Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for your continued support of my blog. Throughout my life I've failed utterly at keeping a diary, and its only because people like you kindly visit and comment that I manage to stay interested in writing. Thank you for visiting!
In case this is your first visit, here is a very quick history of me, so you won't have to bore your way though previous postings.
I'm an English girl who trained originally as a ballet dancer, got a) too tall and b) a bit too injury-prone to continue and so trained in classical acting instead, at a drama school in London.
I'd had fantasies about being tied up, ill-treated and (still sort of hard to admit) spanked all my life, and didn't think anyone with similar interests existed. Then a poor Conservative MP in England was found dead in circumstances that suggested he'd been playing BDSM games which had gone wrong, and the teenage me thought 'Oh, bloody hell, there were maybe two of us, but now one of us is dead'.
So I went into good old denial, joined The Campaign Against Pornography and decided not to date anyone.
After drama school, I started working as an actress and was approached after a theatre show by a photographer who suggested I tried modelling. So I did, and loved it so much that I ended up doing far more modelling than acting.
Then I discovered that there was BDSM on the internet, and started being offered bondage photography bookings. I was very happy, realised I wasn't alone after all, and started having a splendid fun time.
One of the photographers I worked for was Hywel Phillips who ran a beautiful bondage site. Very gradually we became friends, and much later, we fell in love, moved in together and started running the site together too.
This Christmas was our third together in our house, and it was very lovely and peaceful. We opened our presents together, and my last one was from Hywel, a DVD of The Princess Bride which I've loved with a great passion for years and years, partly because I hoped someone would love me properly one day and marry me too (although I also kind of wanted to be held prisoner in a castle, in all honesty). I was very happy that Hywel had remembered how much I liked it, and thought Christmas was generally being a great success.
Then Hywel proposed to me.
And I cried all over him, thought I'd maybe misunderstood, cried more and then remembered I was supposed to say something.
So I said 'yes' and we're going to get married later this year.
And I really am thoroughly happy and grateful that something so lovely could happen. I wish I could go back in time to my worried teenage self and show her this blog post, with the picture below, which Hywel took to celebrate our engagement (he didn't want to be in it, even though I really, really tried). I'd love to explain to teenage-me that there ARE sane people who like playing at BDSM with the people they love, and that you don't have to make a choice between liking BDSM and having conventional romance in your life too. I'd like her to know that being submissive doesn't mean that you can't choose to be with people who'll respect you. And while I'm time-travelling, I'd like to visit the teenage Hywel and reassure him that he'll one day find a girl who thinks bastinado sounds like a good idea.
I know there no magic, happy ever-afters, and I don't expect 2012 to suddenly turn into a year of magical unalloyed joy, but I'm very happy to think that I'll end this year married to a kind, clever, generous man who happens to be a dominant sadist (they seem to actually exist, teenage-me) and I hope there can be lots of romantic happiness for lots of other lovely people this year, kinky or not. If you're reading, I hope one of them will be you :)