Before the internet

It's hard to remember how hard it was to explore a fascination with the spanking fetish in the days before the Internet.  There's no doubt I was fascinated for years at a time when I had to search really hard to find anything to stimulate my interest - perhaps part of the reason why I took to writing my own spanking fiction.  I was aware that their were magazines like Janus, Martinet, Spank and Sting (from reading The English Vice by Ian Gibson from cover to cover in my local reference library) but assumed that it was only in places like Soho that they would be found and I wasn't likely during my teenage years to have unfettered access to such places.

When I started applying to universities and getting invited for interviews two things happened very quickly.  Firstly I noticed that many businessmen travelling on trains seemed to have porno mags in their briefcases.  Then, one day in the autumn of 1977 or early 1978, I travelled for an interview at one of the universities in Manchester.  As I walked out of the station I passed a newsstand and my eyes were drawn to the top of a copy of Janus at the back of the stand.  For the rest of my visit I kept thinking about it and remember very little else about the university visit.   On the assumption that I knew nobody in Manchester and would probably not be going back there any time soon I revisited the newsstand on my return to the station and bought the magazine.

 And here it is - well, to be honest, here is another copy that I purchased later for nostalgic reasons.  At some point in the following years I had a purge of my growing collection of spanking magazines and this one was lost in the process.  To be honest the content was a bit disappointing and not really to my taste.  The stories were okay but the drawings were uninspiring and the dated costumes fro many of the models were not to my liking.   However, years later, I found a copy in the Janus shop in Soho and decided (even 'though it was marked up to six times to original cover price) to re-purchase as it was a piece of my personal history.  I also realised that there were often shops selling this type of material close to railway stations, presumably to satisfy the needs of travelling businessmen.

I have the magazine still although I haven't revised my view of the images.  In fact, looking through it recently, there was really only one poor quality black and white image that I rather like.