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The MP Visits Saint Clare – Part IV – Heard From the Outer Office

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Banner of "How to Read Inez of the Upper iV"“The MP Visits Saint Clare” continues

Earlier instalments:

Further particulars may be found in the Foreword.

This sequence draws from the Charrington Papers and the less officious corners of Saint Clare’s—those neat staff reports never meant to withstand scrutiny; the household logs written with a pointed, domestic hauteur; and the diaries, margins, and illicit notes in which the girls record rather more than their elders imagine. Some documents are respectably typed. Others arrive in the swift, unsteady cursive of someone writing under pressure, or in a place she very much oughtn’t be.

Readers are invited to take up the archivist’s task, and the investigator’s pleasure, of weighing the School’s polished accounts against the smudged, contradictory recollections of those who actually lived the day. Much will be implied. Little will be stated outright. And attentive readers may notice that Miss Gladys Williams’s file, though she left Saint Clare more than five years ago, has begun to grow again—curiously, and on no official authority whatsoever.

The archive remembers. And so, of course, does Inez.

Comments are warmly welcomed. While I enjoy seeing them on Bluesky and Twitter, those left here become part of the archive proper, where they may—quietly—shape what follows.

Saint Clare November: 26,997 / 50 000 words

Foreword – Archivist Note

Among the curiosities preserved in the Saint Clare papers, few are as revealing—or as inadvertently scholarly—as the diary entries of Miss Anne Kelley, English Mistress. Her account of 12 July illustrates a trait well known among school staff but rarely acknowledged in print: the ability to listen with perfect composure while appearing to be engaged in productive labour.

This instalment reproduces her notes from that afternoon, recorded with the precision of a woman trained to mark essays, spot inconsistencies, and deduce motive from grammar alone. Her vantage in the outer office afforded her a position both enviable and unenviable: she was neither participant nor bystander, but something closer to a reluctant ethnographer with unusually good access.

Readers familiar with the preceding parts (particularly the testimonies of Miss Williams) will find here a corrective of sorts. Where Gladys dealt in melodrama and sensation, Miss Kelley offers structure, sequence, and the kind of politely shaded inference that could, if one wished, form the basis of a conference paper on mid-century educational discipline.

What follows is her account: measured, attentive, and unintentionally comprehensive. It is a rare look at how a seasoned member of staff interprets a scene that most schools prefer to consign to institutional memory rather than institutional record.

From the Journal of Miss A. Kelley

12 July 1955

  An extraordinary scene in the Head’s office today. I shall write it down in detail if only to convince myself it truly happened.

  I was meant to be correcting essays in the outer office, though in truth I had half an ear cocked to the corridor. One learns early at Saint Clare’s that most essays will wait, but a first-class opportunity to eavesdrop will not.

(more…)

fiction

The MP Visits Saint Clare Part III – Gladys Williams’ Return

Posted on By Mija

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“The MP Visits Saint Clare” continues

Earlier instalments:

Further particulars may be found in the Foreword.

This sequence draws from the Charrington Papers and the less officious corners of Saint Clare’s—those neat staff reports never meant to withstand scrutiny; the household logs written with a pointed, domestic hauteur; and the diaries, margins, and illicit notes in which the girls record rather more than their elders imagine. Some documents are respectably typed. Others arrive in the swift, unsteady cursive of someone writing under pressure, or in a place she very much oughtn’t be.

Readers are invited to take up the archivist’s task, and the investigator’s pleasure, of weighing the School’s polished accounts against the smudged, contradictory recollections of those who actually lived the day. Much will be implied. Little will be stated outright. And attentive readers may notice that Miss Gladys Williams’s file, though she left Saint Clare more than five years ago, has begun to grow again—curiously, and on no official authority whatsoever.

The archive remembers. And so, of course, does Inez.

Comments are warmly welcomed. While I enjoy seeing them on Bluesky and Twitter, those left here become part of the archive proper, where they may—quietly—shape what follows.

Saint Clare November: 26,997 / 50 000 words

Foreword (From the Archivist):

Readers who have followed Part II will remember that Miss Gladys Williams arrived at Saint Clare already defeated by heat, hunger, and Mr. Charrington’s conversational style (which may be charitably described as “Hansard, but crosser”). What awaited her inside the administrative building was not respite but that most perilous of schoolgirl terrains: the dim corridor leading to the walnut-panelled study of the Head.

Few who have passed through those doors, whether with contraband in their pockets or mud on their gym-slips, ever forget the sensation. The smell of polish, the sense of one’s sins rising from the floorboards like mist, the dreadful awareness that one’s shoes are suddenly either too loud or too squeaky but never, alas, normal.

Gladys records here the brief march between the playing fields and that fateful door, her glossy heels clicking out a rhythm that suggests not so much “dignified adult woman” as “junior in a very great deal of trouble indeed.” It is one of the more revealing passages in the Charrington Papers: a moment when a grown woman discovers, to her horror, that the past can still catch her by the collar.

This instalment brings us only as far as the threshold. Beyond it, another witness. One who’s far calmer, far drier, and with far fewer personal grievances, will take up the tale. 

From Gladys Williams Diary

12 July 1955 continued

Yet there was no way for me to join the Saint Clare girls on the upper fields. Turning away from the bright, joyful noise, I faced the administrative building, every brick of it as unforgiving as I remembered

Here we stepped out of the light and into the dim hallway. That smell! Lavender wax polish, some sort of industrial cleaner, and somehow, beneath it all, a faint whiff of boiled cabbage.

The heat of the motor had wilted me utterly. My suit,  the darling black one with the tiny white polka-dots (quite of the moment!) .hung heavy and creased from the long ride, the fitted waist damp where I had leaned against the sticky leather. My little red hat, once crisp, now felt mashed and crooked against my hair, and my matching gloves clung unpleasantly to my fingers. Even my handbag seemed accusatory, its bright scarlet too bold in the dim corridor. Worst of all were the heels, high, glossy, and entirely unsuitable for school tiles. Theye struck the floor sharply with every step, announcing my approach like a metronome of doom. (more…)

fiction

The MP Visits Saint Clare Part II – The Road to Saint Clare

Posted on By Mija

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Banner of "How to Read Inez of the Upper iV"This sequence draws from the Charrington Papers and the less officious corners of Saint Clare’s—those neat staff reports never meant to withstand scrutiny; the household logs written with a pointed, domestic hauteur; and the diaries, margins, and illicit notes in which the girls record rather more than their elders imagine. Some documents are respectably typed. Others arrive in the swift, unsteady cursive of someone writing under pressure, or in a place she very much oughtn’t be.

Readers are invited to take up the archivist’s task, and the investigator’s pleasure, of weighing the School’s polished accounts against the smudged, contradictory recollections of those who actually lived the day. Much will be implied. Little will be stated outright. And attentive readers may notice that Miss Gladys Williams’s file, though she left Saint Clare more than five years ago, has begun to grow again—curiously, and on no official authority whatsoever.

The archive remembers. And so, of course, does Inez.

Comments are warmly welcomed. While I enjoy seeing them on Bluesky and Twitter, those left here become part of the archive proper, where they may—quietly—shape what follows.

Saint Clare November: 26,997 / 50 000 words

The MP Visits Saint Clare continues. The earlier parts are:

Context is in Foreword below.

The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a constellation of documents—some official, drawn from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others more intimate, taken from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font.

Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained. But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here, and promise to respond. Moreover your ideas and reactions also join the archives, where they may quietly shape what comes next.

Foreword (From the Archivist)

Those who have read the entry for 11 July 1955 will recall that the day ended in no small amount of sulking, slammed doors, and the sort of tense household quiet that staff notice before anyone else. Indeed, Mrs Dorcas Fielding—Housekeeper of Birchwood Grange and long-suffering witness to Miss Gladys Williams’s moods—noted in her report that she was “glad to see the back of them both” when the party departed the next morning.

With that cheerful blessing, we arrive at 12 July, a date that would prove no gentler for anyone involved.

This first instalment follows Gladys’s own account of the journey from London to Saint Clare: the damp gloves, the Lyons tea, the spitefully packed hamper, and the slow, piercing recognition that she is returning not merely to a school but to the last place her life made any sense.

It is worth remembering, as the Rover crawls toward Oxford and tempers fray, that the true calamity of the day has not yet occurred. Gladys feels it coming—in the rustle of Gerald’s papers, in the heaviness of her own hunger, and in the sinking of her heart as the familiar silhouette of the school rises before her.

For now, though, it is enough to follow her into the motor just after nine o’clock, with Mrs Fielding watching from the doorway and thanking Providence that whatever awaits them in Wales will, at least, be elsewhere.

Gladys’s Diary

12 July, on the road to Saint Clare

We left London at nine sharp, Gerald, punctual as a firing squad, calling to me when I was still buttoning my gloves, so no breakfast nor even tea for me. St Alban’s was wrapped in mist, drizzle spotting the windscreen, my gloves clammy already. Gerald plonked himself down with his papers the instant we were in the Rover, and poor Fowler set off steady as a metronome. Judgment and disapproval rolling off Gerald like steam off a pudding. Every rustle of his notes made me feel like I’d committed a fresh crime.

By Oxford my stomach was ready to stage a mutiny. We stopped at Lyons Corner House, thank heaven,  though it was hardly salvation: tea weak as dishwater, buns hard enough to kill a pigeon, but at least something hot. Gerald read The Times while pointedly checking his watch every five minutes. Typical. I chewed gloomily and imagined eggs and bacon at the Dorchester.

I would have smoked to take the edge off, but that, too, is forbidden me. Gerald says I ought to “begin as I mean to go on”, since the Institute won’t allow cigarettes and I had better be quit of them now, mentioning that, given my changed allowance, I should refrain from setting money on fire. As if I were some horrid addict to be weaned, instead of a perfectly normal woman who likes a fag with her tea. What utter rot.

(more…)

fiction

The MP Visits Saint Clare: Part I – 8 – 12 July 1955

Posted on By Mija

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And we’re back in 1955. Sorry about the time traveling. We will get back to Ned and Honour soon.

Context is in Foreword below.

The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a constellation of documents—some official, drawn from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others more intimate, taken from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font.

Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained. But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here, and promise to respond. Moreover your ideas and reactions also join the archives, where they may quietly shape what comes next..

Saint Clare November: 26,997 / 50 000 words

Foreword

From the Archivist

If the Prologue shows Miss Williams after a disastrous morning at the Institute, the present entry shows the three days that led to it—days filled with small offences, smaller triumphs, and domestic tensions that simmered steadily from the 8th to the 12th. Birchwood is not a large house, but it proves more than large enough for misadventure.

When last we left Miss Gladys Williams, it was the night of 11 July 1955, as she lay awake in a fury: raw from her first morning at the Domestic Institute, smarting under Gerald’s tight-lipped decrees, and dreading the next day’s return to Saint Clare School for Girls.

Before we press on to the events of the 12th (where the scenes in the Headmaster’s office still leave Miss Kelley wincing in her private journal), we must step back. Gladys’s bewildered anger in that entry did not spring from nowhere. It was the culmination of several small misadventures, misjudgments, and more than one melodrama by post.

Readers may wish to revisit:

The Elwood Files — the failed attempt to slip Inez’s letter past the school authorities.
The Lady and the Headmaster — in which Lady de Vries learns just enough to become dangerously perceptive.
The Secret Letters, Part I — where Gladys first involves herself in a correspondence she might have been wiser to avoid.
Melodrama by Post — ending in Clarissa’s own very revealing postscript.
Heard in the Charrington Household — Miss Gladys, hauled home from Scotland, is made to “answer for herself.”
Gladys in Trouble — Gerald’s formal terms, Gladys’s formal compliance, and the informal tears that followed.

Yet between her 7 July return and that prophetic line on the 11th — “Apparently 25 is still old enough to be spanked by circumstance” — lies a small but significant gap: three too-warm, sticky, uncomfortable days during which

  • Mrs Fielding’s patience was tested,
  • young Elsie was driven to tears (twice),
  • the milkman did not cometh,
  • the vicarage was pressed into service for stamps,
  • the Institute visit loomed like a thundercloud,
  • and Miss Gladys Williams of St Albans ricocheted between fury, sulks, and the sort of despair that leads a young woman to accuse, with more heat than prudence, a certain lady of having set the entire chain of events in motion.

The documents that follow: Mrs Fielding’s notes, Elsie Turner’s account, Gladys’s own private scribblings, and an unfortunately not-so-private letter, restore that missing chapter. Together, they illuminate why the 11th felt to Gladys like a trap snapping shut, and how the stage was set for the catastrophe of the following day.

For the most attentive readers, it may also be worth glancing back at the 1938 Honour’s Game series:

Connections grow clearer in hindsight, though none of the players in 1955 yet understand how far the past reaches into their present.

Some of the documents reproduced below are drawn from the Blue Room Archives at Saint Clare, specifically from the Lady Gwen de Vries papers and from the Charrington household files.

The Notes of Mrs Dorcas Fielding, Housekeeper
8 to 11 July 1955, St Albans

Friday, 8 July 1955

Since Mr Charrington and Miss Gladys came home yesterday, the house has been all upheaval. Miss Gladys stayed in her room most of the day, resting from her journey. Breakfast tray sent up at eight; returned at ten with only the toast disturbed. Luncheon laid in the dining room; untouched. At half past three she rang for tea and something sweet, then refused the scones as too dry.

Her untouched meals made me want to cry. It is a sin to waste good food.

Young Elsie Turner has been up and down the back stairs carrying trays that come back as full as they went up. I warned her not to show temper. It is not for us to say what a lady ought to eat. But I did begin reducing the portions. There is only so much that can be scraped into the pig bucket before it weighs on one’s conscience.

Mr Charrington kept to his study. He did not speak of Miss Gladys or ask whether she had come down to meals.

(more…)

correction corner A drawing of a stool placed neatly in the corner of a book-lined room.

Correction Corner 1

Posted on By Mija

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Saint Clare November: 26,997 / 50 000 words

Hello Faithful Reader:

In keeping with and stealing I mean borrowing from the lexicon of Sips and Smacks (always a joy, current episode is with one of the Oasis Party organizers, do listen) I’ve cleared out the pile of laundry and popsicle sticks so Mija’s Room now has its own “Correction Corner” that I intend to keep empty. Here I intend to (weekly? monthly? who knows?) post edits made to posts or pages after they’ve gone public on the site.

Why do I need this?

Because the lovely reader (and author) Becca T. Riding of the Sore Is More blog is a super close reader. JAB, faithful reader and co-author isn’t far behind in the editor sweepstakes. Both of these readers are good at something I’m not: noticing detail. I appreciate such things and want to give them the credit and rewards they deserve.

Also, in a scene context, Mija loves1By “loves” I mean it hits EXACTLY on my kink buttons. More on that and my attraction to and love of pedants someday. being corrected.2My real-life self can get super defensive, arguing and sometimes becoming downright snappish. I’ve been working on this for years and am getting better, but it does sound like my academic self could use a bit of correction corner herself. One of the first stories Pablo wrote for is “Spelling,” which he based on “correcting” me for words I had misspelled in my early emails to him. Likewise, the story “Its” has Mija writing a line I still have running through my head “The possessive pronoun ‘its’ has no apostrophe.”

Also, as I’ve discovered working on fixing my stories on The Treehouse, (yes, it’s getting done, slowly) having a change log is a useful thing.

Why do you need this?

Because if you alert me to a needed correction (that is a mistake I’ve made), you can ask for a boon. What that boon might be is for you to decide, within reason.

Because some of you (ahem) have made mistakes in the comments and are annoyed by them (just so you know, they do not bother me a bit). You can ask me to make a correction to your text for you. The price? You “pay” with a boon for the blog. These can be insights, ideas, your own stories/fantasies about the characters.

Okay, so what have I done?

Links Page:

Added to Norse Cavalier‘s blog description to reflect my current favorite: an F/F story “The Business Woman and the Waitress.”

Story Changes:

“The MP Visits Saint Clare – Prologue – 11 July 1955“-

I changed the name of the Institute’s Head from Mrs Fielding to Mrs Perris. [Mrs Fielding is the Charrington’s housekeeper]

“Honor’s Game (Prologue through 3)” – Added the following text from the archivist:

From the Lady de Vries Collection, Blue Room Archives, Saint Clare’s School for Girls:
The papers presented here form part of what is now known as the Lady de Vries Collection. Though the correspondence was originally preserved among the private files of her husband, Edmund Alexander de Vries, 9th Earl of Darlington, its preservation and eventual deposit at Saint Clare’s are due to Lady Gwendolyn Randolph de Vries herself.

The exchange of initials — D. and H. — occurs throughout. Their precise origins are unclear; however, internal evidence suggests that these letters were both a private correspondence between husband and wife and, increasingly, a record of informal “exercises” undertaken by Lady de Vries during the late 1930s.

The editors have retained the original orthography and punctuation. A few later pencil notes in Lord Darlington’s hand are reproduced in grey type. Where the line between affection and assignment blurs, readers are invited to remember that the world beyond these pages was also shifting — toward war, secrecy, and a very different kind of education.

Let’s see how this goes!

  • 1
    By “loves” I mean it hits EXACTLY on my kink buttons. More on that and my attraction to and love of pedants someday.
  • 2
    My real-life self can get super defensive, arguing and sometimes becoming downright snappish. I’ve been working on this for years and am getting better, but it does sound like my academic self could use a bit of correction corner herself.
fiction Card with post title on it.

The MP Visits Saint Clare: Prologue – The Institute and Its Discontents – 11 July 1955

Posted on By Mija

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And we’re back in 1955. Sorry about the time traveling. Context is in Foreword below.

The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a constellation of documents—some official, drawn from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others more intimate, taken from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font.

Readers are invited to step into the role of archivist, assembling the story from these traces, and imagining the lives that fill the gaps between pages—the tensions, the alliances, the secrets too dangerous to write down. Not everything will be explained. But Inez is watching. And she remembers.

Note: Comments are read and much appreciated. Much as I like reading them on Twitter and Bluesky, I love getting them here, and promise to respond. Moreover your ideas and reactions also join the archives, where they may quietly shape what comes next..

Saint Clare November: 26,997 / 50 000 words

Foreword
From the Archivist

We open with Miss Gladys Williams at the end of a day that began far too early and went downhill with impressive speed. The St Albans Institute had little patience for her, and she had even less for it. This evening entry preserves the results: indignation, exhaustion, and a level of offence that could be measured with school rulers if one were inclined.

Her morning at the Institute on 11 July 1955 offers our first glimpse—at least in this sequence—of a girl, well, a young woman, whose capacity for trouble is exceeded only by her capacity for surprise. Nothing dramatic occurs, but the atmosphere is unmistakably primed.

Readers joining us midstream may wish to revisit the earlier Saint Clare entries that converge upon this moment:

The Elwood Files — the failed attempt to slip Inez’s letter past the school authorities.
The Lady and the Headmaster — in which Lady de Vries learns just enough to become dangerously perceptive.
The Secret Letters, Part I — where Gladys first involves herself in a correspondence she might have been wiser to avoid.
Melodrama by Post — ending in Clarissa’s own very revealing postscript.
Heard in the Charrington Household — Miss Gladys, hauled home from Scotland, is made to “answer for herself.”
Gladys in Trouble — Gerald’s formal terms, Gladys’s formal compliance, and the informal tears that followed.

The Charrington Papers, of which the present collection forms a small but telling part offer a glimpse into the anxieties of an English household in the mid–twentieth century. The documents gathered here—letters, annotated responses, and private jottings—capture in miniature a struggle over authority and propriety between Gerald H. Charrington, Member of Parliament and self-appointed patriarch, and his sister-in-law, Miss Gladys Williams, a young woman who had the misfortune to combine a lively disposition with a poor instinct for discretion.

These episodes form the quiet prelude to the tensions now gathering just out of sight. What follows in this entry—indignant, tired, and brimming with offence—is merely the overture.

In the meantime, a wee hint. Look closely at the 1938 Honour’s Game posts and consider where Ned and Honour’s little “game” may have carried Lady Gwen by 1955.

Note: If you’re struggling with the font, here is a plain text version. 

Gladys’s Diary  –  11 July 1955

Diary on nightstand, pen, lipstick

11 July 1955

It’s after 11 PM but I can’t sleep and my head and heart are so full I can hardly stand it. No, I can’t stand it. I’m writing this in the hope of making sense of it. Though it may be I’m just talking to myself.

This morning was Gerald’s humiliation exercise number one: the Institute. He marched me there, hand on my arm like a ward in chancery, and handed me over to the Head as though I were a new pupil. Rather than leave me alone to discuss this, he then stood by while Mrs Perris discussed timetables and subjects as though I’m ten years old. Timetables! For me! And what an utterly wretched timetable it is.

(more…)

New Story: The Angel Ruston

Posted on By Mija

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#AdAstraWriMo – November 2025 Progress!

Saint Clare November: 26,997 / 50 000 words

This hastily written story was inspired by a FaceTime conversation. As I sat in my uniform talking about rain and a research plan,  the face on the other side of the screen was illuminated such that it seemed to wear a halo.

Distracting. Because of course I kept thinking of guardian angels… and spanking. Of course.

The Angel of the North

I stood on tiptoe before the angry, red postbox, fighting to shove a stack of letters through the slot as they threatened to slide out of my grasp. One of them, the thick, unwise one I had written in a fit of 1AM tears, pleading, and righteousness, was wedged right in the middle, its edges tearing.

Already I knew it was a mistake. But the postbox was there, the letters already partway in, and, well, inertia is a powerful force.

(I am Entropy Girl, but that’s another story.)

As I shoved harder, someone behind me cleared his throat. The sound was the most polite, academic, schoolmasterly “ahem” I had ever heard.

I didn’t need to turn. I recognized the voice immediately.

But I turned anyway, my heart already thudding with anticipation and dread.

Despite the polite Britishness of Ruston’s gentle “ahem”, the sound always promised tears at bedtime.

Behind me a tall, faintly rumpled man, spectacles perched halfway down his disapproving nose, his greying hair illuminated in the fading light, stood watching me, his expression mild, eyes intense. I could just see his wings, yes, tucked neatly like an afterthought, the feathers in soft parchment colours, almost shadows against his white shirt. He carried his own oddly individual lighting, the sort that reminded me of the way at dusk a hilltop statue glows at embued with quiet, watchful authority. His gaze was that of a don who’d had to step out of a tutorial, now forced to deal with my nonsense personally.

“My dear girl,” he said in a voice low, warm, but unmistakably reproachful, “you cannot possibly intend to post that.”

Too polite to point, he nodded at the incriminating envelope, the one I’d unconsciously tried to hide in the sandwich of more innocent correspondence. It now stood out and glowed, if not red, then sunset pink.

Knowing I was lost I still tried to brazen it out. “It’s already sealed and stamped.”

Ruston sighed, beleaguered as only a male guardian angel who’s shepherded my communication for almost three decades can sigh. “Neither sealing nor stamping an imprudent letter renders it prudent, my dear, only harder to retrieve.”

(more…)

The Music of Discipline: Notes Toward a Sonic Saint Clare

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Saint Clare November: 26,997 / 50 000 words

Author’s Note: 

Classroom with piano

This post started in another space as I tried to explain why I’m listening, over and over, to a playlist made especially for the Saint Clare world, how it’s constructed and why having it is important to the way I write and my ability to recapture the story’s moods. I’ve been using some version of this playlist (it started with Appalachian Spring  something I’ve listened to and has been a favorite for as long as I can remember) since I returned to Saint Clare this past summer. For me, specific music creates and guides headspace, especially when it comes to writing.  So this post has become a reflection on how music, for girls historically and for me personally, moves between structure and freedom—discipline as both enclosure and release.

So…

Imagine I’m standing at the gates of Saint Clare looking in. The key to entering is letting go of my academic voice and reclaiming and embracing Mija’s — one that’s curious, playful, and unhurried, that knows this is far more about the journey than the destination. This post is a kind of meta reflection, written as a map as I try to find a path back into the Saint Clare world, imagine it leading to a different sort of writing practice, one that can generate hundreds of thousands of words. Writing fiction at this scale isn’t only about research or structure — I’m terrible at structure. Instead it’s about mood, and sound. For me, that begins with an album or playlist that I play every time I want to be in that headspace. 1That much, the need connect specific music to specific writing, is also true for my larger pieces of academic writing These notes on music and discipline are about creating a state of calm focus, a rhythm — one where research and scholarship become texture for Saint Clare rather than, as they would with academic writing, constructing an argument. In this space, joy and rigor can share the same page — one, ideally, of discipline, structure, and pleasure.

These days when I think about the world of Saint Clare, I don’t begin with geography, plot, or even period. I begin with a sound. Not the bell (though there are bells enough in Saint Clare’s world) but a bow against a violin string — specifically my grandmother’s violin. The two told stories of how, when they first married (in the 1930s) she played for my grandfather in the evenings after dinner. While there was radio available, they didn’t have one yet. Nor any sort of record player. There was only the music she carried from her girlhood. She wasn’t especially musically gifted, though my grandfather claimed otherwise. Her father had been the true amateur musician, trained at Eton and Oxford, an organist and choir director who played faithfully for every parish he served. From him she inherited not virtuosity but devotion: the belief that to play faithfully, however simply, was a kind of gift and prayer.

Less than a hundred years ago that was what one did in the evenings: read aloud,  practice music, keep culture alive by hearing it, playing it, creating it physically, and sonically. The bow against string, the pause before the note — gestures of steadiness, civility, and attention. Then too, in this world, silence still had somewhere to sit. I think of that quiet, live music as a discipline — the same sort that, in my imagination, fills the corridors of Saint Clare’s School for Girls.  These gestures of steadiness, civility, and attention are precisely the point where structure meets possibility: the body obeys, but the mind has freedom and space to wander and imagine.

The Sound of Education

As I’ve said before, I’m not a visual person or thinker.  Saint Clare manifested in my head as voices, music, not by what I imagined seeing, but hearing. The hum of a slightly out-of-tune piano before morning prayers mingled with the crack of hockey sticks on frost. The girls’ school, I realised, wasn’t merely an institution; it was an instrument, an intergenerational sonic landscape.

Victorians would have approved. When writing about education, they treated young girls and young, unmarried women as if they were violins in need of constant tuning to a pitch of virtue writ large. Erasmus Darwin (a less famous Darwin, quite enthusiastic about female education rather than beetles) proposed that girls could be improved through art and music.2 Darwin, Erasmus. A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education, in Boarding Schools. London: Gale and the British Library, 1797. Nearly a hundred years later, his theory is further refined with Isabella Tod, suggesting that a good education should teach girls “self-government.”3 Tod, Isabella M.S. “On the Education of Girls of the Middle Classes (1874).” In The Education Papers, 230–247. London: Routledge, 2013.  An attempt to depict these ideals inspire and resonate in at Saint Clare, where musical and moral instruction have echoed one another across decades. Change comes to Saint Clare slowly.

(more…)

  • 1
    That much, the need connect specific music to specific writing, is also true for my larger pieces of academic writing
  • 2
    Darwin, Erasmus. A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education, in Boarding Schools. London: Gale and the British Library, 1797.
  • 3
    Tod, Isabella M.S. “On the Education of Girls of the Middle Classes (1874).” In The Education Papers, 230–247. London: Routledge, 2013.

Announcing 2025 Michealmas Term at Saint Clare

Posted on By Mija

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It’s Michaelmas Term at Saint Clare: #AdAstraWriMo begins at midnight.

Once again, the gates of Saint Clare School for Girls creak open.

The crest still gleams with its public motto: Ad Astra, To the Stars, but those who know the place remember the stitched-in version, the one learned by heart and not by rote:

Per Disciplinam et Lacrimas, Ad Astra – Through discipline and tears, to the stars.

Tomorrow, November, the eleventh month begins and, with it, writers globally again attempt the 50 000-word challenge. This year, I’m returning to Saint Clare not to start something new, but to bring everything home: the stories, the notes, the fragments that have accumulated since the first tale was written back in 1999.

At last, my new Scrivener project now holds the entire school – the dormitories, the prefects’ room, the staff meetings that go on far too long, and, most importantly, the archives. Throughout the month of November I’ll be migrating, revising, and writing new pages for Inez of the Upper IV (Summer Term 1955) – and, in another wing of the imagination, finishing the Honour and Ned series, their stories set some twenty years earlier.

It’s not exactly NaNoWriMo, and not quite rebellion either.
Think of it as a special Michaelmas term: attendance required, results to be determined.

Saint Clare November: 26,997 / 50 000 words

Fifty thousand words will (hopefully) follow – some new, some rediscovered, all part of the same ledger.

The Old Girls return and the inkpots are full once more.

The term begins tomorrow. I’ll be in my study, writing, counting words, and organizing, and in the school’s library, procrastinating via exhaustive research.

If you want to follow along: everything will be filed under#AdAstraWriMo.

Brat 2 Professor: The 2025 Academic Survival Kit

Posted on By Mija

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Paul and I have been busy giving The Treehouse –  our story archive and online home – a fresh coat of paint and a new content management system. Migrating the stories is boring but necessary. Tonight it was the 1997 Brat Kit’s turn. I only meant to polish it up – but instead, I ended up chatting with my 1997 self and writing a 2025 sequel. Now it’s 12:30 AM. Typical.

Background: Back in 1997, brat Mija made her very own “Back to School Survival Kit” for the imaginary Usenet town where everyone was into spanking and we were all in on the joke. In 2025, Professor Mija tried to get serious with her own survival kit… fortunately, 1997 Mija keeps scribbling in the margins. Long may she brat away.

Laptop

  • Professor: Sleek, efficient, full of syllabi and carefully versioned slides.

  • Brat: CHAOS machine. Meme folder primed. Cat-ear filters installed. (Also: accidental ringtone demo file.)

Mug

  • Professor: “World’s Best Professor” – fortified with coffee for committee marathons.

  • Brat: Contents are optional: cocoa & Baileys, kombucha, or something suspiciously green.

Phone / Phantom Assistant

  • Professor: Professional communications hub—email, calendar, student messages.

  • Brat: Pocket chaos engine. Random alarms, timed ringtones, and a hidden audio clip that blurts “Alexa” or “Siri” for maximum confusion. Also for sub texting friends in the room to see who wants to go to lunch, go to drink, hire a hitman for whomever made this dude’s 54 slide presentation. 

Zoom/Teams Background

  • Professor: Bookshelves arranged just so, tasteful framed degrees, neutral warmth.

  • Brat: Headmaster’s study, detention hall, a beach cabana, or outer space. At least we cam pretend the house is clean…

Pens / Dry Erase Markers

  • Professor: Red pen for feedback, fine liners for tidy notes, dry-erase for board diagrams.

  • Brat: Sakura Gelly Rolls, fluorescent highlighters, and the faint marker-fume high one can get while doodling mustaches on Chaucer or administrators. Especially deans.

Stickers

  • Professor: A sticker for the “well-done” paper when appropriate.

  • Brat: Neon smiles, glitter flakes, peel-and-slap tactics.

Chocolate / Edibles

  • Professor: Emergency snack for long meetings (and a private, respectable stash).

  • Brat: Bribes, morale boosters, and COVID-era wisdom: mugs don’t have to contain coffee.

AirTags / Faculty Tracking

  • Professor: Useful for shared equipment and conference swag.

  • Brat: Slip one into a tote and turn faculty life into a scavenger hunt. Why *do* we keep running into each other? 

Portable Charger

  • Professor: Lifesaver between back-to-back classes.

  • Brat: If your phone dies, so do you. Recharge or face the consequences.

Noise Tools (Apps / Devices)

  • Professor: Alerts for class start/stop, timely reminders.

  • Brat: Loop “I’m Too Sexy” during midterms. Walk away slowly.

Ring Light & Filters

  • Professor: Useful for clear, well-lit lectures.

  • Brat: Weaponize with cat ears, anime eyes, and “I teach from a yacht” vibes.

Department Printer / Office Nooks

  • Professor: Workflow engine that sometimes always jams under pressure.

  • Brat: Prime hiding spot for stickers, glitter packets, or chocolate.

Conference Lanyards / Faculty ID

  • Professor: Credentials of scholarship and suffering.

  • Brat: Cat toy. Choker. Laminate “World’s Brattiest Professor.”

Do Not Disturb Tape

  • Professor: “In progress” sign for office hours or recording.

  • Brat: Slap it on the door, claim a Very Important Zoom, and quietly eat your M&Ms.

Sutti the Service Dog

  • Professor: Trusted helper, calm companion, valuable support.

  • Brat: Distraction deluxe. A well-timed whine, shake, or soulful look derails lectures faster than any ringtone.

Glitter & Neon Accessories

  • Professor: Tasteful seasonal flair.

  • Brat: Color-shifting polish, LED laces, eco-friendly glitter.

Margin Verdict (1997 Mija to Professor Mija):

“Girl, you’ve gone WAY too serious. Why you hate us? Your list isn’t survival – it’s detention. Update your brat kit already or your card is getting YANKED.”

Obligatory Warning/Disclaimer: Yes yes, this list is completely irresponsible  and possibly, in places, criminal- it belongs in an imaginary online town where everyone’s into spanking and we’re all in on the joke. Consent is ALL.

…And because history matters, back in 1997, “bratting” was mostly textual – wordplay, sarcasm, little rebellions typed into Usenet threads. In real life, largely verbal talkback. Brat’s a kink identity that grew partly in opposition to the “TREW SUB” culture floating around then – a sort of Gor-inspired submissive ideal where obedience meant wearing metaphorical (and sometimes literal) knee pads with spikes on the inside and never capitalizing your name.

Brats (very definitely including the submissive ones) said, and still say: Nope. We’ll have our own bratty fun, thank you very much. Wanna play with us? Keep up – and catch me if you can.

Truthfully? I want to submit, I like feeling submissive, being a “good girl.” But, for the most part, you gotta make me. Or, at least, I need to know you can. And like it better when you do.

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