Question for our American members.

I'm an American and I enjoy the stories set in the UK. Probably my having lived in the UK and absorbed much of the culture contributes to that enjoyment. I also have good friends there and participate in some school role play games online. So most of the slang--except very new stuff--works for me and many of the places where stories are set are familiar. As I truly love stories about the cane,, the UK is the best place for those, whether in school or other settings.

Allow me to clarify:

The 'forms' in English stories refer to the 'secondary' sector, that is for children aged 11 - 18, with forms 1 to 5 equating to US grades 6 to 10, and the "Sixth Form" (lower and upper) to US Grades 11 and 12.

Having said that, we actually switched quite recently to your system, using the word 'year' instead of 'grade', with 5-year-olds starting primary school in Year 1, and Years 7 to 13 being the secondary sector.

As most UK school stories here are set back in the days of CP, the old system of 'forms' is what you get.

I stand to correction but the word "Form" originates from the days when schools were smaller and had everyone in the same classroom. The pupils sat on "forms" (long backless benches) and were tiered in age with the youngest on the First Form in the front of the class.

When I was at UK Primary School in the 60s our school had long benches in the School Hall and they were still called "Forms".

Thanks for your info English Master, my grandkids start school next year in Blighty so I will now understand the new terminology.

I'm from Texas, so what I grew up with was hairbrushes, belts, straps and the school paddle. So those are the things I tend to write about. While canes aren't really my thing, I do enjoy some British stories, provided they are somewhat plausible. I do read them to learn something of the culture, and many of them are quite entertaining. I had to learn the slang and British idioms, but then once I started to get a handle on them, I found myself enjoying them more. Really, all I ask is the story be plausible, that it be reasonably well written and I like a bit of imagination. I hope some of you Brits find our American stories entertaining as well.

Your stories are excellent Stevenr and I agree with your sentiments above completely.

As a Limey, I first became aware of the Paddle in a letter published in Penthouse/Mayfair in the early 70s, where, if I remember correctly, an American guy's English girlfriend wanted to experience his Frat Paddle that he keep in his UK apartment.

I also prefer the concept of paddling to caning, even though the cane was the norm in the schools I went to.

I would imagine much of the old English school culture, argot and customs are also lost on the English post-Boomer generations who never experienced it.

Aside from the scientifically provable fact that "panties" is a far better word than "knickers" or "pants," the UK setting has no effect on how much I enjoy a story. It's all about character, situation, dynamics and storytelling.

Patron

Agreed, but Bottom is a far better word than Butt for a lady's rear.

Well, "bottom" is better than any other synonym for the human buttocks, I'd venture, yet for variety's sake other terms are also employed in spanking-oriented writing--"butt" does strike me as somewhat crude, however that's merely my personal feeling.

During my mid-to-late teen years, I read almost all of Ian Fleming's original James Bond novels, of course their vocabulary wasn't 'Americanized' so I had to figure out from context some British terms, such as "lift" (elevator), "torch" (flashlight) and "boot" (trunk) of a car. It didn't bother me though, if anything I found it to be an interesting challenge. (That's why I wish that the Harry Potter books hadn't been 'Americanized' for sale in the U.S.A., to me it would've been preferable to have American readers figure out any British terms they weren't familiar with.)

It has worked in basically the same manner for my reading of Library stories set in 'Jolly Olde England,' it's not all that difficult to figure out unfamiliar terminology when necessary--although due to my American upbringing, I do tend to prefer paddlings over canings and hairbrush spankings over slipperings, for deserving (or even occasionally undeserving) bare bottoms...

--C.K.

Many, many years ago, long before I thought of moving to France, a French friend who spoke good English, was telling me that he had tried reading an English erotic novel and given up because the words used had no erotic flavour for him.

I now know what he means as whilst I enjoy reading a regular story in French, any French erotic words don't arouse me.

Now that I've read quite a few American spanking stories, I now try to push my luck occasionally and write one of my own, the obvious advantage being that you can put paddling into a contemporary American school story set somewhere in the South whereas you can't do the same for a UK school story set anywhere in the last thirty years. I've also set a series in the Caribbean - well, Ian Fleming often used this setting for James Bond so why can't I for a strict girls' school?