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discipline

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

Posted on By Mija

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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…)

  • 1
    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.

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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.”

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discipline

Gladys in Trouble – 7 to 9 July 1955

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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

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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

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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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    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.”

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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    (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.

A Sunday in Disgrace – from The Punishment Book (2005)

Posted on By Mija

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[Wanna win a new London Tanner paddle? One’s being raffled this month on this very blog. You enter by posting a comment to any post or page on the blog. Each new comment or reply to another comment gets you another entry.]

This was originally a post written for The Punishment Book, but I think it’s detailed enough to be a story in its own right.

Whenever we’ve been doing real-life discipline/punishment or accountability, it’s been with Sundays as the accounting day. Many of those efforts ended with breaks in consistency, with each of us seeing them as failures and each blaming ourselves for said failures. They weren’t failures, though we wouldn’t find that out for years. I wish I could travel back in time and tell both of us that what we were doing was helping and healing. 1It was only when I had to finish my dissertation under the most unbelievable time constraints that the value of these bursts of structured discipline enforced by punishments became clear; I would not have been able to finish my PhD without them.

More on this at another time.

Yesterday was a discipline Sunday, complete with me being thrashed with our heavy London Tanner tawse in a strict uniform Paul selected and inspected. I’m going to try and write about it in the next week, but given that for the past six months or so, each week my job has managed to find new levels of stressful WFT-ery I’m not so sure I’ll get to it.

Here’s the two tweets that went up about it:

Sunday was also Paul’s birthday, though we celebrated today as well as yesterday.2My favorite part was hearing that Paul didn’t think this was the last time I’d get to make him a birthday pavlova. As part of this, I made him his favorite “cake”3. I know it’s not exactly a cake, but it’s been his traditional birthday cake since the first birthday we spent together. – raspberry pavlova. I learned how to make it online when I found out it was his favorite dessert. Because this was before recipe sites had a lot of pictures, I mistakenly thought the layers of fruit and cream went on and on. It’s one of those “mistakes” that turn out well. This pavlova was not my best, but not my worst either.

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A Sunday in Disgrace
by Mija M/F RL
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So last night, I posted that I wouldn’t be online today (Sunday) and that I was to be punished, but I didn’t know what would happen. Pablo has done a number of different things to punish me over the years we’ve been together. I suspected it would involve pain and my bottom, but I also wondered what else might be done.

Frequently, the “what else” is the hardest part.

All day yesterday, I seemed to be pretending tomorrow (today) was Monday rather than Sunday. Sunday is our traditional day for accounting the past week and planning the next. And this was an accounting I feared, while at the same time I was also afraid that maybe Pablo was going to tell me that since I wasn’t putting in *any* effort, we were going to once again put the idea of discipline (I like sparkle’s term “methodic discipline”) on hold for a while. You see, one of the things we’ve discovered is that Pablo can’t pull me along (at least not very far or very often). He can be very effective at pushing me back on track, but the primary motivation must always come from inside me.

This week it hasn’t.

My life isn’t micromanaged nor governed by many rules. Instead, the rules are very simple. There’s one household job each day (right now different rooms that are being de-cluttered) and a certain amount of time I’m supposed to spend working on my dissertation, wearing a rather uncomfortable schoolgirl uniform. And there are a few (very few) *not* rules, such as, I’m not to lie, not making new clutter, not leaving a mess in the kitchen (especially not leaving the cabinets open), and not making rustling noises with wrappers. This last extends to almost anyone around Pablo as it makes him growl.

We’ve tried more elaborate timetables and charts but chose this time out to stick with a few simple things that need to be done. This week, almost nothing got done. There were a few valid excuses on a couple of days of appointments, but I made no effort to try and work when I could. In fact, I tried very hard not to work. When I try hard at something, I generally succeed. Even more so with something like avoiding studying and cleaning, two things I’m very experienced at hiding from.

This blog and the fun of seeing it linked to from other places proved an easy distraction. And there were lots of phone calls, both made and received. Anyway, now I’m stalling because I’m embarrassed to write about being punished.

So yesterday, Pab asked if Sunday had any commitments. I searched my head high and low, but there were none. Our calendar was clear. After I’d verified that, he told me that I wasn’t doing anything all day except being disciplined. Eeek! I felt like I deserved that and was relieved that he wasn’t giving up on me, so I didn’t argue. And *then* he told me that I would have to write something for the Punishment Book saying I would be punished and *then* something on Sunday night describing what had happened. I balked, first arguing that the other authors might object to that sort of use of our blog. And then, when he pointed out that was unlikely, I started sulking and said I wouldn’t do it. Pab followed up with a promise to do it himself if I didn’t, but then after we talked, he saw that I shouldn’t have to have this space that’s been designated for me and the other authors and have it taken and used in punishing me.

At that point, these posts became his request. I’m doing them partly because he understood and respected my having this space and also because it’s probably a good thing to write about here.

Oh, and I was to be off the ‘net for 24 hours starting at midnight last night. This was a hard thing, but by this morning, when we were walking to The Coffee Bean for Sunday coffee and I was given the order of the day, I was offering to stay offline for a week if that could please be the only punishment. Pab doubted I could stay off that long, but even if I could, he wasn’t willing to revise the order given. So what was the order?

Uniform, talk, hard hairbrush spanking over my knickers, corner time with some questions to answer afterward, school work of significance, something else I’m not quite ready to talk about, followed by a very hard bare bottom hair brushing.

Anyway, to get going on the substance, after I’d had my shower this morning, I found a clean starched white shirt, grey gymslip, black shoes, green plaid tie, grey knee socks, and white knickers waiting for me on the uniform chair. I dressed very slowly, leaving the last button on my shirt and the tie for Pab to do.

After I was buttoned up, there ended up being no talk, just an inspection including a tactile check to make sure I was smoothly shaved beneath my knickers. I was, which didn’t elicit praise but rather a comment that “we wouldn’t be needing the ruler then.” (Because down there it gets ruled if it isn’t smooth when checked.) Maybe because I’d taken so long getting dressed, I found myself turned over his lap without any more talking. He told me he was going to spank me quite hard over my knickers and I could spend the day thinking of how it was going to feel tonight over my bare bottom. I don’t think he held much back and the spanking was hard and fast. The implement used is one generally used for discipline and punishment in our house. It’s a 10-inch heavy ebony hairbrush that *hurts* more than I can admit. It can take me from start to howling in about 15 seconds.

This morning I ended up howling into a pillow by the tenth smack and lost count at 60. They came very fast, hard and landed on alternating sides in almost the same spots. My sit spots to be exact.

He then had me sit in front of him for a small hug (sniffle) and a lecture, telling me I would be on a chair in the corner for a long time and wasn’t to look around or worry about what he was doing because I was being watched. There wasn’t exactly a threat of more hair brushing, but somehow I suspect hair brushing would be involved should I not stare deep into the corner until I was called out. I needed to be able to tell him what had gone wrong in the previous week, how it could be avoided in the week ahead, and what I planned to accomplish today.

So I sat bare-bottomed on the hard wooden chair and thought about the questions. My answers came pretty quickly and mostly included my laziness and the fact I’ve been trying to work in the late afternoon (procrastination) when morning is my most productive time of day. When we talked about this when corner time was over (30 minutes later!), and I told him both what I’d planned on doing and the reasons I thought I was struggling, he asked if I felt set up for failure today. As it was already getting late, I said “yes,” which kinda annoyed him, but it was really the truth. Plus, I felt a bit angry, even though there was no reason for me to be annoyed with anyone other than myself.

I went into my study, feeling sad that I couldn’t check my e-mail, put upon because I thought Pab was mad at me unfairly and started to type. Pablo got ready for a walk and then came in, and he comforted me for a bit, which made me cry. I think I was also thinking about the next hairbrush spanking, which was going to hurt a lot, as I could definitely feel the first one as I sat working.

Without the net, the work went pretty quickly. Because I’ve been quite lazy, two and a half hours was about all I could do, which still was a thousand words of a new chapter—not bad considering I’ve avoided writing anything new since August.

After I finished, Pab was still out, so I started dinner, still in my uniform, as I wasn’t sure I could take it off. I’d just finished the prep work (didn’t want to start cooking until the OTHER thing got taken care of when Pab arrived home. With flowers as an early Valentine’s and because he loves me. That was great. But he put them in the sink because he still had the other thing to do.

For the “other thing,” I had to change out of my uniform into a grey Pab’s T-shirt and keep on my white knickers.

In the eight years I’ve been doing online writing, this is something I’ve never written about. Part of my punishment/discipline tonight was what we call a “bottom cleaning” or enema. I think the reason it’s so hard for me to write about them is that anything connected with what we refer to as “my bottom hole” is the most private and invasive thing and leaves me without any resistance. Enemas are the most extreme part of what get done “down there.” I tend to cry the entire way through, not because it hurts (these aren’t cold water or punishment-style enemas) though of course they aren’t comfortable exactly, but because the process leaves me feeling totally helpless. Such was the case tonight, for the slightly soapy first and the plain water second. He held me for each of the five minutes I had to hold the water before he let me run (or walk gingerly, as the case may be) to the bathroom.

I can be bratty through spankings (though not punishment ones, of course), but even the mention of anything anal, especially the “e thing,” tends to make me suddenly quiet and submissive. By the time the second one had ended, I was curled up on the bed. Pab came in after putting the e-stuff away, told me there was one last thing, and sent me to the corner. I stood there very, very still, trying to get my head around the idea of being spanked very hard with the brush. By then, I knew I deserved it, but I still felt afraid. The brush is used for punishment for good reason. There’s no implement I like, but my feelings about the ebony brush run on a spectrum between fear and loathing. Still more because even worse than the cane, it leaves very few lasting marks and can be (and has been) used daily on occasion. Before I went to the corner, I very softly asked if he could gag me for the hair brushing as I was worried I was going to end up screaming.

Corner time seemed very brief before I was called over to Pab’s lap. I sat and embraced him, apologized for the previous week, and told him how much better I was going to be in the coming week. He had the brush in his hand. He comforted me a bit and allowed that I was right to be scared of the brush. He’d put out an old, clean cotton shirt and told me to fashion whatever sort of gag I needed. Then he pulled down my knickers almost to my knees and helped me over his lap. I twisted the shirt into a sort of rope I could bite on. Panic already had tears running down my cheeks.

Pablo patted my bottom.

“What’s this?” He asked.

I took the shirt out, wondering if he was pointing out my bareness as he reached forward to pull my right hand into the small of my back, effectively pinning me.

“My bare bottom. Sir.”

“No,” he said, patting a bit harder. “What do you *feel*?”

I froze for a second. Hope rose a bit within me.

“Your hand. Sir.”

Maybe it just meant a warm-up? That would certainly help, though.

“Right. What sort of girls get hand-spanked on their bare bottoms?”

I answered, feeling a bit embarrassed, and also feeling my knickers slip down past my knees.

“Little girls?”

“What sort of little girls?”

“Um…” Goodness. Oh right. “Naughty little girls. Sir.”

“That’s right. I don’t think I need the brush tonight. But remember how hard my hand is. You’re not getting off entirely.”

And that was true. The hand spanking was long and hard and made me cry. He spanked my whole bottom and up and down my thighs. He then held me across his lap and lectured a bit on the horrible fate (mostly the bare-bottom hair brushing) that would befall me if I had another week like the previous one.

I won’t. Even with my bottom still burning more than three hours later, I still feel grateful. When I asked why he’d not hairbrushed me, Pab said he always wanted a punishment to be no more than enough. It was enough. This week will be different.

While Pab made us mashed potatoes to go with my orange pork carnitas, I arranged my flowers. He told me the bottom cleaning was going to be part of our Sunday ritual from now on and I squeaked a bit. I know he likes how quiet and submissive I am afterward.

We’ll wait and see on that last thing. With any luck, the soap and bag will go back to lurking under the bathroom sink.

And a new week begins tomorrow for this newly good girl.

 

  • 1
    It was only when I had to finish my dissertation under the most unbelievable time constraints that the value of these bursts of structured discipline enforced by punishments became clear; I would not have been able to finish my PhD without them.
  • 2
    My favorite part was hearing that Paul didn’t think this was the last time I’d get to make him a birthday pavlova.
  • 3
    . I know it’s not exactly a cake, but it’s been his traditional birthday cake since the first birthday we spent together.

About Uniforms Part 1: Introduction – Where Did That #dailyuniform come from?

Posted on By Mija

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

Happy February!1This started out as “Happy New Year.” I’ve been working on this damn post since November 2024. Here’s to hoping 2025 is better than we’re expecting.

Think of this as an introduction to a series of posts. The first, hopefully, of many, though frankly, I’ve never been one to finish multi-part stories. But, you know, it could happen so let’s be optimistic

This, much as is the case with spanking, may be a topic I can write about forever.

If you follow me on Twitter or Bluesky, you may have noticed that for several months, I’ve been posting (terrible) selfies wearing school uniforms, sometimes remembering to tag them with what I thought was my own made-up hashtag, #dailyuniform.2But of course, others use it for other stuff, too. Why? Well, frankly, I’ve been in the spanking scene since 1997. Even allowing for ones I’ve given away as my size changed, I’ve got A LOT of uniforms. Why not enjoy them?3Like spanking, uniform kink is a habit for me. The more I do it, the more I think about it, the more I want to indulge. And on and on.

The way I think about uniforms and what they mean to me has several facets. So, let’s get started with my uniform biography.

A bit of the inventory – December 2023 – apologies for the terrible lighting.

(more…)

  • 1
    This started out as “Happy New Year.” I’ve been working on this damn post since November 2024.
  • 2
    But of course, others use it for other stuff, too.
  • 3
    Like spanking, uniform kink is a habit for me. The more I do it, the more I think about it, the more I want to indulge. And on and on.
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