A better title would be strawberry with vanilla. Strawberries are red and round. Also when in season they are shiny and sweet, a metaphor, if ever there was one for a well-spanked woman’s bottom. But this post is not about just any woman or any bottom come to that, it is about Indigo.

“Can I have chocolate?” she asks; so cute as she flutters her eyelashes.

It is not a formal permission thing, but we have an unspoken arrangement that if left to herself Indigo would eat too much Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut. I stress here that this is her view not mine. Surely there could never be too much Fruit and Nut?

She also likes Oreos (introduced to her by an American friend), Green and Black’s, but not Lindt no not that, discerning is our Indigo.

Now I could say no, an answer guaranteed to be greeted with a pout or three, but it is not a power trip thing for either of us.

If she has to ask, then it becomes a conscious act to have it, a small hurdle made manifest.

There are many such ‘arrangements’ between us. They are the sort of things that blur into a kind of vanilla façade. But then there are jobs and dinner too make, sick friends to see and meetings in town about that next project… so many things vanilla to bolster that façade that one might think that life is all vanilla and no strawberries.

I am sure there are people out there who might envy our ‘spanking marriage,’ I mean why wouldn’t it be perfect? But in truth perfection is for the gods. It is a transient thing. Moments are perfect, all else is in the chase.

If things were always perfect then I would have no reason to spank Indigo and then where is our perfection? You see perfection in this-thing-that-we-do is the pursuit of an idea. For one thing to my mind Indigo is not spanked often enough. But I am sure would say that she is spanked too often. You see, already we don’t agree.

As we find ourselves in this new life I will seize on every strawberry and raspberry, but when they cannot be found amid the daily dose of vanilla, there is always the chocolate.