Mija’s Room

Category: musings

correction corner

Correction Corner #2 – January 12, 2026

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A brief pause at the archive desk for housekeeping, mending, and the occasional discreet pinning back of a hem.

First, handwriting. I have been revisiting earlier entries to make the use of cursive fonts more consistent, and, more importantly, more readable. Lady Gwendolyn and Miss Anne Kelley’s writing now appear in hands that suggest legibility as well as character. Flourish has its place, but Saint Clare’s has never been a school that prized ornament over clarity, except perhaps in the prospectus and certain prize-day speeches.

Second, the forewords and afterwords. I am also tidying these across the MP Visits sequence so they speak to one another more neatly. The School itself is perfectly capable of generating three contradictory accounts of the same event, plus a fourth in pencil that insists the first three never happened. The archive, however, ought to provide at least a stable frame in which to enjoy the confusion.

Third, a practical matter, now happily resolved. Paul, our longstanding and long suffering Stylesheet Beak,1A Beak, as any public school pupil will tell you, may sound like a gentle bird, but is not to be trifled with, particularly where fonts are concerned. has fixed the vexed matter of the comment box, which on some browsers (Safari, I am looking at you) displayed readers’ words in a size apparently intended for smuggling under a blotter, or for writing the Lord’s Prayer on a grain of rice. The situation is now in hand.

Fourth, and this is a correction still in progress, I have been remiss in providing plain-text versions of posts that rely heavily on handwritten fonts. Not all readers find cursive easy, and while Saint Clare’s has a long tradition of expecting girls to decipher one another’s notes at speed (often by torchlight, and often with consequences), the archive should be more accommodating. Plain-text versions will be added going forward, and to earlier posts where possible. Consider it accessibility rather than a collapse in standards.

Finally, a word about illustrations.

Some readers will have noticed a change. Earlier Saint Clare/Inez entries often came with drawings that leaned toward coloured pencil and watercolour, the sort of thing one might expect in a storybook, a school annual, or the margins of a Latin exercise when the mistress’s back is turned. Changes in how image generation now behaves on ChatGPT have made that style increasingly difficult to produce reliably. The results tend, of late, toward the photographic, the over-polished, or the alarmingly literal, which rather defeats the point.

For the time being, I will be relying on simpler artwork and on drawings I already have, with the occasional experiment when circumstances allow. I may yet pull out my coloured pencils in a pinch, but no promises. The point has always been suggestion as much as illustration, and I trust the archive can manage with a little less gloss and a little more imagination.

Thank you, as ever, for your patience, your sharp eyes, and your willingness to notice when the filing system has been quietly adjusted. Corrections, like discipline, work best when administered early and with a steady hand.

  • 1
    A Beak, as any public school pupil will tell you, may sound like a gentle bird, but is not to be trifled with, particularly where fonts are concerned.

The Music of Discipline: Notes Toward a Sonic Saint Clare

Posted on By Mija

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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, and 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.
amigas Card reading September Summarized in orange script

September Summarized (2025)

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In Southern California September is a peculiar season. That felt especially true this year after a summer spent in the British Isles. September’s the month when the calendar insists autumn has arrived, Pumpkin Spiced Everything starts to appear, the days grow noticeably shorter — and yet here the thermometer climbs higher than in July.1Good grief. Clearly I’m in my 50s — I’m writing about the weather. It’s not the heat that bothers me though — mostly I dislike watching the daylight dwindle; from here to (almost) January I’m counting down to the Winter Solstice, and looking forward to when the days begin to stretch again.

The luggage is still missing, but at least I’ve replaced some of the books.

Still, I’ve always loved the back-to-school feeling — even as a teacher. There’s something magical about new notebooks, fresh pens, and a stack of books waiting to be opened. This September brought plenty of that “new term” spirit, research and writing. Here’s September’s report:

Oasis
The Las Vegas party. Not a bad way to open the month. Thanks to Sutti’s accompanying me to the party, I was able to spend time in the suites — something I hadn’t managed in years. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the first scene party in a very long while where I didn’t suffer a panic attack. That in itself is a small triumph. I have two more posts begun about the experience, but (in true school girl2At least me as a school girl… fashion) I can’t promise when I’ll be able to get back to them.

Sips and Smacks logoSips and Smacks
A thrilling highlight of the month was being a guest on Sips and Smacks Episode 125. Rex and Adalia, the hosts, are engaging and fun. This made talking with them more like a brunch chatting poolside than an interview. We spoke about the way the scene has changed, what’s very much the same, differences between Paul’s and my uniform kinks — how his lean toward discipline and precise presentation, while mine are bound up with the belonging and community that uniform uniformity represents. They were sweet and let me enthuse about Inez of the Upper IV, and we looked back at the history of The Treehouse and its links to the Usenet days of alt.sex.spanking and soc.sexuality.spanking.

[Long-time readers will recall I first wrote about Sips and Smacks in December 2024 It feels like a full circle: from discovering the podcast to sitting down with the hosts as friends.]

Inez of the Upper IV
The Saint Clare’s/Inez stories continue to occupy much of my brain space — and I’m delighted they do. Readers have joined in: writing their own pieces, sending suggestions, even sharing memories of their schooldays. When I first began offering these “documents” as building blocks for stories, I wasn’t sure anyone would care to take part. Every comment since I began posting them has mattered enormously.

I’m currently trying to decide whether Scrivener3This is my third attempt to find the right use case for the software. It’s so visually elegant. Fingers crossed. might help me manage the sprawl (the red strings, pins, and sealing wax proving inadequate), I discovered I’ve already written more than 100,000 words of notes, timelines, and background. More flows out every time I open the “Mija” profile on my MacBook. This is, without a doubt, the most sustained burst of creativity I’ve had since my early days on alt.sex.spanking and soc.sexuality.spanking. I couldn’t be more delighted to find I am still Mija, with or without Pablo, something I’d doubted was possible when this blog began.

Recently, Inez’s story has stepped back into the 1930s to sketch the story of Inez’s parents,  Honour and Ned, prompted at least in part by Brigitte’s observation that Saint Clare has some of the same atmosphere as the boarding school in Rosamund Pilcher’s novel Coming Home.

The Treehouse Returns
Even with getting to hand out with Rex and Adalia, my biggest September news is <cue trumpets>:  after being abruptly shuttered five years ago, Pablo and Mija’s Treehouse will be back online in the next couple of months. Here in my room I’ve even made a little news page here.  But, of course, after being away so long we’re renovating. The original site was hand coded by Paul in 1999 — twenty-five years later Treehouse 2.0 will have a more sophisticated back end (like me). Paul and I are currently both uploading the individual stories and other texts.  This process reminds me just how much we lived there – not just us, but some of our oldest friends. It is more than a website; it is our time capsule of 1990s-2000s Usenet, when spankos (or whatever we call ourselves) first began finding one another online. My hope is that it still carries the spirit of alt.sex.spanking and soc.sexuality.spanking — a lively space where stories and friendships grew. That space meant the world to me in its day — something I’ve discussed in posts throughout this blog — I’m so glad our little piece will soon be back.

Closing Notes
So ends September’s chronicle: one part personal challenge, one part conversation, one part creative ferment, and one part community rediscovered. If you’d like to listen in, I’ll report back soon with more on Inez, and — like everyone else in the common room — I’m waiting eagerly for the day The Treehouse reopens its doors.I’ll report back soon with more on Inez, and — like everyone else in the common room — I’m eagerly anticipating the day Pablo and Mija’s Treehouse drops its rope ladder and welcomes everyone back in.

  • 1
    Good grief. Clearly I’m in my 50s — I’m writing about the weather.
  • 2
    At least me as a school girl…
  • 3
    This is my third attempt to find the right use case for the software. It’s so visually elegant. Fingers crossed.

Oasis 2025 – Day (-1) – Arrival.

Posted on By Mija

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Some things are over, some things go on.
Part of me you carry, part of me is gone.” — T.P

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Day -1: Arrival

I left the house at 5:00 AM this morning to catch an eight o’clock flight from L.A. to Las Vegas. Landed just after 9:00 AM, hotel by eleven, dog park stop for Sutti tucked in before my 2:00-5:00 meeting, oodles of emails and then quick walkies before straight into teaching a Zoom class from 7:00-10:00 PM that’s only just finished. Tomorrow morning brings more meetings before the official start of Oasis tomorrow night. As ever the weekend feels like a braid of obligations: academic, domestic, and canine, with an added kink.

This is only my second Oasis—my first on my own. Last year Paul and I were in Vegas together, as we had been for decades of parties before. Onks ago, before he moved to Los Angeles, before we married, there were two long-ago Shadow Lane Labor Day parties I’d attended without him, but those were in Palm Springs, and I’d driven. No dog, no flight, no juggling of suitcases and expired licences. Flying makes traveling different, heavier somehow,  though I’d been careful—lesson learned from the UK trip—to pack light: just two bags, each under twenty-five pounds. Neither heavy nor hard to handle on their own,  but even packing light is heavy with the knowledge of how often and how much I’d taken for granted Paul’s quiet labor as bearer. Without him, every minor thing looms far larger.

Today it was the luggage hydra: deplane, doggie relief, train to baggage claim (blue line? red line? I never remember—this airport feels like it was designed as a riddle). Then the slow parade: bus to central car rentals, another bus to the off-site car rentals—only to discover my driver’s licence had expired last month. Back on July 28, my birthday, while I was in the UK, no less. Exactly the sort of stressful AuDHD slip that drove Paul quietly nuts and that he would have noticed, prevented, and made sure I fixed before I even clocked it was a problem.

Sutti and my much-smaller luggage watch me try and solve the Expired Driver’s License Problem.

Left to myself, I still made it through. Solved the license issue in twenty minutes via California’s DMV online renewal –a minor miracle—but not without the sense of carrying two bags that grew heavier with every transfer, multiplying like gremlins despite each being small enough to carry-on.1Though I’d checked them because, well, Sutti. And then, of course, my discomfort at navigating the casino: all flashing lights and noise, a disorienting labyrinth that seems custom-designed to trip every sensory wire I have. Paul’s guided me through such spaces so many times (I realized today I’ve never even been to Vegas without him), steady and unbothered while I flinched at the clamor, blindly following the thread of his presence like it was the only map that mattered. Alone, it was another gauntlet in a day full of them.

Still, I managed, and I am managing. Day-by-day. There’s a quiet pride in that, a sense of #smallvictories—getting the licence renewed, finding the right bus, shepherding the luggage and the dog and myself through the day. But the victories don’t lessen the losses. Friends like Tony, gone. And Paul: his absence both sharp and constant—so much so it blurs into the texture of everything, distorting, making it harder to name, and still harder to breathe. Not impossible—just hard. Everything is harder without being satisfying..

Tonight, beneath it all—the meetings, the luggage, the dog walks—runs the quieter anticipation: what it would mean to play here, or anywhere, without him. For years, Paul has been both my anchor and boundary: the one who made it possible to for me play, however rarely, with others, because I knew he would be there afterwards to carry the physical side of aftercare, to give the touch I otherwise find so impossible to accept. Even before he began attending these parties with me, he called every night whether I was away or home. Bedtime check-ins, his voice steady in my ear, the reassurance at each day’s end that no matter what I did or didn’t do at the party or elsewhere, he would be there to come back to, to gather me in, make sure I made it back to him and to myself. That’s always been my real aftercare—the spine of it.

Once he could come to parties with me, he was never far away. We didn’t play together much, but he watched me play with others, his presence making that play possible, his aftercare grounding me through some deep and dark scenes. He watched and helped me say “no” when I froze, carried me out of scenes that might otherwise have left me stranded. Care that was the invisible net beneath the visible play.

In June I went to TASSP in Dallas, my first time at that gathering, first party without Paul in more than twenty-five years. I stayed only a couple of days, and I made the conscious choice not to play much at all, apart from the group detention scene. It wasn’t abstinence so much as reconnaissance: watching, listening, reminding myself I could be present without having to prove anything by throwing myself into play. Oasis will test that same edge. Do I play? With whom? Why? And if I do, what scaffolding will I need to make it feel safe, meaningful, shared, and mine?

I haven’t really seen anyone yet—just a few quick waves across the lobby this afternoon. The anticipation is still in my head, untempered by coffee or dinners or catching up. Today his absence showed itself in the unglamorous practicalities: luggage straps biting into my hands, the absurd relay of trains and buses, the birthday licence expired in the desert heat. Tomorrow, I know, it will surface in quieter ways—less visible, more tender.

For now, I’ll go down to dinner, alone. Later, at least, I will not be entirely alone in the king-sized bed. Sutti will be there, breathing steady beside me. A small comfort. But a comfort all the same.

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    Though I’d checked them because, well, Sutti.

Waiting for Inez – It’s your own time you’re wasting…

Posted on By Mija

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This bit should go without saying, but just in case. Saint Clare stories contain corporal punishment of fictional children. School girls. Fictional children are the only sorts of children who should be spanked. This is porn/erotica, not parenting advice or possible pedagogy. You’re welcome to start any comment with “I don’t believe in spanking children,” though I assume that’s the case. Me neither.

While You Wait for Inez…

Wouldn’t you know it? The bell has gone but Inez isn’t quite ready. She’s gathering her notes, straightening collar and tie, and revising her opinions, always a painful process.

While you wait, this is your chance to explore the Saint Clare back catalogue. Saint Clare’s School for Girls stories don’t begin with Inez — she’s only the latest bright spark to walk its drafty halls. Many of these earlier tales date back more than 25 years, and span the decades between the late 19th to late 20th centuries. Some are tidy and well-edited. Others are not. But they all belong.

From Pablo and Mija’s Treehouse on Saint Clare stories:

The fictional St. Clare School is a place very near and dear to Mija’s heart. It part of a space she’s had since childhood and exists largely in her mind. Prior to these stories, most of it hadn’t ever been shared with anyone. It has a long history, however, and the stories in this collection aren’t written in any sort of serial fashion. Characters change and time moves forward and backward so only the school itself is a constant.

Mija’s vision of St. Clare is roughly drawn from both her Catholic girls’ school in the United States and her imaginary vision of a British girls’ school – though the setting will seem more British than American. It also comes from her reading about schools in Britain and visits to Scottish museums and uniform shops.

Most of all it is an imaginary female space, so the stories will revolve around schoolgirls and their relationships with each other. And spanking too, of course. St. Clare School is nothing if not traditional.

I’ve cleaned the ink off a few blotters, pressed my kilts, and opened the archive. They’re not meant to be read in any special order.

 

Here they are:

Tessa’s Summer Uniform

The first of the St. Clare stories, inspired by a trip to Aitken and Niven in Edinburgh. A daughter’s transfer to St. Clare and the shopping trip for her new uniform becomes a lesson in the discipline her mother ‘felt’ at both home and school.

Can’t Buy Me Love

The second of the St. Clare stories. A new girl’s attempt to win friends at St. Clare through gifts of sweets lands her in painful trouble as she painfully learns that true friendship must be earned.

The Comfort of Small Things

The third of the St. Clare stories, co-written with my dear friend, the ever-bratty MollyB. It’s a tale of friendships between girls and women as two field hockey players  are made to pay OTK for an intimate transgression.

Red Darn

It’s wartime, complete with rationing, and someone’s not taking care of her knickers! How wasteful. Poor Fiona wants to curl up with a novel and takes a few short cuts to get more reading time. Unfortunately, this doesn’t end well for her. Written for one of the last SSCs.

A Meeting With Our Headmaster 

Mariana writes to her friend Vera about a visit to their headmaster’s study and a very painful waking up!

Emily’s Report

This is more parental (or at least paternal) than the other St. Clare stories, but the school is still there (though maybe in not-so-central a fashion). It reflects my daddy/daughter-ish vein of stories

Overdue 

A short St. Clare story written for the 2001 SSC. I’ve always been fascinated at the power that prefects and the like were given over other girls at school – including the power to punish their peers

Not a timeline. Not a canon. And the curriculum is always in flux.

Some of these stories contradict each other. Some characters have changed their names. One or two staff members appear in two places at once. No one agrees on the colour of the prefects’ blazer. And frankly, some of the punctuation and spelling is shameful.

I’m calling it “curriculum reform.” Because continuity is for boys’ schools.

One more note…

Yesterday I posted a short companion piece — “Saint Clare School Justifications or A Few Explanations for the Inconsistencies That Are Absolutely Not My Fault“on just this topic.  It offers excuses, background, mixed in with a bit of girls’ and women’s education (Written in best handwriting, naturally.)
Post TitleDate Posted
Teaser – “Inez of the Upper Fourth” – a Saint Clare Summer Saga21 July 2025
Saint Clare School Justifications or A Few Explanations for the Inconsistencies That Are Absolutely Not My Fault)22 July 2025
Waiting for Inez – It’s your own time you’re wasting…23 July 2025
Start HERE: Inez’s Detention Essay24 July 2025
Inez of the Upper IV – Cast of Characters25 July 2025
The Real Motto of Saint Clare’s School for Girls27 July 2025
The Staffroom Files Part 1: Inez of the Upper Fourth29 July 2025
Notations from Matron’s Logbook: Inez of the Upper 4th30 July 2025
Staff Meeting Transcript – Inez of the Upper IV2 August 2025
Inez’s Diary, 19 June 19553 August 2025
Clarissa’s Letters Home or The Jelly Baby Files11 August 2025
The Elwood Files – Inez of the Upper IV17 August 2025
The Lady and the Headmaster23 August 2025
The Secret Letters – Part 15 September 2025
Melodrama by Post: Aunt Gladys, Lady de Vries, and Other Disasters7 September 2025
Heard in the Charrington Household, OR,The Day Miss Gladys Came Home12 September 2025
Gladys in Trouble15 September 2025
Honour’s Lesson, Autumn 193816 September 2025
Honor's Game - Prologue - Autumn 19383 October 2025
Honor's Game - Part 1 - November 19383 October 2025
Honour’s Game – Part 2 – November – December 19384 October 2025
Honour’s Game, Part 3 – December 1938 – January 193924 October 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare – Prologue – 11 July 195516 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare: Part 1 – 8 – 12 July 195519 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part II – The Road to Saint Clare22 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part III – Gladys Williams’ Return23 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part IV – Heard From the Outer Office24 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part V – Clarissa in the Infirmary 11 December 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part VI - Inez’s Diary, 13 July 195526 December 2025
MP Visits Saint Clare – Part VII – Ghastly Gladys29 December 2025
MP Visits Saint Clare – Part VIII – Mustn’t Grumble Gladys30 December 2025
MP Visits Saint Clare – Part IX – Statement of J. Fowler, Chauffeur4 January 2026
The MP Visits Part X — A Closing Essay OR Loose Ends, Properly Filed5 January 2026

Saint Clare School Justifications or A Few Explanations for the Inconsistencies That Are Absolutely Not My Fault

Posted on By Mija

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It has been brought to my attention — mostly via very kind readers, indulgent co-authors, one formidable academic, and more than once by a pedantic spouse — that the stories set in and around Saint Clare School for Girls do not follow a coherent educational model but shifts, sometimes jarringly, between UK and US education models.

To which I reply: yes. Quite.

Or: like, totally, dude.

Saint Clare School for Girls is a patchwork, a blazer-clad chimera. But in my defence, so is/was the history of girls’ education, especially in Britain — and I have the sources (and schoolgirl excuses) to prove it.

I started Saint Clare’s School for Girls as a one off, a whim so I could write “Tessa’s Summer Uniform,” a breathless little story, inspired by my 1999 wide-eyed visit to John Lewis in London (where I got a lovely boater) and a much-missed (and oft- discussed) uniform shop in Edinburgh: Aitkin and Niven.

I never intended it to be a series — I never ment to build a world. Mary Catherine’s world building work with Saint Francis didn’t exist yet, else I probably would have been intimidated into silence. Whatever my good qualities may be, consistency is not one of them.

Yet , paradox, I love tradition. Saint Clare isn’t one story, one time, nor does it exist in one place. Instead it borrows freely and globally from girls’ boarding school fiction and history.

Yes, Saint Clare’s  traditions are occasionally contradictory. But then — so was reality. When Oxford and Cambridge were still squinting suspiciously at women applicants (Oxford grudgingly awarded degrees at a very few colleges in 1920; Cambridge waited until 1948 in any colleges, it was the late 1970s in others), clever girls with ambition often looked west. The Seven Sisters colleges in the U.S. — Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, and their ilk — had offered full degrees, rigorous coursework, and well-sharpened elbows since the 19th century.

There were lasting exchanges between British and American institutions surrounding women’s education going back to before the US Civil War. Some young women crossed the Atlantic for study and stayed in the US, changing and influencing elite US female education, making it more British. Others returned to Britain with transatlantic ideas and wearing sensible shoes. So if Saint Clare seems like it can’t quite decide whether it’s Malory Towers, Radcliffe College, or Harry Potter with Latin homework — it’s because it’s world is built on just such migrations.

Supporting Notes:

  • Girton College, founded in 1869, was the first residential college for women at Cambridge. Women were not granted full degrees until 1948.
  • Newnham College, founded in 1871, was a centre of women’s education and later a pipeline for wartime service (including codebreaking).
  • Oxford began granting degrees to women in 1920, but Cambridge waited nearly three decades longer.
  • The Seven Sisters colleges (Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Smith, Vassar, Radcliffe, Barnard, Mount Holyoke) were America’s answer to the Ivy League for women — frequently hosted or corresponded with ambitious young British students.
  • Girls from stricter British schools were sometimes dispatched to Toronto or Chicago when their Headmistresses deemed Cambridge ‘too soft.’ (This remains a highly enjoyable but currently untraceable anecdote.)
  • More notes will be added, excuses provided, and sources invented as needed.

And if all that still doesn’t explain Saint Clare’s peculiar place in the digital and literary cosmos, I must remind you: the earliest stories were written not for print, but for the glorious chaos that was 1990s Usenet. It was there that Saint Clare first emerged, polished shoes and all, into the great adolescent commons of the early internet — a place oddly well-suited to school stories, which are, after all, about rules, rebellion, longing, and the vast emotional complexity of growing up in public.

And if EVEN all THAT isn’t enough to explain Saint Clare’s particular blend of precision and anachronism, I offer this personal note: I am myself the product of an all-girls school — not a boarding school, but the sort with hymns praising Mary in assembly, pleated knee-length skirts and a frightfully strict shoe policy. My mother attended, taught there, and served as an administrator. She, and the school’s other teachers, could spot a shirttail untucked or the wrong shade of socks at fifty paces.

My secondary school was also a beautiful place, designed with girls and young women in mind. The grounds were full of roses and vases of flowers filled the classrooms where advanced placement literature and calucus were taught. It’s hard to shake the rhythm of a schoolgirl’s day or being one of many in matching uniforms, at once unique and, well, uniform, once it’s in your bones.

Beyond those,  Saint Clare’s offers a particular blend of precision and anachronism In answer I offer this final exhibit: Aitken & Niven, a now-vanished department store on George Street in Edinburgh. When I spent the summers of 1999 and 2000 there, it was gloriously — stubbornly — out of time. The upper floor was entirely devoted to racks of school uniforms for every imaginable Scottish boarding school, alongside footlockers and racks of name-tag personalization forms. The floor was staffed by women who dressed like it was still 1959 and operated with the silent authority of minor royals. In the corner, there was a tea shop so British that when I left a one-pound tip, they chased me down the stairs to return it, assuming I had left it in error.

Tell me that’s not Saint Clare in miniature.
Post TitleDate Posted
Teaser – “Inez of the Upper Fourth” – a Saint Clare Summer Saga21 July 2025
Saint Clare School Justifications or A Few Explanations for the Inconsistencies That Are Absolutely Not My Fault)22 July 2025
Waiting for Inez – It’s your own time you’re wasting…23 July 2025
Start HERE: Inez’s Detention Essay24 July 2025
Inez of the Upper IV – Cast of Characters25 July 2025
The Real Motto of Saint Clare’s School for Girls27 July 2025
The Staffroom Files Part 1: Inez of the Upper Fourth29 July 2025
Notations from Matron’s Logbook: Inez of the Upper 4th30 July 2025
Staff Meeting Transcript – Inez of the Upper IV2 August 2025
Inez’s Diary, 19 June 19553 August 2025
Clarissa’s Letters Home or The Jelly Baby Files11 August 2025
The Elwood Files – Inez of the Upper IV17 August 2025
The Lady and the Headmaster23 August 2025
The Secret Letters – Part 15 September 2025
Melodrama by Post: Aunt Gladys, Lady de Vries, and Other Disasters7 September 2025
Heard in the Charrington Household, OR,The Day Miss Gladys Came Home12 September 2025
Gladys in Trouble15 September 2025
Honour’s Lesson, Autumn 193816 September 2025
Honor's Game - Prologue - Autumn 19383 October 2025
Honor's Game - Part 1 - November 19383 October 2025
Honour’s Game – Part 2 – November – December 19384 October 2025
Honour’s Game, Part 3 – December 1938 – January 193924 October 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare – Prologue – 11 July 195516 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare: Part 1 – 8 – 12 July 195519 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part II – The Road to Saint Clare22 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part III – Gladys Williams’ Return23 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part IV – Heard From the Outer Office24 November 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part V – Clarissa in the Infirmary 11 December 2025
The MP Visits Saint Clare Part VI - Inez’s Diary, 13 July 195526 December 2025
MP Visits Saint Clare – Part VII – Ghastly Gladys29 December 2025
MP Visits Saint Clare – Part VIII – Mustn’t Grumble Gladys30 December 2025
MP Visits Saint Clare – Part IX – Statement of J. Fowler, Chauffeur4 January 2026
The MP Visits Part X — A Closing Essay OR Loose Ends, Properly Filed5 January 2026

About Uniforms: When This Schoolgirl Boards

Posted on By Mija

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[I began writing this early in the morning on July 3 planning to finish and post it before my flight to London on July 4th. In keeping with this UK trip having “nothing is easy” issues, when I called the airline at 7PM PDT to make sure that everything was set , I received the unhappy news from United that there was a whole other area of  needed documentation culminating with a permission letter from Heathrow Animal Control required for Sutti to travel with me. They were lovely and helpful. Twelve hours of sifting through medical files for needed paperwork and $70+ worth of international calls and Sutti and I were able to board. 

This, and the consequences of my procrastination/overpacking,1More on this problem later. They’re related derailed my plan to write and post this to my blog before I left, however. London was a whirlwind, meeting up with Paul, making sure Sutti recovered well from the flight… on and on. Now in much quieter Wales (we’re in lovely, delightfully named Mumbles, sort of a coastal suburb of Swansea), I’ve not been able to post or do much of anything on the internet because there are lots of connectivity issues. The owner’s struggling to getting BT to turn the internet on, and there’s basically no cellular service either, even with my UK eSIM. Serves me right for wishing so hard for a digital detox. ]

The question isn’t “should I wear a school blazer for tomorrow’s flight?” but rather “which one?”

Blue, Green, Burgundy,or Navy?
Four blazers hang ready, each with its own story—and its own discreet Latin motto waiting to be sewn on with the patch. By the end of this post you may be able to help me decide which one I should wear tomorrow for my flight from Los Angeles to London.

What? Why does a Fifty‑Something Woman Wear Her School Blazer on Planes?
Short answer? Because school blazers are perfect traveling companions, especially when flying. You may think it’s my kink talking here, but come with me on this. My blazers have been the perfect addition to my wardrobe, in and out of scenes. Longer answer? Wearing a school blazer when I fly is the single smartest travel decision I’ve ever made. Doing so combines fashion, function, and playful rebellion against the tyranny of airplane pajamas. Frankly, they look smart!2As I’m writing this I’m remembering that Olympic athletes often have a travel uniform that includes something very like a school blazer. Indeed, the origins of uniform blazers connect to the history of rowing teams.

This was my flight outfit to and from Dallas for TASSP

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  • 1
    More on this problem later. They’re related
  • 2
    As I’m writing this I’m remembering that Olympic athletes often have a travel uniform that includes something very like a school blazer. Indeed, the origins of uniform blazers connect to the history of rowing teams.

It’s the One Year Anniversary of Mija’s Room

Posted on By Mija

6 comment(s) so far. Please add yours!

 

Introductory Note: June rather than January is when the academic year changes at most colleges and universities in the United States. Academic year (AY) 2024-2025 is over; AY 2025-2026 is being rolled out. Paul left on his journey to rediscover his home in early May; I turned in my grades almost exactly a month ago today.  didn’t plan it this way, but it seems a good time to take stock of where I’ve been and where I want to go.

In June 2024, after spending more than a year messing with the layout and design while trying to figure out how to blog again, I pushed the button and made “Mija’s Room” live. My (or at least Mija’s) return to the internet was largely received with silence and disinterest, much to my delight. I wanted to write but feared answering questions, especially about Paul and me, as I figured out if I can be “Mija” again. Blogging was a way to reconnect with the parts of myself that had written stories and discussions on the ass/sss newsgroups for 15 years.

That soft launch was a year ago today this month, though I didn’t formally write a “Welcome” post until the end of September, some three months later.

Since then I’ve tried to write updates regularly, though it’s been less often than I’d like. I managed to post at least once each month, except for April.1That month I did update and add to the stories and links page, but never got around to putting up an actual post. Overall, and being kind to myself, I’m happy with having put up 39 posts and more than 25 pages. It’s been great to have a place to write about kink again in a more sustained way than Twitter/BlueSky can allow. Writing about Paul and me separating and all that accompanied that was harder than I’d expected it to be, especially when it went from a two to a three body problem. I’ve appreciated the support from and reconnection with old friends and the chance to make new ones.

Going to two national (really international) parties where I saw and experienced the changes the rising generation is making, especially in the far greater racial and gender diversity, as well as their comfort with switching is more than I could have hoped for and has been fantastic.

My “Mija” goals for this coming year include:

  1. Write at least two posts, ideally one story and one not-story, every month
  2. Be more timely in replying to readers and make replies regularly on blogs and sites I read
  3. Develop and curate my link pages so as to encourage readers and writers
  4. Inventory “The Cupboard”  (implements) and “The Wardrobe” (uniforms)
  5. Get el tercer ojo and The Punishment Book back up on the web, probably as archives rather than active sites.
  6. Working with Paul, get the The Treehouse back up and get two long-discussed special projects going
  7. Attend as many parties (national and local) as possible
  8. Attend Rosy Peaches and other Southern California munches
  9. Make new friends and reconnect with old ones
  10. Stop caring who knows I’m into spanking

Other goals include:

  1. Gett my house organized by both adding things that I want to add and clearing out the many many things I have that I “don’t find to be useful or believe to be beautiful”
  2. Figuring out the best way to meet my monthly expenses which are currently exceeding my incomings2This was expected and is okay. I’ve got a number of options, none of which involve selling plasma.
  3. Taking better care of my health, physical and mental, and all that entails, including, sadly, several surgeries
  4. Stay in touch with my kink and vanilla friends
  5. Restart calligraphy
  6. Get ready for my too-long-delayed sabbatical in AY 2026-2027
  7. Default to “no” rather than “yes” when asked to add to my work responsibilities
  8. Journal as well as keeping a calendar
  9. Don’t let the grim state of the US and world steal my joy or hope
  10. Do my best to be aware of ALL THE THINGS but don’t beat myself up for every mistake

Writing all of these down will help me remember them and be a gesture toward holding myself accountable.

These are pretty ambitious — I’ll see how well I can do. This is exactly the sort of sustained effort I’ve always struggled with so it will be a test for the efficacy of my ADHD therapy and treatment.

Let’s see how it goes…

 

  • 1
    That month I did update and add to the stories and links page, but never got around to putting up an actual post.
  • 2
    This was expected and is okay. I’ve got a number of options, none of which involve selling plasma.

Consent and Limits: Context and Consequences

Posted on By Mija

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Inspired by the wonderful podcast Sips and Smacks, Episode 108, this started back in April as a post on accountability, discipline, and punishment. However, as I tried to write it, I realized I need to write a context piece giving my take on consent and limits first. The specifics are, in places, blurry and that’s intentional. I’m not writing about any one event but rather some recent and not-so-recent experiences that inform my notions of consent, how it’s given, and what it means.

It probably goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: this post is written solely from my perspective and experiences. It’s my narrative, my truth. That’s significant because in any narrative about any relationship, each person involved experiences things from their own perspective and within their own specific context. This shapes their narrative, that is, their experience of reality. Without getting too “narrative theory-ish,”  these differences shape each person’s “truth,” meaning that there’s rarely a single version of any experience involving more than one person. 

This post, as has always been the case with any post I make about our relationship and/or play, was read by and discussed with Paul before I posted it. In this case, I explicitly asked him to check it over for anything that was untrue, though he has his own perspectives based on his own experiences and misunderstandings, so before I posted it we could agree we’re operating from the same set of facts.

All of the following are based on how things have been between us for the past 25+ years — how they will be is something we’re still figuring out, literally day-by-day, a process that’s painful and wonderful. I’m writing this, in part, to try and tease out all this so I can understand where we are and imagine where we might go. Since neither of us have figured out or agreed how things will be going forward, I’m keeping this in the present.

There’s a lot to be said for a walled garden.

Paul and I have been partnered in some form or other 1 (1997) online only, long distance, (1998-2002) long distance, with in-person visits, (2002ish-2004) living together , (2004-present) married. basically since I delurked on the newsgroup.2I delurked in February 1997. Paul wrote the first “Pablo and Mija” story in March — he posted the first two in April 1997. Before that I’d never been spanked as an adult by anyone. Paul and I did a long-distance call in August 1997 that was a directed self-spanking as a serious punishment for a troubling real life issue between the two of us. That punishment, done via landline telephones using phone cards (yes, we are that old) in my dorm room was the first (adult) spanking either of us gave or received. Yet, even before this, we’d each playfully punished and disciplined the other with uniforms, essays, and lines. Those elements came naturally to the relationship –almost from our first exchanges.

Reading over Paul’s account of it, written for me and afterwards posted to the newsgroup, the early shades of the myriad ways accountability, and consensual non-consent to discipline and punishment are part of “our scene” are visible in that first punishment. Because of this, my limits and boundaries with Paul have framed my participation in the larger spanking scene. Negotiations and limits with other people exist, and have always existed, but those limits have always been created and lived within those I have with Paul, informing whatever I’ve considered doing with other people. There are, and always have been, a lot of things I do with Paul that I don’t do with anyone else and vice versa.

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  • 1
    (1997) online only, long distance, (1998-2002) long distance, with in-person visits, (2002ish-2004) living together , (2004-present) married.
  • 2
    I delurked in February 1997. Paul wrote the first “Pablo and Mija” story in March — he posted the first two in April 1997.

Thinking About Pooh…

Posted on By Mija

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This post was inspired by this Twitter post:

I’ve got a lot of writing to post, assuming it gets finished. Two are stories, currently each over 1500 words with no ends in sight, another is a uniform post about my uniformity kink, also too long, also unfinished. Yet another is a loooong post on limits and consent, currently 2000+ words. Now that the 2024-2025 academic year is done, at least for me, I’m trying to write, that is, do “Mija writing”  for at least an hour a day. So far, so good, but nothing is yet finished.

But while Paul was packing for his epic coast-to-coast journey across the US – from Long Beach, California to New York, New York seeing friends and Big Things along the way, and then on to London (for pictures of said Big Things see his Twitter feed), he pulled out a pile of letters, cards, and postcards from me.

I wrote letters and post cards to Paul most days in the summer of 1997 and pretty regularly after.

Going through them felt like going through a time warp.  I then pulled out some of mine from Paul. There aren’t as many as he was phoning me most mornings. He was, however, much better than at picking cards, including the one he sent with birthday presents1The only ones I received from anyone that year, a fact that scandalized him. in July 1997: the worst and most wonderful summer of my life. It was the summer when I was, at least in the technical sense, homeless,2Not “sleeping-on-the-streets” homeless. I’d taken a summer job that required me to sleep in as I was supervising and teaching ESL students, working (or at least on call) 24 hours a day, six days a week. But homeless in the sense of having no fixed address. having left my marriage but, because of that, been refused a bed in my parents’ house. My sister was on the other side of the country. The newsgroup, alt.sex.spanking, where my new (read: “only”) friends were, was inaccessible as I had no phone, no computer, and no way to dial into the internet. I felt like I was disappearing, becoming a ghost. These were not times I’ve ever wanted to revisit.

But, reading through them, I remembered that Paul didn’t let me disappear. When I no longer had internet access, he found a way to call almost every night. All I had to do was find a pay phone somewhere, use my 100 minute phone card to call him, give him the pay phone’s number and he’d call back and talk to me, tell me who was doing what on the group, about his life in Scotland, remind me that I only had to make it until the fourth week of August and I could move into the university dorms. He’d tell me he loved me — that I was special and made him so happy, that he felt so full of life. And I’d remember that in our cyber world I was “Mija” and that in that world she/I got to have fun adventures. Live with Pablo Stubbs in our treehouse. He made sure I knew I was loved, insisted on it until I couldn’t help but believe him. He told me I sparkled,  called me “angel” and while we spoke he made me feel like one. I suspect I wasn’t actually very sparkly those evenings, but certainly by my birthday (July 28) I had fallen in love. That much has never changed.3Talking with our therapist the other day, I don’t think it ever will — it’s part of who I am so losing it would require me to cut out too much of myself.

Yes, of course I still have them. Wouldn’t you?

For my birthday Paul sent me a package that magically arrived exactly on my birthday. The gifts included books. They were books that introduced me to two of his favorite authors who then became fast favorites of mine: Terry Pratchett and Bill Bryson4Bryson Bear, who came to live with me at Christmas 1997, was named after Bill Bryson the author.. There were also (on cassette tapes!) recordings of Paul reading the stories he’d written for me, by then Its, Spelling, Safety, Surfing, and Sleeping. 5Despite his feeling super self-conscious, he made those recordings so I could play them through my walkman and listen his voice on nights when I couldn’t get to a phone. And this lovely card, embarrassingly addressed (on an inner envelope) to “The Angel Who Needs to Have Her Bottom Smacked.”6Not going to recount the inside… ’cause we’d all blush.

We were the cutest, really.

 

Yes! Pooh-sticks!

It’s of Winnie the Pooh, of course, our long-time bedtime favorite, something he read to me even over the phone. While he’s read many, many, many books to me, he’s read and re-read the Pooh stories, especially at times of stress and sadness. Pooh and the other animals live in such a cozy, comfortable world. Pooh is safety, a reminder that things gone wrong can be righted. That the best pleasures are small, sweet, and quiet.

Because “Sometimes,” said Pooh, “the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”

 

  • 1
    The only ones I received from anyone that year, a fact that scandalized him.
  • 2
    Not “sleeping-on-the-streets” homeless. I’d taken a summer job that required me to sleep in as I was supervising and teaching ESL students, working (or at least on call) 24 hours a day, six days a week. But homeless in the sense of having no fixed address.
  • 3
    Talking with our therapist the other day, I don’t think it ever will — it’s part of who I am so losing it would require me to cut out too much of myself.
  • 4
    Bryson Bear, who came to live with me at Christmas 1997, was named after Bill Bryson the author.
  • 5
    Despite his feeling super self-conscious, he made those recordings so I could play them through my walkman and listen his voice on nights when I couldn’t get to a phone.
  • 6
    Not going to recount the inside… ’cause we’d all blush.
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