Looking at society around us it is easy to assume that we live in a vanilla world. Vanilla after all, we assume, is the wider community’s default setting. However, you did not have to look very far to see that our brand of spice is often not far below the surface. Perhaps the world is in fact a spice cake of infinite variation and merely has vanilla icing. Okay so that is a corny analogy, but here is what set that thought in motion.

In the past there have been many anecdotes published here giving a glimpse of a whole world of spanking. The Dotes features have been experiences, conversations and stories heard or overheard. Now some are definitely true others may not be, but all happened even if someone was spinning a yarn and only wished they had happened.

There has not been a Dotes post for a while. That is because or the best anecdotes have been told. Well the non-private ones anyway. The ones that are left are snippets of insight that would not by themselves fill a post. However taken together they present an altogether different take on the world, almost as if someone were looking at a society reversed in a mirror.

The other day there was a feature in one of the magazines about Irish women coming to London to train as lawyers and this brought to mind a strange event in a London pub that had amazingly had almost been forgotten.

Thinking on this other events came flooding back.

Once long ago on a train to Brighton a teenage boy overheard a conversation between two slightly older girls sitting in front of him. As best as can be recalled it went something like this:

“Are you on the rag again?”

“How can you tell?”

“You always get ratty.”

“I know, sorry. He is always on about that. I drive him mad.”

“I thought he was a softy.”

“Yeah maybe. Last month I really went for it though. No good reason but it was my period and I was being a bitch. We argued about nothing all morning. In the end he goes, ‘if you don’t calm down I’m gonna take your jeans and knickers down and spank your bare arse for you.’ I goes ‘you wouldn’t dare.’ Then he grabbed me and we ended up running around the kitchen. He had my jeans half down when his dad came home. Talk about saved by the bell.”

The way she said the last part had a distinctly disappointed tone to it.

A few years later while sitting in a park in Berlin, there were two girls indulging in a bit of horseplay. They hadn’t realised they were being watched and after several minutes of play fighting one of the girls went over her friends knee for a spanking. The spankee kept looking around, presumably in case there was anyone watching. When she saw there was the spanking immediately stopped and both girls ran off blushing.

Stranger still, and you have to wonder if this is a false memory or an odd dream, there were two separate conversations overheard on one London bus.

The first was between two teenage girls sitting on the front upstairs window seat of a Route Master bus.

“Did you catch it last night?” The first girl asked.

“Oh and how.” The second replied.

“Did it hurt much?”

“I yelled my head off.”

“Dad or your Mum?”

“Dad worse luck.”

Then they both stood up oblivious that their conversation had been overheard and got off at their stop.

Sitting next to them, in the left-hand window seat were two 20-something men. Once the girls had gone one of them said: “Did you hear that?”

“Yeah. What a laugh ay? I didn’t know girls still got good hidings.” The other replied.

“I heard another conversation like that in a cinema queue the other day.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah. Two girls talking about getting a spanking at home. But the really odd thing was, one of them said: ‘your mum still doing that enema thing.’”

“No shit.”

“That’s what she said. I mean a bloody enema as a punishment, that’s really weird. I mean these weren’t kids either, older than those other two and what were they, 16, 17?”

“Bloody hell!”

The conversation ended there. No more details.

Now back to Irish women lawyers in London. Now this is also true.

Sitting in a pub just off Moorgate in 1999 there was a very pretty redheaded girl and her friend fighting off the chat-up brigade. Now yours truly was biding his time as he saw that they were not happy with the attention. Finally, the redhead said in a Dublin accent could she join us because she was getting pestered.

It turns out that she was a city lawyer and engaged to be married but couldn’t move in a city pub for the wolves.

“Your boyfriend the jealous type?”

“Oh and the rest. Just because I got chatted up here he would spank my arse and I didn’t even do anything. Bloody hard too.”

Now ears pricked at this. She was around 28 and clearly an educated woman. Here she was not only allowing herself to be spanked but also admitting to it to a strange man.

“You okay with that?”

“Goes with the territory. I have that kind of bottom. I don’t mind so much. Sometimes we do it for fun.”

At this, she stood up and bent forward for inspection.

“I see what you mean.”

“Yeah I bet you do.”

“Tell me more.”

“Are you chatting me up now?”

“Only if you let me. I don’t want to drive you away by joining the wolves.”

“You’re alright but I am with my man.”

“Pity. Let me know if you need a hand with the bottom smacking.”

“Why are you experienced at that kind of thing? I bet you are you are.” She giggled. “I’ll let you know. But I get quite enough of that from my boyfriend.”

So there you are, a small forgotten conversation, but one that is very revealing about the world we live in. Scratch the surface and who knows?