There is an old saying in some parts of England: the world wakes at Imbole. That’s Imbolc (pronounced Eemolk) if you are of Celtic rather than Anglo-Saxon persuasion. It is supposed to be a day of awakening; halfway between Yule and Ostara, widely regarded as the first day of spring. I don’t know about where you were, but I think it snowed on 2 February; there was certainly no sign of spring.

As if to underline the challenges of the coming year my Word software has crashed and needs installing (or taking out and shot) and I have had to resort to WordPad for writing, hence the increased chance of typos.

Nevertheless, Spankville has taken it to heart and it looks like we are warming up to a good year. I have been featured on not one but on at least three blogs this last week. Firstly, the successful and talented Natasha Knight carried an interview with yours truly exploring my personal history and views on being a Dom. I wish my Amazon sales matched hers. Oh well.

You might remember I reviewed one of her books sometime back and if I ever get the chance I will review another. Her book Given to the Savage caused such a stir it had to be renamed so as not to frighten the Amazonian Horses. In any case it is apparently the number one best SCi-Fi Erotic novel according to at least one award,

Secondly there is good and bad news from Blossom and Thorn (Aka Season and Michael). They are fully on the mend and returning to health. However, they are for the time being (I chose to believe) retiring from blogging. Their last post was quite flattering to one DJ Black, but more to the point they name checked a good many more in a fulsome open letter. We wish them luck.

In a third but worthy mention of this blog, Chross draws a comparison with my short story the Deal and Weeds. Not having seen the show I hadn’t thought of that, but I can see where he is coming from. There is a much discussed spanking scene in a car that I have seen. Actually this story was a revisit to a gangster short I wrote a few years back. But I have already noted that I occasionally lift ideas from sources unconsciously. My only defence is that the words are creatively constructed by me even if the plots are sometimes borrowed. After all Shakespeare did it.

Before you wince at my crude comparison with the great bard, it was just a handy segue into a mention of the playwright on the Spank Statement. It carries a discussion of spankings that might have been in Shakespeare and features some pictures from productions where this has been addressed. One is republished above.

One of the pictures above I found via Chross, to give him full credit but given it is by Little Noddy on Deviant Art, I thought it worth including.

Other pictures were taken from: Acknowledging Imperfection (via AAA), About Spanking, Cutiepie, Spanking Toons, Scarlet’s Real Magic, Girls’ Boarding School, AAA, Able and MarQue.