Hope Springs Eternal

I realise this will probably not mean much to those outside the UK but as the stats show a large part of my audience is in the UK, here goes.

This lunchtime I turned on the television part way through today's episode of the game show Bargain Hunt.  For those who don't know, two pairs of players each have to buy three items for under £300 total, usually at an antiques fair of some kind, and then sell them for profit at an auction.  Each pair has the assistance of an antiques expert.  At the moment I turned on today the rather lovely Natasha Raskin, one of the regular experts, was just saying "Well you should look at the bottom for marks because that's what it's all about."  I looked up quickly hoping she had some cane marks across her lovely derriere, but sadly she was advising her teams about how to assess the value of a glass vase. Another time maybe...

Record Collectors

Back in my schooldays I spent quite a bit of time hanging around in record shops and I remember that at one stage, as the number of record labels was increasing, one trick they used to draw attention to their artistes was to produce little booklets showing off all their latest recordings.  I couldn't afford many records but I could collect these free booklets.  I have a vivid recollection of my excitement at the time when I came across a catalogue produced by Island Records - this was around 1975 so I would have been mid-teens with raging hormones.  The tiny image of the cover of Robert Palmer's album Pressure Drop kind of leapt out at me!  I remember carefully cutting it out of the catalogue and pasting it into a scrapbook I clandestinely kept for such treasures.  When I say tiny image I do mean tiny - from memory it would have been little more than a centimetre square.  Just saw the image again on the internet (rather larger) and it brought the memory back.

Amy Cawcliffe

We are truly blessed that so many good looking girls choose to model for spanking websites and movies.   However I was especially impressed with Amy Cawcliffe who recently appeared at The Northern Spanking website - a great find who I hope will be making a lot more appearances soon.

My school cane

At the school I attended from the age of 11 onwards, there was plenty of corporal punishment used.  Most of it was in the classroom setting or around the school at lunchtime or break time and was by any of the teachers using a variety of implements - probably most commonly the plimsoll (slipper/gymshoe/dab - whatever you call it).  I'd put money on a bet that none of these were ever formally recorded in any sort of punishment book and were, therefore, almost certainly illegal.  However, for the most serious cases you could be caned although this was the preserve of the headmaster or his deputy in the privacy of their office.  I never experienced that first hand but on one occasion the deputy headmaster did threaten to cane everyone in our class and to underline his threat he brought along the official school cane.  I clearly remember the shape of it was not dissimilar to the one pictured here.  The odd thing is that although there are plenty of websites offering for sale reproductions of school canes - usually of rattan or dragon cane - they are generally offered as either straight canes or with the classic crook handle.  I have never seen any on offer of this sort of shape at the handle end.  Can anyone shed any light on what we're looking at here and also, perhaps, if anyone does sell canes of this type?

Favourite for April

This is what I'd like to see much more of - perfect evidence that it would be quite possible to require a schoolgirl in a short skirt, as is the fashion, to bend over for a caning on her bottom without the need to expose her undergarments.  And I'd like to bet that six hard strokes applied like this would give the wayward miss a very salutary lesson that she wouldn't be in a hurry to repeat anytime soon.  Sadly, I have no idea of the source - I would love to see more and better still a video.  I think this is one of my all-time favourites.

(The pedant in me has caused me to flip the image - I'm right handed and enjoy pictures of right handers carrying out the punishment so much more....!)