

I do like a thuddy toy. I think paddles are my all-time favourite thing. But it's all about the variety, really. You can't beat a bit of stinginess; I'm terribly fond of canes. The stingiest thing I've ever been hit with was a dressage whip. That hurt. But, as with all stingy things, the pain went away quite quickly unlike with thuddy things where the pain just keeps on building.

Ouchy

When it comes to my least favourite implement though, then that's definitely the flogger. They're just so annoyingly flappy. I know lots of people are very keen on them but I find them quite irritating. Largely because a lot of the time they're not being used to cause pain. I like pain. I don't really do 'sensation play'. If I'm on the receiving end of a light flogging, there's a bit of me thinking "Oh, come on. I'm not after a massage here." I don't want to be lightly caressed.

Caress-y

Of course, floggers can hurt as has been demonstrated on me on a number of occasions. But even then, it's not the right kind of pain. It's all sort of unfocused and all over the place. It doesn't connect in the same way that a paddle or a cane or well-aimed hand does.

Now, I am fully accepting of the fact that I am going to be flogged. I haven't had a Spanking Friend who hasn't used a flogger on me. Doms love a flogger. I understand that they are quite satisfying to wield. And I don't mind them. As part of an overall spanking experience, they're fine.

Definitely not my favourite though. If I had a spanking which only consisted of a hand-spanking and a flogging, I think I would feel quite unsatisfied at the end. Whereas I would be entirely content with just "hand spanking and paddling", I reckon. Or "hand spanking and caning".

I admit I'm being a bit unreasonable as 'flogger' covers a wide variety of different kinky spank-toys. Big, small, leather, suede, rubber. Googling for flogger images has revealed that Uberkinky have a metal ball chain flogger that they describe as having "serious bite". Yes, I'm sure it does.

Bitey

Current Gentleman Spanking Friend recently purchased a pink plastic flogger. It's bright and cheerful and looks like the sort of thing you'd be able to buy in the gift shop at Chessington World of Adventures. That flogger wasn't flappy and ineffectual at all. It had quite the sting to it. Rather too much, as it goes, as our first go had to be curtailed due to the damn thing cutting my skin. Because personally while I'm all about the pain, drawing blood is never on the to-do list during a spanking.

He's made some adjustments to the end of the tails which were causing the problem so hopefully it'll be back in play for his next visit. With the literal rough edges taken care of, it's definitely a flogger that I would be happy to spend more time with. I don't think it undermines my "not really liking floggers" point though. I think if you put this particular flogger on a Spanking Implements Venn Diagram (and I really need to start constructing a Spanking Implements Venn Diagram) then it would be in the bit where floggers and whips overlap.

Not flappy

Incidentally, Current Gentleman Spanking Friend has named this particular item 'Felicia'. Because apparently naming one's spanking implements is a Thing That Doms Do. I remain unconvinced. I think he's a strange man. But, hey, whatever makes him happy. I'm not about to judge other people's weirdness.

There are so, so many different kinds of implements out there to be spanked with. From the hastily improvised to the meticulously crafted by artisan perverts. I went to the London Alternative Market fetish fair recently. My goodness, there an awful lot of things you can buy which have been specifically designed to be used on a willing sub. And, frankly, I'm happy to try most of them. It really is a most delightful journey. Bring it on! The thuddy, the slappy, the stingy, the whippy and, yes on occasion, the annoyingly flappy.

Beat Me On the Bottom with the Woman's Weekly

Comedian, actress, songwriter, screenwriter and all-round fucking genius, Victoria Wood died last week. In the year which seems to be determined to be remembered as the one where everyone dies (and it's only April for fuck's sake), Victoria Wood's death hit me particularly hard. I think she was brilliant. And not just because she wrote a song which contained the line "beat me on the bottom with the Woman's Weekly".

1953 - 2016. Fuck cancer.

Wood was a fantastic comic writer and performer. There was never any meanness to her comedy. Her comic creations weren't grotesques. They often felt like people you felt like you knew even if you actually didn't. So many of the tributes I have been reading online, have pointed out what an incredibly generous comic writer she was. She always gave the best lines to her co-performers.

As a teenager in the 80's, I was all too aware that there really weren't that many female comedians around. In fact, the numbers of men and women in comedy in still massively imbalanced. Why is that? Think of the people in your immediate social circle. Are your female friends less likely to make you laugh than your male ones? I really doubt it. There's a whole load of ingrained sexism behind the fact that 95% of the guests on BBC panel shows have a penis.

But institutionalised sexism in television comedy isn't the point of this post. Victoria wasn't just one of the best female comedians, she was one of the best ever, regardless of sex. She was absolutely brilliant.

And of course she wrote and performed the marvellous, marvellous Ballad of Barry and Freda,


I was thirteen when I heard first heard her perform it during An Audience With Victoria Wood. I'm not saying I was turned on by a comic song, exactly, but as a nascent pervert, it made rather an impression on me. There is a lot of kink in that song.

Bend me over backwards on my hostess trolley!

Dangle from the wardrobe in your balaclava!

No cautions, just contortions. Smear an avocado on my lower portions!

For your potassium-rich sploshing needs

And, the perfectly perfect final line: "Beat me on the bottom with the Woman's Weekly!" In the tributes which have poured forth since last Wednesday, this is the line that has been quoted the most.

So, you know, it's not just me. Everyone's a spanko really.

In fact, Current Gentleman Spanking Friend has asked me to get hold of a copy of the Woman's Weekly before our next date, He may want to check out the knitting patterns but it seems more likely that he is planning a tribute to Victoria Wood of his own. In fact, I suspect he might be a bit of a pervert.

Leap Day

Well, will you look at that? It's the 29th of February. The one day out of 1,461 when it's acceptable for a lady to propose to a gentleman. Normally us womenfolk just stand around all passive and coquettish waiting for a man to drop to his knees and offer us an escape route from terminal spinsterhood.

But, hurrah, on this very special day, we get to turn the tables, look our desired conquests up and down and say "Well, how about it, stud?"

You better shape up, 'cause I need a man
And my heart is set on you

Disappointingly, I have proposed to exactly zero (0) men today. If I change my mind about the whole marriage business and want to take matters into my own hands I am going to have to wait until 2020 before I get my next opportunity.

Well, obviously, I'm not because (a) It's the 21st century and women can propose to men anytime they feel like it and (b) I am never not ever getting married ever. I've made it to my forties without tying the knot. I reckon I'm safe now.

So where does this tradition come from? Well according to legend, in the fifth century St Brigid beseeched fellow patron saint of Ireland, St Patrick for a day when women could propose to their suitors. And, um, that's it. Not only is it bollocks - St Brigid would have been eight years old at the time of St Patrick's death which would have made her a pretty precocious campaigner for women's rights in any century - it's kind of boring. What kind of backstory is that? Someone asked "Can this thing be a thing?" and the other person - presumably - said "yes". It's rubbish. You need a bit more plot there, legend-making-up people.

Oh, and there are no citations for this legend until the 19th century so it's double bollocks.

Presumably, the tradition came about because the 29th of February is a crazy, nonsensical sort of a day. It doesn't even happen most years! And what's the most crazy nonsensical thing our 19th century ancestors could think of?  Women proposing to men! How bonkers is that!?

As it happens, I am very happy being a spinster. (A spinster who can date, shag and be spanked by anyone she damn well pleases, obviously.)

I have recently taken my spinsterhood up a notch. Last Friday, I adopted two beautiful elderly cats. They're lovely. I have no intention of ensnaring myself a man. I fully intend to be a Crazy Cat Lady instead. It's going extraordinarily well so far.

Bad Neighbours

Of course, this movie was just called "Neighbors" in the US.
I assume they changed it for us Brits, because "Neighbours" would just make us think of a certain Australian soap opera, Kylie Minogue and the ear-wormiest theme song in the history of ever.

I've mentioned before that spanking is a noisy business. Unless you have some kind of fully soundproofed spank dungeon, I'm sure you're aware that the application of a stout wooden paddle to a fleshy backside can have a bit of a reverberating sound to it. (Incidentally, if you do have a fully soundproofed spank dungeon, can I borrow it sometime, please?)

I live in a block of flats so I potentially have three lots of neighbours who might be disturbed by the sounds of the occasional spanky shenanigans which occur round my place. Because my apartments are relatively newly built and because I never hear what my neighbours are up to (and I'm not just talking about kinky stuff), I like to kid myself that noise-wise my home is pretty well insulated. Still, even if it isn't, I never see my neighbours. It's not like we need to make awkward chitchat while washing our cars or weeding our front gardens.

Nicer people than me are probably more concerned about disturbing their neighbours. My current gentleman spanker friend was very aware of how noisy the whole business was when we were round his house the other day. Happily, that didn't stop him having at it with gusto. Apart from the occasional "ow", "ouch" or "fucking hell!", I'm not a particularly noisy spankee. But, like I said, the sound of wood or leather or a an open palm enthusiastically applied to a willing arse, well it's not exactly quiet, is it?

In the right hands, this hairbrush can make a lot of noise.

Later on in the evening we were chilling out and cuddling and watching Doctor Who (in fact I think we were literally "Netflix and Chill"ing. You know like cool young people do. Unless I've hopelessly misunderstood that particular meme) when there was a ring at his doorbell. He was all "Who the hell is calling at at 10 o'clock in the evening?"

I was briefly worried that I might have to reassure some well-meaning neighbours that my friend wasn't imprisoning and beating some poor hapless woman against her will. Luckily, they were just handing over a parcel which had been delivered earlier that day.

Thing is, the parcel in question was a leather gladiator kilt. And it was entirely clear from the
packaging exactly what it was. (Poor show, leatheraddicts.com, have you never heard of discretion?)

Maybe don't get this delivered to your mum's house.

Gentleman spanking friend is convinced that not only do his neighbours now know that he's a pervert, but that they spent the evening discussing when was best to drop the package off. "Shall we take it round now, do you think?" "Best not, just at the moment. He sounds busy." Then politely waiting until there was a lull in the spanking noises before nipping round.

Oh I hope my kinks don't make me un-neighbourly. I try to be a nice person. I don't drop litter, I recycle, I buy copious amounts of sweets every Halloween just in case (even though Trick or Treating isn't something that ever happens round these parts). If I am a nuisance, I'd like to think that at the very least, it might give the neighbours something to chat to one another about. "Oh hello, Doris. You know her at number 9? Well, you'd never guess what she gets up to. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if she planted some pampas grass outside her house. You never know with those types."

Happy New Year!

Hello, my lovelies! I have been shamefully neglectful of you all lately. I have been spending my time not being Etta Stark these last few months. I am a bunch of people these days. Occasionally, I am even myself.

But now I'm back! From Outer Space! And you find me here with that sad look upon my face.

You should have changed that stupid lock. You should have made me leave the key.

I am resolving, right here, right now, to be Etta Stark more often in 2016. I will finish the three books I have on the go. I will blog more often. Heaven knows, you people deserve to hear me twatting on about inconsequential bollocks.

Pictured: Bollocks.

Happy New Year, everybody! You know what? We should hang out more.

Affairs. Is Everyone At It?

I was at my parents' house earlier today doing a bit of IT Support for my dad. Over tea and chocolate digestives, Dad mentioned that Mum has recently been demonstrating an impressive knowledge of cricket while they've been satisfying their current addiction for watching every single TV quiz programme ever.

My dad is massively into cricket. My mum isn't. But clearly having been married to a cricket fan for almost five decades has caused a certain amount of cricketing knowledge to seep into my mother's consciousness through some kind of osmosis.

Note for my American readership: Cricket is a bit like baseball.
But with more wickets, "Howzats?" and "Silly Mid On"s.
And stopping for tea, obviously.

I didn't say that, though. Because apparently, when I see a line that shouldn't be crossed, I like to leap across that line with gay abandon. What response did I give to one of my parents saying that the other one knew more about cricket than they realised? I said: "Maybe Mum's having an affair?"

(I would like to say at this point that my mum was actually part of this conversation. I mean there's lines and there's lines.)

My reasoning was that if someone shows an interest in a subject that they've never shown an interest in before, there must be an ulterior motive, hmm? My mum's response was, entirely reasonably, "And when would I have time for this affair? I certainly haven't noticed it happening." My dad mused that if Mum was having an affair then doing so with a professional cricketer would be pretty impressive.

I blame Mumsnet. I have spent far too much time recently reading Mumsnet talkboards. If you spend any time at all on the Relationships board, it's very easy to come to the conclusion that all men are lying, adulterous arseholes. This mistrust permeates the whole of Mumsnet. If anyone so much as suggests that their "DH" has started showing a fondness for Mint Choc Chip ice cream when he has always previously preferred Rum and Raisin, mumsnetters will immediately cry "Leave the Bastard! He's been lying to you! He obviously has a secret life you don't know about!". It's the middle-class equivalent of Jeremy Kyle every day.

Adulterer.

I don't really think there's any extra-marital hanky-panky going on in my parents' marriage. They have been dating for fifty-four years and still quite obviously fancy one another like crazy. If I were an only child, I could claim that the reason that I have never managed to maintain a long-term relationship is because of the ludicrously high standard of coupley bliss presented to me by my parents. Obviously, I could never possibly hope to achieve that so there is no point in trying. Unfortunately, my two siblings' happy long-term marriages throw a bit of a spanner into that particular hypothesis.

I blogged about the Ashley Madison data leak a couple of months ago. There's cold hard statistics which demonstrate that - at least as far as this particular "Adultery R Us" website was concerned - intent to play away is largely a male pursuit. Actual heterosexual infidelity is probably more a 50/50 thing, though.

According to this webpage which I just googled, roughly 30% to 60% of all married individuals will engage in infidelity at some point during their marriage. Jesus, really? Is that likely? That's fucking massive. Clearly, my research has been minimal. I would hope that was some kind of biased survey because otherwise I have to consider the idea that of my five closest friends (and their five partners), it's statistically probably that maybe three of them have fucked someone else since whenever it was I turned up in my best dress on their special day, toasted their happiness and enjoyed their wedding breakfast catering.

I want some reassurance here. I've never been married. I absolutely never intend to get married. I'm forty-one years old so I reckon I've dodged that particular bullet. But I want to believe that the married couples I know are doing it properly. I got all teared up during the Groom's speech at your wedding, you bastards. Don't tell me those warm fuzzy feelings were based on lies.

I honestly can't imagine that there is a woman on earth I could love as much as you.
But, you know, if I DO get a better offer, I'm totally gonna go for it.

Clearly whatever other people choose to do with their marriages is no concern of mine. That said, I am probably going to re-activate my online dating account in the next few weeks. I do worry that within my target age bracket of 35 to 55 year olds, there are going to people who, despite saying that they are divorced or separated, are actually still living with partners who have no idea that their partners are cruising for a bit of spanky, extramarital fun without their significant other's consent.

And while I might be absolutely OK with open polyamorous relationships, I have no intention of inadvertently becoming the Other Woman in someone else's exclusive relationship. What percentage of those extra-marital affair statistics involve people who had no idea that they were fucking somebody else's current partner?

I guess if I do start dating again, I shall have to rely on my 'gut instinct'. I'm wary of relying on any of my internal organs when it comes to judging another individual's honesty. And I'm pretty sure my 'gut' isn't really up to the task. It does a fine job of transferring food to my digestive system. I have no problems with its performance on that score. Ascertaining whether relative strangers are on the level? That might be a bit of an ask.

"He's a wrong 'un."

So, reassure me, readers. Tell me that everyone in an exclusive monogamous relationship remains entirely faithful to their partner. And the only married people fucking outside of the conjugal bedroom are fully on-board polygamists who have all read The Ethical Slut and are happy to discuss their extra-marital relationships with their spouses over tea and biscuits.

It might not be true but, fuck it, that's the world I want to live in.

Don't Tell The Children.

Spanky romantic relationships don't happen in a vacuum. Many of my fellow spanky romance writers are happily married wives with a clutch of dependent offspring.

I imagine that maintaining an enthusiastic and abundant sex life is a tricky thing when you have a herd of tiny unreliable sleepers about the place at the best of times. Does this get a whole lot trickier when there's spank-based kinkery involved?

Spanking is loud. I live in an apartment block and worry that my neighbours may have been occasionally subjected to the resoundingly loud noise of a visiting gentleman's hand repeatedly hitting my arse. I do hope not. I never hear what my neighbours are up to. I hope this is because the building is well sound-proofed. Of course, it could just be that all my neighbours are terribly, terribly quiet and I am the inadvertent kinky Nightmare Neighbour from Hell.

"Hand spankings, paddlings, canings, whippings. It went on for hours.
Honestly we had to turn the volume on the television right down so we could listen in properly."

I am a parent, too, of course. Not that I have to worry about my daughter overhearing my spanking shenanigans. She's an adult. Although she nominally lives at the same address as me, even when she's not at university she generally has better places to be. I do have to warn her when popping home unexpectedly might be a bit awkward. "You're not planning to come round next Thursday are you? No particular reason."

She knows I've been dating and she seems to be pretty happy about it. I imagine she thinks it's vanilla sex that I don't want interrupting, though. And while nobody wants to walk in and find their middle-aged mum sexing it up with a gentleman friend, I kind of think it would be worse if she came home unexpectedly and found me tied to the dining room table on the receiving end of a severe caning. Which is why I always bolt the door. Just in case.

I appreciate that locking your children out of the house isn't really a workable option when they are school-age or younger. As a single parent, I got round this by having no sex at all for a decade and a half and only finally embraced the kinky BDSM lifestyle once my daughter had buggered off to live in a different county. I don't recommend this approach, by the way.

Parents have sex. It's allowed. I have a younger sibling which means my mum and dad must have had sex at least once since I was born. It's possible that they have had sex more than once since 1974. They clearly still fancy one another. I am not going to consider it though because parents + sex = ewwwww. Nope. Not even going to think about it.

I do accept that this isn't a healthy attitude on my part. Not only do parents have sex. Frequently they have sex for reasons other than making babies.

Babette Cole's wonderful book Mummy Laid An Egg explains exactly where babies come from. It's written for children and brilliantly - while also explaining about penises and vaginas and sperm and whatnot - tells small people that Mummy and Daddy also have sex for fun. Here are some ways mummies and daddies fit together:
And while I'm delighted that kids who read this book might grow up thinking that skateboard sex, clown sex, helium balloon sex and space hopper sex are a natural part of adult interpersonal relationships, it sadly doesn't cover the option that sometimes a man and a woman who love each other very much may choose to hit one another with sturdy implements and leave a week's worth of bruises.

So, how do you manage it, kinky parents? Does every one-hour child-free window mean a quick sprint to the spanky toy bag so that you can fit in a swift bit of paddling/nipple-clamping/*insert kinky fetish-ing here* before you have to go and pick the kids up from Scouts? Do you just shrug it off if one of your offspring wanders into your bedroom at 11pm and sees Mum bent over Dad's lap with her knickers round her knees? "Go back to bed, Riley. I'm busy inspecting Mummy's bottom. It's a Grown-Up thing."

Recently, Reddit had a thread about "Things You Don't Want Your Children To Know About You". One of the responses was "That daddy and I don't go to 'dinner parties', we hit up swing clubs."

I assume they're talking about swinging rather than swing jazz, here.
Doesn't look much like a sex club, though.

Do kids need to know about their parents' sex lives? Probably not. But do young people need to know as much as possible about sex? Abso-fucking-lutely. I have always had an open dialogue with my daughter about sex, contraception, only doing things that you're OK with and never ever letting people slut-shame you. I know a frankly ridiculous amount about my daughter's sex life. I am delighted that she is she so open about it with me. She probably knows more about my sex life than is usual in these circumstances. Although she does get the vanilla PG version, to be fair.

Maybe I'm just getting the vanilla version of my daughter's sex life. That's fine. I go to munches regularly. I live in a university town so we get a lot of students attending. My daughter's university is only forty-five minutes drive from here. I have a friend who is one of the organisers for munches in my daughter's University town. He's mentioned that they they get a lot of students there too, and, for all I know, my kid might be a munch regular, I'm fine with that. If she does have a kinky side, I hope she doesn't wait until she's forty before she embraces it. As long as we're not attending the same munches or BDSM sex clubs as one another, it's fine.

Sooner or later, every parent has to have the "Where do babies come from?" conversation. And, you know what, you don't get to have it once and then wash your hands of it. You have the "Where do babies come from?" conversation frequently over many years in a variety of age-appropriate ways. And when you have a nineteen year old daughter, the conversation largely consists of you saying "Here, have all these condoms. Please don't make me a Grandma just yet."

I'm just not sure when spanking, caning, nipple clamps, butt plugs and bondage should be brought into the discussion. I don't think it was covered in any of the books I read. Parenting is a bloody tricky business.

Pansexuality

I have been discussing, elsewhere on the web, the concept of Pansexuality.

Nothing to do with this guy.

It was on a fairly vanilla non-kinky forum, and the main question was "So how is being pansexual any different from being bisexual?"

I identify as bisexual and am pretty ignorant regarding pansexuality so I thought it a pretty fair (and very interesting) question.

And as far as I understand it (and please correct me if I am wrong. I would love to discuss this with someone with a better understanding of these things than me), there isn't much difference between bisexuality and pansexuality. A lot of it is down to semantics. Using the prefix "bi-" when referring to one's sexuality suggests an acceptance that one's sex is one of a limited number of options. Two options. You're male or you're female. Tick the fucking box.

Life, love, sex and gender are more complicated than that. Potential lovers could be trans, intersex or just downright refuse to align themselves to one particular gender. (Or they could be asexual, of course. Personally, I couldn't date an asexual person. I am a as-much-as-possible-sexual. It wouldn't be fair on either of us.)

Pansexuals seem to want to establish themselves as more accepting than people of other sexualities. It's a fair point I guess. Except, no it really isn't. I have done a bit of reading and it seems that "willingness to date transgender people" seems to be a pretty key point in people who identify as pansexual. Surely that carries with it an assumption that anyone who calls themselves heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual aren't OK with dating anyone transgender? When did that get decided? Did I miss another memo?

I consider myself bisexual because I am really not that bothered whether someone has a vagina or a penis. They could be entirely smooth down there like a Ken doll and that would be fine if they were interesting and funny and really into spanking.

I'm not saying this is a thing of mine, by the way.

Not only that, I actually think that everyone's at least a tiny bit bisexual. There are six billion people on the planet. Those of you who have met your "other half" probably did so at school or university or work. You probably managed to meet someone within a hundred miles of wherever you were in any case. If you subscribe to the idea that there is only one person in the world for you, you were pretty bloody lucky. I imagine that even the most loved-up of you committed, exclusive, monogamous types probably realise that there are a thousand or so people on this planet that you could have loved just as much. You don't need to go looking for them because what you have is pretty damned special. But you know, as much as you might consider yourself heterosexual or homosexual, there's got to be a chance that at least one of those thousand or so hypothetical lovers is a different sex to the one you were expecting.

One of these people wold be perfect for you.

I would potentially be up for dating someone who was transgender. It hasn't really come up so far. Although, I did have a trans woman contact me on OKCupid a few months ago. She was eighteen years old. I don't normally reply to people who are quite so far out of my preferred age range but I was intrigued by her profile picture. She had photoshopped her nose out of all existence. I checked out the rest of her pictures and about two thirds of them had big smeary blurry splodges in the middle of her face where her nose should have been. The other third showed a perfectly attractive teenage girl with an entirely reasonable nose. So, feeling all mumsy, I messaged her telling her that she didn't need to photoshop her pictures like that and that she looked lovely. (And mentioned that, by the way, she was waaay too young for me but, you know, good luck with everything. Because you know, I may be everything-sexual but I definitely don't date people younger than my daughter,) When she responded telling me she was trans, I did have a bit of a panic that my well-meaning "Just be happy with who you are!" comments were a bit insensitive.

Obviously, I think that people should be able to identify their sexuality any way they damn well please. What's the alternative? Some kind of "Sexuality Police"?

Sexuality Police

That said, there was an involuntary eye-roll when I came across the term "Demisexual". Demisexuals apparently consider an emotional attachment more important than a sexual one. Well, bully for you. That's not a sexual preference, that's a lifestyle choice. Do self-proclaimed demisexuals really think that heterosexuals and homosexuals just go around fucking people of the opposite or their own sex indiscriminately?

So, what should I be calling myself? Because as far as I can see, both 'bisexual' and 'pansexual' seem to be appropriate. Fetlife offers 'pansexual' as an option in its fairly comprehensive drop-down list. But if I decide to be pan- rather than bi- in my sexual preferences then I have removed myself from the LGBT in-group and everyone knows that's a pretty cool group to be hovering round the fringes of.

I think when it comes down to it, I have to decide what's really important in my life. And what's most important to me is being a total, fucking grammar pedant.

You see, the prefixes hetero and homo derive from Ancient Greek. (Heteros meaning 'other' and Homos meaning 'same'.) Pan (meaning 'all) is also Greek in origin.

Bi, on the other hand, is Latin. The equivalent Greek prefix is Di.

I have, therefore, decided to consider myself Disexual. For smug dictionary-based reasons. Happy to shag anyone who is as fascinated by the etymology of words as I am. I shall be emailing Fetlife and asking them to update their drop-down list forthwith.

This, apparently, is my sexuality.