“What’s this for?” I asked.

“What do you think it’s for?” Abel answered, discreetly testing the thing against his palm.

No, no. I’m perfectly aware that any wooden board with a handle is a ready-made paddle. But what is it for originally? I assume they’re not selling it in the cookshop because it’s a spanking implement?

Anyway, we brought the paddle home and tested it with a few reasonable smacks as I bent forward with my hands on the wall. It’s quite pleasant, in that ouchie kind of way.

I still have no idea what it was originally.

The former feels far more authentic for some scenes: the judge condemning a young convict to receive thirty strokes of the birch on her admission to the Reformatory; the ship’s captain sentencing the stowaway girl to twenty lashes; the Headmaster solemnly informing the pupil standing before him that she would receive six of the best for her misbehaviour.

I rather enjoy creating the moment of nervous uncertainty (“so how many am I going to get?”), followed by that jaw-dropping moment of truth (“he can’t give me *that* many”). I like the idea of the girl knowing precisely how many strokes are to come (and more importantly, perhaps, how few – relative to the total - have already been administered). And there’s something in making the girl concentrate on the progress of the punishment – the count preventing her from switching off and losing herself, blanking out what’s happening to her.

But the latter? “I’m going to thrash you until you’re truly sorry”? “Whip her until she breaks”? “Oh no: I’ve hardly started”. Mmmm, I could rather enjoy those. But they’re best saved for somewhat different scenarios, methinks, authenticity being everything.

Remind me: I need to give you a count-up to nine strokes of the cane around lunchtime on 7 August - when it’s: 12:34:56 7/8/9

Of course. Never has there been a more obvious reason for a caning.

Elementary, my dear Haron. They’re not yours, so I deduce that they were left there during one of the get-togethers we’ve had with kinky friends since moving in.

Needless to say, I am most disappointed in whichever young lady is to blame. Would the owner of the garment in question please own up, explain how your underwear came to have been removed in our hallway and left behind our radiator, and report to my study next time you visit so that I may deal the matter before returning your knickers?

This wraps up the most complicated fiction-writing commitment I’ve ever made: a story a week for three years, from the point of view of three characters, working in a shared world with a group of other writers. For a lover of school stories, Lowewood was a perfect universe for exploring a wealth of scenarios jumping into my head from day to day. For a spanking writer, it was an incredibly useful education.

As an epilogue, here are some of the things I’ve learned from working on Lowewood:

1. Episodic writing makes completely different demands on a writer than working on a novel does. For myself I’ve worked out that a good Lowewood post has to accomplish several things:

• Be a story in its own right, with a set-up, developing action, culmination, and a resolution. (Cliffhangers notwithstanding.)
• Slot into the larger plot arch of the school year, and move it along.
• Develop your character, moving her/him along in the emotional arch you’ve planned for the year. For bonus points, assist fellow writers in their character journeys. For super-bonus points, also develop secondary (non-point-of-view) characters.
• Drop in some details that will enrich the world of the school.
• Have sizzling-hot spanking action, or at least hot sex. Bonus points if you manage not to make it look bolted on at the last minute, because you were too busy working on all the previous requirements.
• Do all of the above every week, in no more than about 1200 words (an arbitrary length I chose for myself; other writers have other comfortable lengths, but writing short has been a challenge for all of us from the start).

Obviously, I haven’t always succeeded in all of this. Some of my fellow writers are a lot better at episodic writing, and I’m hugely envious of their achievements. I’ve tried to learn some tricks by watching character-driven crime dramas with pen and paper at the ready, mentally substituting crime-solving with spanking/sex. (”Criminal Minds” has been the most useful, because it pays the most attention to character consistency and development.)

2. Your characters are not you. They have to be enough like you that you don’t struggle coming up with emotional responses to the situations at hand, and different enough that you don’t hesitate to them unlikeable if the situation demands it.

I don’t have Sylvie’s finely honed awareness of her surroundings, or Ned’s impulsiveness, or Violet’s don’t-care attitude. At the same time, like me at 16, Sylvie likes the idea of boys more than actual boys. Like me at 16, Ned is deeply romantic. Like me at 16, Violet has a massive ego mixed with teenage self-esteem issues. All that said, none of them is me, which has helped me shape and hurt them to my heart’s content.

3. Speaking of an ego: when you’re co-writing in a big group, it’s essential to remember that you’re all creating a long work together, as opposed to it being just you writing some stories in the same world as your mates. You’ve got to be willing to respond to calls for help with plot and character developments, not bristle at requests for edits and changes, and sometimes write posts to order. Obviously, nobody would ask you to write something you’re uncomfortable with (notice that at no point has anything medical has appeared in my posts), but if there needs to be, say, a play rehearsal on a Thursday, you’ve got to be prepared to volunteer to write it.

4. Deadlines are deadlines, damn it.

These are the things I’ve learned, and even though I have no plans to do a similar project any time soon, the insights I got while writing for Lowewood have helped me develop, equipped me with new writing tools, and have been overall fantastically useful.

I’m deeply grateful to all my fellow writers for the work we’ve done together and the support I’ve had over these three years, to the readers for caring about our creations, and to Jessica for initiating and managing the whole show.

Thus it was that I found myself in a well-known burger chain the other morning, the first customer of the day a few moments after they’d opened. I’d allowed two hours for a 55 minute trip. Quite reasonably, I thought. So I had a fair amount of time to kill - and a breakfast muffin just had to be done.

The supervisor was lovely, friendly - and totally disorganised. She closed the till without giving me change; gave me the wrong change; poured me the wrong type of coffee; forgot that I’d ordered the *double* bacon. And all of this was done with a giggle and the biggest of smiles.

It was when she wandered outside while I was eating and lit up a cigarette that kinky thoughts came to mind. For how was she to know that the smart gentleman in the corner wasn’t a typical customer, but was here from Head Office to assess their standards following recent complaints?

I’d introduce myself when she came back in; ask her to accompany me to the manager’s office; list the shortcomings I’d notice, and put her over my knee.

McDisciplinarian? Yep, sounds like my kinda job.

I got terribly excited when I read that, but it was in vain: what actually happened is she said something he didn’t like, and he made his disapproval known to the public. That’s all.

No, no, Vancouver Sun, that’s not what a spanking is.

A spanking is what I’m imagining happening to Ms Fox, over Michael Bay’s knee, right in the middle of the film set. With his hand slapping her bottom, and her legs kicking in the air. That’s a spanking, see?

I’m thinking that, if they extend the scheme southwards, Haron and I (both avowed non-smokers) are going to buy a pack of cigarettes, each smoke a couple, register for the scheme and immediately “give up” and pocket £300.

No doubt the same idea will occur to a group girls at the local boarding school. Only, unfortunately for them, their Housemaster will discover them as they smoke the cigarettes they’d bought to get onto the scheme in the first place. The customary six of the best will result for each of the girls, followed by a further six for their dastardly plan to defraud the taxpayer.

I’m not saying that I want to know exactly and in advance what’s going to be happening to me: there should be enough room for manoeuvre for the top to use a slipper if he wants to, or a cane if he feels like it, or make me write lines, or whatever. But I really need to be told at the start how many issues we’ll be dealing with, and what the rules are for the allocation of strokes.

For example, “and if you move, I’ll give you an extra one”, before a caning starts, is fine. “You’ve moved! It’s an extra stroke!” is not fine, even if we’ve played before, and I’d had extra strokes for moving in previous scenes.

What particularly throws me is when I feel the punishment has come to its logical end, and I’ve suffered through it, then to hear “I’m not sure I’ve got through to you - I think another six are in order.” I just shoot straight out of character, and feel like I’ve been lied to.

I wonder how it is for you? Do you like to be taken unawares?

“The European Commission will give 5,000 young Europeans trees to plant before the Copenhagen climate change summit in December.

Anyone aged 14 - 29 from ten EU states, including Britain, can go to clickatree.europa.eu for a free sapling.”

So here’s the plan: let’s subvert the initiative for kinky purposes. I reckon all of you who qualify should click on the link and order your tree, thus securing a free supply of switches for future spankings!

Do post a comment here once your sapling is on order! And pass on news of our campaign to your kinky friends, by email and on your blogs: after all, we need to recruit 5,000 pervy people to take over their whole stock…