Mija’s Room

Category: punishment

STORY: 4th of July Fireworks (2006) Real life

Posted on By Mija

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Uncredited photo.

This was originally posted on The Punishment Book blog – in 2006. 20  years ago!1It was also posted on Mija’s Room two years ago, before this blog went public.  

As with many story from the PB, it does make me wonder how ADHD wasn’t diagnosed earlier.

“Bed!”

“But I want to stay up a bit longer,” I argued.

“You have a long day at work tomorrow,” Pablo replied (that was true) smacking me not-very-hard as I waked walked by.

“See,” I teased, giggling a bit, “even you don’t want me to go to bed.  That smack was pretty half-hearted.”

“The ones I’m going to give you in the bedroom won’t be.”

I gulped.  My guilt came flooding back.  How could I have forgotten about this morning?

(more…)

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    It was also posted on Mija’s Room two years ago, before this blog went public.
discipline

MP Visits Saint Clare – Part VII – Ghastly Gladys

Posted on By Mija

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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..

Archivist Foreword

The document that follows was written in the back seat of a carefully maintained Humber on the afternoon of 12 July 1955, shortly after its author had been summoned to the Headmaster’s study at Saint Clare’s. Although Gladys Williams was no longer a pupil of the school, this distinction proved to be of limited practical importance.

Readers familiar with the school story will recognise the situation without difficulty. A former girl returns, meaning well, and finds herself required to explain her conduct, to wait, and to remain present. The rules, once learned, are not easily forgotten, and are applied with particular confidence to those who ought to know better.

This entry does not attempt to set out the facts of the incident in full; those are recorded elsewhere, and in proper order. What Gladys provides instead is a running account of the afternoon as she experienced it: the Headmaster’s study, the formalities observed, the tea tray, the silences, and the journey that followed. She writes quickly, with feeling, and at some length. This too will be familiar to readers of school diaries.

With this entry, the Saint Clare record pauses. Lessons resume, bells ring, and the school continues. The account that follows travels on.

The MP Visits Saint Clare – Previously posted

Gladys’ Diary

12 July 1955

Later (the Head’s Study; continued in the car)

I won’t forget today, no matter how old I get or how many pages I scribble. Ghastly. Utterly ghastly. There were so many awful bits I can’t even decide which was the worst, nor which to write first. Now that we are back on the road I am writing as fast as I can, partly so I don’t have to look up. If I don’t look at him, perhaps Gerald won’t speak to me. I can feel him watching me over the tops of his papers, but I go on as if I were completely absorbed.

Instead of letting me slink away after that wretched drive up from London, Gerald marched us straight down the dim corridor to the Head’s study. The cabbage smell clung to the walls and our shoes echoed like a sentence already passed. He opened the door, stood back, and waited for me to go in first, as if I were being presented for inspection. We weren’t expected — not then — but he behaved as if the place had been waiting for him all along, papers under his arm, that terrible air of purpose he puts on when he’s decided something. I think Miss Kelley tried to say something, but I barely caught her eye before I was all but pushed into the Head’s office.

Mr Lewis blinked at us from behind his spectacles, plainly surprised to see a party from London descend on him without warning. Gerald merely inclined his head and said, smooth as you please, “A word, if you please.”

The Head invited us as if we had not already imposed ourselves, and then, almost absurdly, rang for a tea tray with sandwiches .

These niceties over, Gerald turned on me, using that dreadful low voice of his, the one that weighs more than shouting ever could.

“Miss Williams,” he said, quiet and clipped, “I wish you to tell the Head exactly what you have done.”

There was nowhere to look. My heart sank straight through my shoes. I am not a pupil; I have not been one for years. And yet there I stood, spluttering and stammering like a schoolgirl hauled up for passing notes. Gerald would have none of it. I had to admit everything: Clarissa’s letter with Inez’s enclosed, the request to send it on to her mother, my saying yes, my writing a cover note and posting them off to Lady de Vries. I told it in silly little scraps, and every bit felt worse once the Head had heard it. The words slid out like stones, and the room, large though it was, felt very small as the shelves of books seemed to close in around me.

When I finally finished, Mr Lewis did not address me at all, but remarked, almost to the furniture, “Ah, so that is how she knew.” The “she” was certainly not me.

Then, more formally, he straightened in his chair and addressed us both. He was polite, firm but almost apologetic, and said the School could not possibly condone letters carried privately. He paused and added (as I could have told him) that as I am no longer a student, my part in the matter was not his affair, but one to be settled between my brother-in-law and me.

Gerald nodded, but replied that he wished the matter on record, and asked that Clarissa be called.

Mr Lewis went to the door and asked Miss Kelley to have a prefect bring Clarissa to his office. We heard her give instructions to “Fairfax” — a prefect, I suppose — just as one of the kitchen maids came in with the clattering tea tray. Then, adding to the whole Lewis Carroll feeling of the afternoon, the Head apologised for the tray’s “meagre fare,” offhandedly blaming our sudden appearance for leaving the kitchen unprepared.

What followed was an extreme bout of conversational awkwardness. He talked about anything except what we were really there for: the heat, the gardens, the fête already past, the coming holidays. His small talk sounded thin and nervous to me. Gerald answered in kind, dry but courteous, as he ate sandwiches and drank two cups of tea. I never touched mine. No one seemed to notice. Everyone else was fed. The silences between the men grew longer and heavier until they felt like stones piling up. Despite the tea, my mouth was completely dry, and I contributed nothing.

After what felt like hours, but was probably no more than twenty minutes, Clarissa arrived, walking through the doorway as if to her doom, her legs so embarrassingly bare and vulnerable in her field hockey skirt, grass stains still on her knees. I saw the shock on her face when she took in Gerald and then me, sitting there together. Her eyes were huge and round. I heard Miss Kelley say something low to the prefect as Clarissa crossed the threshold. Mr Lewis remained at his desk.

Gerald didn’t waste a moment. After the briefest of greetings, he took Clarissa through the same wretched confession he’d forced out of me, making her tell the Head exactly what she had done. My stomach clenched and I was glad I hadn’t touched the tea. I felt her eyes on me, begging for help, but I couldn’t meet them.

I won’t pretend I listened to every word. I heard her first stumbles, the brave little resolves, the determined refusal to betray Inez. Clarissa would not, could not, name her. Gerald repeated my admissions for her benefit and scolded her for involving me, his voice dry and clipped, as if this were all part of a lesson that needed to be properly understood. Mr Lewis sat very straight in his chair and said nothing, nodding only occasionally.

When it was done, the Head stood, cleared his throat, and spoke with that careful, official politeness of his, saying he was satisfied he understood the situation. He added that the School could not be party to further discussion of family discipline, and that Gerald was welcome to make use of the study. Then, murmuring something about other duties, he left the room.

The door shut behind him and, just like that, the air changed. We were alone.

(more…)

Gym Rules (2011) – Reader Request

Posted on By Mija

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Below is a post from The Punishment Book, a domestic discipline blog I hosted about 15 years ago that ran for about eight years. There were a number of friends in various sorts of relationships who wrote for it. Someone recently asked me what sort of things got posted there. There were posts like this one that were basically accounts of discipline/punishments. Also, discussions of what discipline and punishment meant to us. We could go on and on… and we did.

My personal archive of posts reads like proof of AuDHD. If only someone had said.

[This post has been written twice. The first draft got eaten by TypePad (boo!). I thought maybe this was a sign that this story wasn’t meant to be shared, but Zille and Paul convinced me that if I didn’t share the story here, pictures of my bottom and its cane marks could end up on Twitter. Since the last thing I want to do is show my bottom to the world for being caned for not going to the gym enough, and thus prove why I need to go to the gym more often, I’m busy re-typing this on the bus.]

As those of you who read here and / or Spanking Blog1Hey! Spanking Blog! So glad to see you’re still out there.  know, I’ve asked Paul to help me make better use of my gym membership by giving me 49 strokes of the cane, that’s one for every dollar my membership costs, any week I don’t make it to the gym at least three times. Paul gets to pick everything about the caning except the number of strokes. He can choose the cane he wants, what I wear and what position I’m caned in. This week I only went to the gym once. My reckoning was last night (Sunday).

Now I wasn’t entirely sure I would really get caned for missing the gym this week. I had some very good excuses. First, my gym isn’t air conditioned and last week it was very hot several days. So I didn’t go to the gym for fear of getting over-heated. Then my mother showed up with all her loveliness and drama. I spent one whole day running errands with her. So I didn’t go to the gym that day either. Saturday was taken up with a family party. I couldn’t go to the gym Saturday. And Sunday I had to go out to brunch with a friend of my parents. And then I had to come home and get my writing sample ready. I couldn’t go to the gym on Sunday. Suddenly all the days were gone and a week had past with only one gym trip. But of course Paul would understand.

He understood and even agreed I had very good reasons for not having gone to the gym. But that didn’t matter. I hadn’t gone and I’d asked him to punish me, to cane me, if I didn’t go. I think if he had made the rule, he might have let me off this week. Maybe not. But because I asked for this and didn’t say “except for weeks when it’s really hot or I’m really busy” he followed through. And that’s right. My gym opens at 5:30 AM and is open until 11:00 PM. We make time for things that are important and getting good use out of my gym membership and spending some time on my body is important. Truth be told, for all that my excuses are good, I could have gone.

Paul let me know yesterday afternoon that I was going to be caned. I struggled a bit with the knowledge. I was in the midst of wrestling with the text of my writing sample and couldn’t quite make room in my head for the idea of being caned. So I buried myself in my work and didn’t think about it. Even as evening progressed (with me still working away) I was in denial. You see, not only is my dad with us this week, my mom is here as well. They sleep in the bedroom next to ours. And unlike my dad, my mom is a light sleeper.

When I came out of the bathroom after doing all those evening things, the nursery cane was at the end of the bed. He was going to go through with it.

I thought about calling safeword on the caning. I mean, my mom.

But the thing is, part of me didn’t want to. I want to be held accountable. I asked for this. So I cowardly tried to slide into bed with the vague hope that if I fell asleep fast (all that writing and editing had made me tired) Paul wouldn’t cane me. After all, he’s always trying to get me to sleep. He sternly told me not to get into bed.

So I took a deep breath and stood next to the bed, after closing the door, and, rather sadly, pushing my bed stool up against it. I hoped that like last week, this week he’d be using the cane over the knee (thats’ what the nursery cane, which is short and thin, is made for). Sure enough, he sat down on the bed and had me pull down my pjs. I took them down and climbed over his lap. He spent a good amount of time adjusting my position, turning the top of my body closer to the head of the bed and my bottom further down his leg. What he was doing wasn’t clear to me until the first stroke landed.

He was giving himself more room to swing so the tip of the cane would land harder.
The first stroke landed like a cut. The thing is, the nursery cane is very very thin and really really stings. That was true last week, but from the start it was clear this caning was a lot harder than the one the week before before. But, my brain cried, as I considered screaming, my parents are in the next room. So I pulled my hands forward (my arms had been folded behind my back) and started counting off the strokes on my right fingers, one at a time, while on my left I kept track in groups of twelve.

The thing about the thin cane is that it really stings. When Paul used it on me it felt more like a switch than a cane. By the time he reached twelve I could feel the tip marks crossing. The sting was terrible and I fought with myself to lie still. Paul will probably say I wasn’t still, but I’m sure I mostly was. As I counted each one off it seemed an impossible number was left. When he reached twenty-four I started to panic and tears welled up in my eyes. I tried to keep my breathing slow and even because I knew if I started crying I might make noise. And making noise, being heard by my parents seemed much worse than even the hurt the cane was doing.

Strange as it may seem, at thirty-six I felt a sense of relief because it meant there were only twelve left. However much they might hurt, I could get through twelve more. Paul sped up and the strokes landed harder still and faster, making me gasp into the sheets. My feet fluttered as I tried hard not to kick. After quite a build-up of pain, it ended in a rush — an almost “is that all there is?” moment. Then the burn started to soak in.
Paul kept me over his lap as he rubbed some LUSH dream cream into my bottom. It stings, but in a soothing sort of way. It hurt enough that I teared a bit as we snuggled close but I expected all signs to be gone by morning. This is so not the case. Almost 24 hours later and I’m still sitting tenderly, the right side of my bottom is still hot to the touch. Yes, this is me pouting a bit.

But not too much. I did, after all, ask for this. And I’m sure this week I will make it to the gym at least three times. Why am I sure? First because I want to. Second because my bottom really hurts. And third, my parents will not be here next weekend. Paul has let it be known that should he have to cane me next week, I won’t be getting off with the nursery cane.
I’m going to be such a good girl. No, really.

Posted by Mija on 17 October 2011 at 09:46 PM

Lots of posts like this one. Some of mine will be part of The Treehouse site when it goes live. There are also a couple here: Careless Girl (2006),  A Sunday in Disgrace.

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    Hey! Spanking Blog! So glad to see you’re still out there.
discipline

NEW STORY – Naughty Arabella Gets the Sack – A Krampus at Saint Clare Story

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Foreword:

Every so often, a Saint Clare story arrives from an unexpected corner—this one came from an offhand comment on Bluesky about how “Arabella” is the name of a girl who is absolutely up to mischief. That joke blossomed into an open challenge to write a story with “Naughty Arabella” somewhere in the title.

https://bsky.app/profile/mija-again.bsky.social/post/3m754wu5vrc2n
This is my offering.

Naughty Arabella Gets the Sack – Winter 1925 at Saint Clare’s takes place firmly within the larger Saint Clare universe, but outside the Inez of the Upper IV arc. It introduces an earlier generation of girls—and a long-standing bit of school folklore involving a seasonal visitor who is, essentially, OFSTED with hooves. Krampus pays annual calls to Saint Clare’s, but this year he meets his match in Arabella Fairchild: blonde, brilliant, catastrophically charming, and overdue for supernatural accountability.

The result is part school-story romp, part institutional mythmaking, and wholly Saint Clare’s.

 STORY – Naughty Arabella Gets the Sack

Chapter I – In Which Saint Clare’s Watches a Drama Unfold

Saint Clare School for Girls slept beneath a frosty moon in the winter of 1925, its chimneys puffing industriously and its corridors stretching away into dim, draughty mystery. Most of the Second Form were fast asleep in their flannel nightgowns, except for those peering nervously from their beds, listening to the unmistakable CLONK–CLONK–CLONK of something decidedly not school-sanctioned approaching.

Arabella Fairchild, however, was not in her nightgown.

Oh no.

Arabella stood at the centre of the corridor, dressed in her full uniform—immaculate gymslip, snowy white shirt, hair ribbons neat at either side of her head—because Arabella firmly believed that if one must face the supernatural, one should at least look as though one were about to captain the lacrosse team.

She was, as the Headmistress had once remarked in a despairingly admiring tone, “the sort of blonde beauty who, in six years, during her first season, will oblige her father to consider hiring armed guards1Borrowed from Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather (I think). in addition to the usual chaperones.”

Arabella knew this.

Arabella relied on this.

But Arabella’s beauty had never yet faced Krampus.

Girls Who Watched

Behind her, in the rows of narrow iron bedsteads, half the Second Form crouched behind blankets, whispering furiously.

“She’s done it again,” hissed Primrose Pembury, who had once taken the blame for Arabella’s practical joke involving a frog in the Latin master’s hat.

“And she’ll get away with it again,” muttered Clara Dawlish, who had written one hundred lines after Arabella persuaded her to switch name-tags on the exam papers.

“I’d like to see her caught. Just once!” whispered Lottie, who had been given detention when Arabella accidentally (on purpose) set off a smoke-bomb during sewing.

Little Sally Billings (who had been framed for the “ink-in-the-cocoa” incident) clutched her hot-water bottle and breathed, “Look at her! Smirking like she owns the place!”

The girls’ resentment simmered in the cold air.

This was the year Arabella Fairchild would receive her comeuppance.

They could feel it.

(more…)

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    Borrowed from Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather (I think).
discipline External shot of St. Clare School in the afternoon sun. In the foreground is a girl in a white shirt laying on a cot.

The MP Visits Saint Clare Part V – Clarissa in the Infirmary 1

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“The MP Visits Saint Clare” continues

Earlier instalments:

Further particulars may be found in the Foreword below.

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: 42,924 / 50,000 words

Foreword

From the Archivist

Having concluded Miss Kelley’s contribution to the Charrington Papers—written, as ever, from a strategically advantageous desk—we proceed to the next document set, in which Saint Clare’s own medical wing weighs in.

Clarissa Charrington’s transfer to the infirmary on the evening of 12 July was recorded with the calm efficiency peculiar to boarding school matrons, who tend to regard tears as symptoms, disobedience as diagnosis, and cod-liver oil as cure. Matron Whitlock’s notes provide the official version: measured, sensible, and serenely unconcerned with the child’s sense of dignity.

Clarissa’s corresponding diary entry presents something rather different: a young heroine stunned by shock, shame, and a games skirt that suddenly felt two inches too short for public consumption.

Between the two, the reader may triangulate something like truth.

CLARISSA CHARRINGTON – DIARY

Entry 1 – In the Headmaster’s StudyMiss Kelley comforts crying girl.

12 July 1955 – Afternoon

It happened. It truly happened. I keep writing the words to make them real, but my hands won’t stop shaking. Papa asked Mr Lewis for the room, and then for me, and he was perfectly calm – horribly calm, the kind of calm that means there is no escape. I thought I knew what it would feel like, being in trouble with Papa, but it is worse when he doesn’t even raise his voice. Worse than shouting. Worse than anything.

I was marched in still in my games kit, looking a fright. I had grass on my socks and my blouse wasn’t properly tucked in, and all I could think was that if I’d known he was coming, I would at least have changed. But I didn’t know. No one warned me. Georgie Fairfax only said the Head wanted me at once. (more…)

fiction Card with post title on it.

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

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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..

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…)

discipline

Honour’s Lesson, Autumn 1938

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The brief tale that follows is not of Saint Clares’ in the 1950s, nor yet of the Upper IV. It comes from an earlier generation, set long before Inez first entered the school gates. In the unsettled autumn of 1938, Ned and Honour de Vries were newly wed. Told not through documents, but in the style of Regency romance, this story offers not a school record but a portrait of love, discipline, and loyalty in a world tilting toward war. Attentive readers may recognise here the same threads: secrecy, obedience, defiance, so important to Inez’s own story.

It was a London drawing room, heavy with smoke and restless laughter, late in the autumn of 1938. The newspapers still proclaimed peace, yet every sensible man felt the ground quiver beneath the headlines. Ned stood aloof, a whisky glass untouched in his hand, his eyes fixed on Honour, his young bride—radiant as a flame in pale silk, perilously bright.

The pale gown softened her beauty but betrayed her youth, making her seem more the debutante she had been months before than the worldly wife she fancied herself. Her laugh – pitched a shade too high, lingering a breath too long – drew the eager attention of every young man in the room. They mistook her inexperience for daring, her girlishness for sophistication.

When she mimicked the Prime Minister, tilting an imaginary umbrella and wobbling her voice in his plummy tones, the circle of young men roared with delight. She flushed with triumph, careless of the older women’s sharp glances and of the attaché in the corner whose eyes saw her not as a beauty but as a lever to be pulled.

Ned’s jaw tightened. To the others, she was a charming bride showing off her sparkle. To him, she was a bright flame catching against dry kindling. He saw the peril of innocence mistaken for invitation, the danger of brilliance wielded without care. He sensed gossip already clinging to her like sickly perfume, a risk that could be stored, repeated, used. He admired her wit – how could he not? – yet threaded through the gaiety he heard something else: the false brightness of a society pretending it was not on the verge of war.

Once they left the party, he let his mask slip, stopped hiding his displeasure. They rode home in near silence, the hum of the motor car the only sound between them. Honour was still flushed with triumph, replaying her witticisms, humming, smiling as though she had carried the evening herself. To her, it had been another drawing room lark, a stage on which she sparkled. To Ned, it was a reminder that he was already driving headlong into a war declared in whispers, a phantom that would end only when the real one began.

At last she noticed his tension. “You’re cross with me,” she said, light as champagne bubbles. “Were you jealous, my husband? I did not think you insecure. It was but a bit of fun to pass the time.”

“You enjoy being noticed,” Ned replied flatly.

She smiled, careless. “Is that a crime, my Darlington?”

He did not turn his head. His gloved hands rested steady on his knees, his gaze fixed ahead.

“You enjoyed yourself,” he said finally, his voice level. “Too much.”

(more…)

discipline

Gladys in Trouble – 7 to 9 July 1955

Posted on By Mija

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The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a series of documents—some official, pulled from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others are more intimate, drawn from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. Some will appear typed and orderly; others will 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 responses and ideas are included in the archives and may shift and change the story’s evolution.

Foreword

From the archivist:

The Charrington Papers, of which the present collection forms a small but telling part [see also Heard in the Charrington Household, Melodrama by Post, and The Secret Letters] 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.

Gerald’s concern, as his marginal notes repeatedly remind us, was not primarily with his own standing in the Commons (never more than modest) but with the long-term durability of the Charrington name. For him, a single ill-judged phrase, if repeated outside the family, could metastasise into a reputation for “wildness”—a quality, in his view, both unbecoming in a woman of five-and-twenty and indelible once attached. That his sister-in-law’s lapses might be mentioned in the Hertfordshire Gazette or (worse) among the parents at Saint Clare School was to Gerald a matter of great peril.

Gladys, for her part, complies outwardly—she had little choice—but her replies, clipped and formally correct, show a mastery of what might be called “obedience with barbs.” She acknowledges each of Gerald’s terms in turn, yet her diction—quotation marks, ironic phrasing, and finally the notorious sign-off, “Your ever-dutiful sister-in-law”—betrays a simmering contempt. Gerald, pen in hand, read her words as if they were a draft to be marked, underlining insolent turns of phrase and scribbling anxious comments about “damage” and “reputation” in the margins. His annotations, reproduced here, are at once the most revealing and the most inadvertently comic element of the collection.

The reader may choose to treat this exchange as a serious episode in the policing of female conduct in postwar Britain. Equally, one may detect in it the rhythms of a domestic farce: the ponderous elder brother pronouncing “terms” as if from the bench, the young woman skewering him with her pen even as she submits, and the lurking fear that the Gazette might carry word of it all. Either reading is legitimate; indeed, part of the value of the documents lies in their capacity to sustain both.

Letter from Gerald Charrington to Miss Gladys Williams

 

7 July 1955

My beloved sister Gladys,

Following our interview in the study this morning, I set down the following terms, which will remain in force until further notice:

      1. Your allowance is suspended. You will be provided with necessities at my discretion, but no sums for amusements, travel, or frivolities.
      2. You are not to remain in this house without either myself or Mrs. Fielding in residence. Neither are you to absent yourself on visits without my express approval.
      3. You will attend a course of domestic science at the St. Albans Institute. Mrs. Fielding will make the arrangements. Attendance is not optional.
      4. You will accompany me to Saint Clare School later this month, to answer directly for your actions in the matter of your niece and her friend.
      5. Fielding will remain in residence and will report daily by post. In addition, I will require  a weekly written account of your progress from your teachers at the domestic science institute..

As to your question of when these restrictions will be lifted: that will be when I am confident in your maturity and judgment.

Gladys, I care for you as I have always done. It is because of that affection that I cannot allow you to go on as you have. Think of this less as a punishment than as a remedy, one that may yet set you on the sounder course you require.

I trust you understand me clearly. Please respond to this letter and indicate your understanding and agreement with each of the tenms. 

Gerald H. Charrington

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discipline

Notations from Matron’s Logbook: Inez of the Upper 4th

Posted on By Mija

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How to Read “Inez of the Upper IV”

The story of Inez de Vries unfolds through a series of documents—some official, pulled from the prim and unforgiving files of Saint Clare’s School for Girls; others are more intimate, drawn from the journals, letters, and scribbled notes of the girls themselves. These pieces will be posted gradually, over the next two weeks, allowing the narrative to take shape not through a single telling, but through fragments. Some will appear typed and orderly; others will retain the texture of handwriting, rendered in a cursive-style font to honor the green-ink originals. 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.

Use the comments to build the story together: ask questions, float theories, invent what’s missing. What do you. think lies between the lines? The archive is incomplete—but the story lives in the spaces between.

Introduction to Notations from Matron’s Logbook

Based on yesterday’s and today’s staff memos, if you’re wondering how the adults at Saint Clare’s have been coping with the ripple effects of Inez de Vries’s behavior—well, Matron does not “cope” when it comes to school girls. Matron examines, documents, and judges.

For those unfamiliar with the role: the school Matron isn’t quite a nurse, not quite a governess, and certainly not one to cross. She oversees the infirmary, enforces standards of health, hygiene, and attitude. At Saint Clare’s she doles out cod-liver oil, brisk dismissals, and the occasional perfectly legal bottom-smacking. Given with her broad hand and firm affection, of course.

This log entry, made the Sunday after Inez’s transgressions and disciplinary theatrics, gives us a glimpse into the clinical eye (and moral clarity) of one Patricia Rowntree, Matron of Saint Clare’s since before the Armistice. She has no time for teenaged drama or malingering.

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blog

Spanking Stories – My Fictional Origins

Posted on By Mija

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This post got super long. There’s some good content (not by me) after the jump though. Plus, I manage to write about my childhood without being grim, so there’s that.

And, I’m also posting it at 2:15 AM so it’s very likely there are a lot of grammar, spelling and other errors. Sorry?  

I can’t remember a time I wasn’t interested in spanking. There was never a time I wasn’t looking for and noticing spanking references in popular culture.

I mean, interested, in a way that, even when I was 5 or younger, I knew no one could ever know, that I could never tell anyone about. My fascination has always seemed strange, even1Or maybe especially. to me. I was “spanked” too frequently and too hard throughout my childhood in ways that, even for the 1970s and 1980s, were abusive. I hated and feared being punished — even now I  remember how terrified I felt. The horrible anticipation; all these things that, when chosen as an adult, when I know I’m safe and loved, are scary in a good and exciting way, were frightening and shameful beyond belief when I was a child.2I knew I had to be truly bad to need to be punished so severely and so often, you see. In retrospect, my sister and I actually were unnaturally well-behaved children; the “trouble” we got into was mostly for dishonesty while trying to cover up mistakes and accidents (so many from ADHD as it turns out) so as not to get punished.

But even so, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel a shameful rush of excitement when I saw a spanking on television, or when another child mentioned they were afraid they might get spanked (my child-self’s lack of sympathy for my classmates appalls me), I could feel my heart pound harder, my face flush.3I don’t think I ever spoke about being spanked with anyone other than my sister. Maybe because by the time I was 7 or 8 I knew that the severity and frequency of my “getting it” was a lot more than my classmates. So I just listened. A lot. Best of all though was coming across accounts of spankings in books. Those stories I returned to over and over.  I’ve joked that I learned to read and became such a great researcher, if I do say so myself, looking for anything about spankings across literature, history, and social science.

A number of people (mostly female) over the years have written about reading the strapping scene in Laura Wilder‘s Little House in the Big Woods. A friend commented once that her book eventually opened to those pages on its own, much to her embarrassment. Likewise. I received the whole set of the Little House books for my First Communion when I was seven, meaning I no longer needed to wait my turn to check then out from the library.

The passage we all remember is:

“Aunt Lotty had gone, and Laura and Mary were tired and cross. They were at the woodpile, gathering a pan of chips to kindle the fire in the morning. They always hated to pick up chips, but every day they had to do it. Tonight they hated it more than ever.

Laura grabbed the biggest chip, and Mary said:

“I don’t care. Aunt Lotty likes my hair best, anyway. Golden hair is lots prettier than brown.”
Laura’s throat swelled tight, and she could not speak. She knew golden hair was prettier than brown. She couldn’t speak, so she reached out quickly and slapped Mary’s face.

Then she heard Pa say, “Come here, Laura.”

She went slowly, dragging her feet. Pa was sitting just inside the door. He had seen her slap Mary.

“You remember,” Pa said, “I told you girls you must never strike each other.”

Laura began, “But Mary said–”

“That makes no difference,” said Pa. “It is what I say that you must mind.”

Then he took down a strap from the wall, and he whipped Laura with the strap.

Laura sat on a chair in the corner and sobbed. When she stopped sobbing, she sulked. The only thing in the whole world to be glad about was that Mary had to fill the chip pan all by herself.

Is it any wonder I’m kinked? I mean, there’s a strapping and corner time. Followed by aftercare — something that was not a feature of the spankings/beatings of my childhood:

At last, when it was getting dark, Pa said again, “Come here, Laura.” His voice was kind, and when Laura came he took her on his knee and hugged her close. She sat in the crook of his arm, her head against his shoulder and his long brown whiskers partly covering her eyes, and everything was all right again.

She told Pa all about it, and she asked him, “You don’t like golden hair better than brown, do you?”

Pa’s blue eyes shone down at her, and he said, “Well, Laura, my hair is brown.”

She had not thought of that. Pa’s hair was brown, and his whiskers were brown, and she thought brown was a lovely color. But she was glad that Mary had had to gather all the chips.”

That passage was easy to type. While I copied the text, I could have written it from memory.4Except in my memory that last line is “But she was *still* glad that Mary had to gather all the chips.”

Read on, this is a long post, but if you liked the above it’s (probably) worth it.

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  • 1
    Or maybe especially.
  • 2
    I knew I had to be truly bad to need to be punished so severely and so often, you see. In retrospect, my sister and I actually were unnaturally well-behaved children; the “trouble” we got into was mostly for dishonesty while trying to cover up mistakes and accidents (so many from ADHD as it turns out) so as not to get punished.
  • 3
    I don’t think I ever spoke about being spanked with anyone other than my sister. Maybe because by the time I was 7 or 8 I knew that the severity and frequency of my “getting it” was a lot more than my classmates. So I just listened. A lot.
  • 4
    Except in my memory that last line is “But she was *still* glad that Mary had to gather all the chips.”
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