Ariel Anderssen Amelia Jane Rutherford

Lordy, I've had an eventful month. And not altogether in a good way. Do forgive me, I know that blogs aren't really meant to be diaries, but I want a record of my rather mad NHS experience over the last few weeks, so I'm putting it here (cos I don't have an actual diary). Hope it may provide entertainment to some of you, somehow. Especially if you maybe have a medical fetish.

In the UK, we have the much-talked-about National Health Service (NHS for short). It provides free healthcare to UK residents, and means that wherever you are in the UK, you can visit a doctor or hospital for free. And good heavens, I'm glad of that, because otherwise I'd be looking at a big old medical bill as a result of the last few weeks.

3 weeks ago, I woke up with a weird abdominal pain. I was shooting a custom video, and then going on to a bondage shoot later that afternoon. So I took some painkillers and did both shoots. At 10pm I finished work, and drove from London to Yorkshire for a shoot the next day. I arrived at my hotel at about 1am, feeling kind of ill, and went to bed. The next day I was still in pain, so I went to my lingerie shoot, took painkillers, and decided to go to hospital on the way to my next shoot (which was further up North).

I arrived with the lovely http://www.petandponygirls.com/ who kindly drove me to their nearest emergency healthcare centre (which isn't a hospital, it's like a little mini clinic for minor illness). DOCTOR NUMBER 1, I have to say, was really rubbish. He poked at my tummy, told me I was 'probably ok' and told me to take painkillers. Which wasn't all that reassuring. So I returned to the Pet and Ponygirl studio, took some painkillers, and went to bed.

I shot with them for 2 days, which was, as always, lovely, but passed in a kind of blur of pain. When the shoot was over, I drove down to the Midlands to stay with my sister. She helped me make an appointment with her local GP for the next day.

DOCTOR NUMBER 2 was really kind. She said she couldn't really help much unless I stayed in the area for tests, but suggested.... painkillers.

Later that afternoon, the pain was worse, so I telephoned the national medical helpline thing. Which is notoriously hopeless, but they were also very kind, and suggested another emergency clinic I could visit.

DOCTOR NUMBER 3 was also very kind. She suggested that maybe I'd picked up an infection on location (I do work in some extraordinarily grubby places) and gave me an antibiotic. I was very, very happy.

The next day, I drove West to meet up with the BDM for a big, week-long location shoot for http://www.restrainedelegance.com . There were multiple models arriving, and a big crew. I was meant to be both (whoop, am enjoying learning to rig!) Two days in, I was in more pain, so the BDM took me to hospital after we'd finished work for the day (thank you, and I'm so sorry to the models and crew who we abandoned for the evening)

DOCTOR NUMBER 4 thought I should be properly examined so kept me in hospital for a few hours. After doing blood tests they weren't sure what was wrong, so gave me another antibiotic. Which I was very grateful for, but started to wonder whether it was actually going to help.

We finished our shoot, I managed to model on the last day (painkillers!) and we set off to celebrate the BDM's birthday at a hotel I'd booked near to the UK Space Centre, which we were visiting the next day. By midnight, I was in so much pain that the BDM called an ambulance and we went to hospital again....

DOCTOR NUMBER 5 decided I should have an ultrasound scan, so I stayed in hospital overnight, and had a scan the next morning. It didn't work properly, and they didn't have the equipment to do all the tests they needed to do, so they sent me home, and said they'd send me an appointment through the post. We drove back home (no Space Centre visit, boo) and I went to bed with some painkillers.

Two days later, the pain was so bad (and spreading, rather alarmingly, upwards) that the BDM took me to our local hospital's emergency department. DOCTOR NUMBER 6 took blood tests (I hate them, HATE THEM) and was, I'm sorry to say, not very helpful. She went off to talk to someone more senior, and came back to say that I should, umm, take painkillers. And that my brain might be sending random pain signals to my abdomen for no reason, and that it might stop on it's own. I started to feel rather despairing, especially because the BDM's birthday party was the next day, and we were having lots of people to stay....

At lunchtime the next day, the painkillers weren't working, and after hiding from the birthday party for a couple of hours I went back to hospital (this time, in case it's useful for you in the future, to the out-of-hours GP service). Thank heavens for DOCTOR NUMBER 7. She got me admitted to hospital properly, and after being there for a couple of days, they discovered a ruptured ovarian cyst. I was so, so relieved that there was a reason for all the pain, and very grateful that I didn't have to pay for all those hospital visits. I'm a bit disappointed that it took so many visits before someone helped properly - I'm not fabulously assertive, but I'm thinking that if I'd been even less so, I might still be at home, taking painkillers and being scared of bothering any more doctors.

Thank you, and sorry to the following people;-

To Pet-and-Ponygirls.com for taking me to a doctor in the first place, and for a shoot that managed to still be fun despite not being super well. I do hope the videos don't reflect that.

To my sister, who was lovely, as always, and helped me find telephone numbers.

To all the models and crew on the Restrained Elegance shoot, who were fab to work with, and forgiving of my regular disappearances. Thanks for still letting me tie you up, Sophia, Janey and Fi.

To the staff of Coventry University Hospital (who, I'm thinking, probably don't read this blog)

To my friend P, who'd booked me for a spanking shoot, and couldn't have been kinder about reassuring me that it was ok to cancel. I'm so sorry, especially since you'd worked on a lovely script.

To my friend J, who was also fabulous about my letting him down at pretty short notice. Thank you again for your concern and courtesy.

To all the other photographers and models who've missed shoots because of me this week and next week. Thank you for being so generous about it, and I hope not to let you down again.

To the crew of http://www.firmhandspanking.com who'd assembled a cast and location for our shoot next week. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for not insisting we go ahead with the shoot.

To my Mum (who also probably doesn't read this blog, but you never know!) who abandoned her goats, dogs, husband, and house move to come and visit me in hospital.

To the staff of the Royal Berkshire Hospital, for not just sending me home with more painkillers, and giving me so much jam sponge and custard. Brilliant!

To everyone who sent texts, emails and cards. I didn't tell anyone I didn't have to for work reasons, because I was too upset and scared, so sorry to everyone I didn't contact.

And finally, thank you to the BDM, who's shoot I disrupted, who's birthday I ruined, who's party I missed, and who's driven me from hospital to hospital, always being calm and rational. And who's suspended all dom-lyness in order to be the best sort of boyfriend for a rather weepy, ill girlfriend.

I'm still on drugs, but hopefully on the mend, and shall post again when I'm ok. Sorry for the non-hot post!

Well, alright, the picture doesn't actually relate to the heading. But I love lense flare and I'm rather keen on the photographer. And, laaaaaa, it's my blog, hoorah!

Before I start, thank you everyone for your extremely kind and lovely comments, emails and Get Well cards. You've helped me through a really weird, painful and frustrating time, and while I'm not sure if I'm on the mend or not at the moment, I'm certainly on less drugs for now, and my head is clear enough to blog.

Righty -ho, here goes. I hope it's interesting, this is something I've been thinking about a lot over the last few weeks, and I'd love to know what other people think.

The reason I've started thinking about the subject of humiliation is because over the last few weeks, I've not been able to do so much of a lot of the things that make me feel ok about myself. Although I complain about being busy and rushing all over the place working, I really like being booked for lots of different jobs, and I'm proud of being able to do a good job for most of the different people I work for. I like being ok at housework, and I like it when I can cook for the BDM (which has never been all that often, TBH...) I'm quite proud of myself, I guess, for having enough energy to do a 4 hour drive, a day's work, another 4 hour drive and then get up the next day and do it all over again. And I suppose I was proud of being physically fairly fit.

Having had a couple of months in and out of hospital, resting a lot, and not being able to work full-time has been upsetting and humiliating.

Now there's no surprise that it's not been very sexy, but it did remind me how absolutely horrible the feeling of humiliation is. And I wondered to myself, how I could possibly have ever found humiliation hot?

Then I realised, I actually don't. It's just that the things that lots of other people would find humiliating don't happen to have the same effect on me. And this made me very interested.

I suppose being forced to take off your clothes in a roleplay might be awfully humiliating to some people, but I don't mind being naked, and taking off my clothes feels like a symbol of the exciting things that are likely to happen next. So I have to act humiliated, rather than actually feel it.

Shooting pet-girl training, as I have quite often (most recently for the fab www.petandponygirls.com ) is definitely potentially humiliating, but I find it really relaxing not to have to talk, and I think I'm quite good at being a ponygirl (ego, hello) so I don't find it humiliating at all.

Spanking (and other types of pain play) certainly doesn't humiliate me either. Not really (though I enjoy pretending, definitely). I suppose that I actually feel proud rather than humiliated if I'm feeling anything other than scared and turned on...

Corner-time, which is surely specifically designed for humiliation doesn't really have that effect on me either. I really like imagining that I feel terribly shamed, but I don't actually mind it. Exposure doesn't make me feel anything bad at all.

And so the list goes on in my head - all these things which look humiliating from the outside, but are in fact just hugely good fun for me. And I think they're fun because they're meant to be humiliating, but just happen not to be for me. Rather than happening to be fun in spite of the fact that some people would find them humiliating.

I wonder if that'd be the same for most other spanking models? I'm sort of guessing so, but some of us might actually genuinely be humiliated by those things, but maybe enjoy them because they are...

Then I thought about things which actually are humiliating for me. In the BDSM context, these include;-

1) Things which are presented to you as though they'll hurt, and then don't. Out of politeness, I tend to pretend that they're really painful anyway, but that does make me feel ridiculous, and therefore humiliated. I'd much rather have the implement that actually hurts than the silly pretend-y Ann Summers version.

2) As I've talked about before, lame story lines that don't match any character I could possibly hope to play successfully. Ohhhhh Lordy, that is genuinely, awfully humiliating.

3) Being tied up, and then given a task to do which is pretty much impossible. It makes me feel clumsy, uncoordinated and therefore humiliated.

4) Pretending to have orgasms. I simply won't. Humiliating, humiliating, humiliating. I won't have real ones on-screen either, but that's for a different reason.

5) Peephole bras and crotchless panties. I don't know why, but I'd feel hideously humiliated by having to wear them. Nude feels much better to me.

In a non-BDSM context, there's a longer list. I won't put everything down, because I think that might be dull. Some of the first that spring to mind are;-

1) Pronouncing words wrong. I quite often do this, having learned lots of words by reading rather than hearing them spoken. Ohhhhh the shame. I still blush if I think about examples from years ago.

2) Not being able to speak other European languages well. The shame! I'd feel much more like a proper international model if I could, but I'm rubbish. And the bits I can say, I don't dare in case I get the pronunciation wrong.

3) Realising I'm being boring.

And on that note, I'll jolly well stop.

Thanks for reading, if you've got this far!

A/a xx

Hello everyone! I seem to be feeling better, and am back at work for now. I'll be having an investigative operation just before Christmas, and will possibly have bits of me removed if it's deemed necessary (I'm hoping they won't take anything important away, like my bottom...). But in the meantime, I'm allowed to shoot again, as long as I'm careful (no hanging upside down for now).

And to celebrate being back, the fabbo John Tisbury has employed me to work on his stand at the Erotica Exhibition in London next week.

This is very exciting for a number of reasons; we're exhibiting John's new work from the last year, which includes some pictures of me that I'm very proud of. I'll get to have a go at trying to make people buy things (I'm rubbish at this - I have no hard-sell ability whatsoever and am slightly pathetically grateful if anyone buys a picture of me). And hopefully, I'll meet a couple of people who read my blog. This is always tremendous fun; so if you happen to be in the London area next weekend come along and find me - I'll be in the art gallery section.

You can even buy the above picture, if you like.

Before I start, I'm so sorry that I only actually find time to post on my blog when I'm ill. Ridiculous, I know, and it probably gives you a rather unrealistic view of how delicate I am. All the weeks in which I'm not posting are filled with fairly good health, I promise. Anyway, I've got a boring old virus this weekend, so I'm in (my new, metal-framed, bondage-ready BDM gift) bed, doing all the computer'y things I put off when I'm well.

Right, that's out of the way.

I've been having an almost indescribably kinky time over the last couple of weeks. This is because I had to cancel my BDSM themed shoots in September and October, and I've got a diagnostic operation scheduled for just before Christmas (to find out why I broke so dramatically at the end of August this year). The operation means I can't schedule any shoots until the end of January, so I've been feeling as though poor Ariel and Amelia were in retirement. But I realised I had a window of opportunity before my operation and decided it'd be a great idea to stock up on BDSM experiences to get me through January. Sort of in the same way that everyone else is buying turkeys and boil-in-the-bag rice, and whatever else we buy in a great big pre-Christmas panic. Boil-in-the-bag rice? I don't know where that came from. I've never had it myself....

Lordy, this is going to be a long post, I can feel it coming on.

So, here's my schedule of shoots I've been doing, and shoots I'm hoping to do before hospital catches up with me. They've been tremendous fun so far, although sometimes rather surprising.

After the Erotica Exhibition (which was brilliant - thanks again to the people who came to see me, it made me so happy) I headed to the frozen North to http://www.chimerabondage.com/

I've worked for Chimera several times before, and have found their self-bondage concept fabulously challenging. As a bondage model, it's often easy to drift off into a happy world of one's own while being tied up - but being the rigger as well makes a lot more demands on concentration. This maybe makes it a little bit less of a sexy experience (especially for someone who really likes to fantasise about the person tying me up), but on this trip they gave me a chance to experiment with self-suspension, which I absolutely loved. Here's a quick frame-grab of my favourite one...

So, with 'suspension' ticked off my Christmas memory list, off I went to another bondage shoot, this time in the frozen South West.

And it was absolutely brilliant. I've always enjoyed dividing my time between shooting for commercial projects, and working with people who are simply producing BDSM pictures for their own entertainment. Both approaches have lots of advantages, and this shoot seemed to have all the pleasures of not shooting commercially. It was the photographer's first bondage shoot for a year, which meant he basically had 12 months worth of ideas and props to try out. He also had no particular quota of shots he needed for each set of pictures, which meant we could try really, really uncomfortable things because they only needed to be sustainable for a minute or so. Tremendous! And, not having the ruthless approach of a professional producer (which I'm entirely in sympathy with), he didn't see it as a waste of time to stop for a cup of tea and a cake every time he'd untied me. Mince pies! Duck l'orange for lunch! And the largest collection of spreader bars I'd ever seen. After ending up on my back, feeling like a large robotic insect with spreader bars attached at every possible point, I drove back home feeling as though I'd had the very best kind of day.

The very next day, I had my first proper, full-day CP shoot since August. It was one which I'd missed shooting because of being in hospital on the scheduled shoot day, and I'd spent 3 months looking forward to finally having a go at bringing the story to life. My friend P had spent that time refining his script and adding more details, so we spent the day in a gorgeous Alice-in-Wonderland world of dreams which gradually became darker and more severe as the shoot progressed.

But oh, my Goodness. I hadn't realised how quickly my body would forget how to cope with hard CP. Since I started spanking modelling, I've worked fairly regularly, and of course, I've played a lot at home too. But being ill put any harder play on hold, and since I've started to feel better I've been shooting constantly which has meant the BDM has been very careful about leaving marks on me. This shoot, however, was scheduled to allow recovery time, so there were prolonged strappings and canings in the script.

Wow! I'd forgotten what proper bruising is like! After the first 12 stroke caning, my bottom felt strangely corrugated - nothing like the slightly raised ridges I'd become used to. 'How interesting!' I thought to myself. And was rather pleased, really, to have the chance to re-capture what marks are meant to be like. A couple of (marvellous) scenes later, I was playing a maid who was being strapped instead of dismissed - for an offence she didn't commit. Totally up-my-street story-wise, I do enjoy being a martyr. And normally, stories I'm enjoying carry me along so well that I don't feel the pain too much. But not at this shoot. Deeply enjoying my character (who'd decided not to give anyone the pleasure of seeing her react to being punished), I felt confident that I could cope with the strap (it's one of mine, and I thought I remembered what it felt like).

I was entirely wrong. After about 5 strokes, I thought it must have drawn blood. As far as I know this isn't actually possible with the strap we were using, but it hurt absolutely hideously. Not that it wasn't fun (it really was, my character just had to up her game a bit), but by the end of the scene, I could feel hard bruises appearing under the skin. It's a feeling I associate with the result of a wooden paddle, not a leather strap. Still very interesting, I thought. But I started to feel a bit nervous about the final scene, which was a long caning.

Again, it was constructed to make me want to be terribly brave. I'd been caught helping stranded airmen escape an occupied war-time country, and was trying not to hand any information over until they'd had time to escape. For every 5 minutes I resisted questioning, 10 strokes of the cane would be added to my punishment.

Hoorah! I thought. I'm going to be amazingly brave! P had kindly constructed the story so that the airmen would escape, and by the time I finally gave away their hiding place, I'd earned 80 strokes of the belt, and 80 of the cane. This wasn't beyond what we'd shot in previous films, so, seeking refuge in my happiness at my imaginary compatriots' freedom, I prepared to be very, very brave and patriotic.

In the bizarre blur of pain that followed, I recall a few things. I scraped the skin off one of my elbows, gouged a deep scar in the wooden chair I was bending over with the handcuffs I was wearing, ended up on the floor a lot of times, hit myself in the eye with the same handcuffs, and screamed an awful lot. My ruthless captor, in a remarkable gesture of decency, decided that maybe I'd had enough. Like a loon, I insisted we should carry on, and so the scene ended with the highly-trained heroine politely insisting that Mr Interrogator should continue, she didn't want to interrupt his work; while Mr Beastly Interrogator heroically claimed that no, it was quite alright, he wasn't angry any more and didn't want to carry on punishing his mortal enemy after all.

Obviously, it was sensible, kind and sane for P to finish the scene at 60 strokes. Having occasionally been caned by tops who have lost all sense of proportion and reality, I appreciate his clear-sighted approach very much indeed. And from my point of view it was an absolutely fabulous day; not just because of the excellent story, but because of the chance to feel as though I was starting all over again as a spanking model. A week on, I still have fading bruises, and I feel absolutely the opposite of jaded. But it's shocking to realise how fast my body had forgotten how to deal with prolonged CP.

Honestly, this is ridiculously long post. I haven't actually finished telling you about my kink-ridden couple of weeks, which have included a wonderful two-day slave-training shoot with the BDM. So I think I'd better stop, have a rest, and post again when I've collected my thoughts a bit.

Thanks for jolly well reading, and hope you're stocking up for Christmas too!

A/a

After seeing the new year in with the BDM, who very kindly gave me 12 strokes of the cane (which had been my idea because I have a very short memory and had forgotten how much it would be likely to hurt) I've woken up in 2011 feeling very energetic and ready to have an interesting and good year. Thank you to all of you who visit my blog. It is a constant source of surprise and happiness when I find people who know what I've been thinking because they've read about it here. So I'll try to share more of what goes on in my life here in 2011.

Good heavens, I'm also very happy to have been nominated as Spankee of the Year over at http://thespankingspot.com , along with some very super girls. So if you like my spanking work (or the work of one of those other beastly girls) do go along and vote for one of us if you feel like it.

I'll try to write more often but not write quite such freakishly long posts this year :)

A/a

Over the last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about the aesthetics of the spanking scene. So have some of my friends; Leia Ann Woods wrote a thoughtful post on her blog, which I commented on, and then realised I wanted to say more. So here goes.

When I started thinking about doing spanking work, I thought it would fulfil some long-held fantasies. I'd never had the chance to be spanked, and I thought it would be brilliant to experience CP in a safe environment, with an experienced top. I was worried I might be too old, too tall, not tough enough or not pretty enough to be accepted by any producers, but it turned out I was wrong. Since I was already working as a nude model, I was also very grateful to discover that spanking production companies were prepared to pay me well enough that I could afford to work with them and take time off afterwards for the bruises to heal.

Being paid to do something I'd always wanted to do was remarkable; liberating, sexy and very exciting. But the best thing about it was totally unexpected. At my first shoot, the absolute joy of being able to talk freely to other people who shared my fetish actually made me feel drunk. I couldn't sleep after my first shoot - the feeling of finally connecting with the spanking world was incredible.

At my next shoot, I met other spanking models for the first time. I'd been very nervous about it - my fantasies didn't involve other girls being spanked too and I was worried I wouldn't enjoy myself. But I'd reckoned without the pleasure of being able to discuss being a submissive/bottom with other girls who shared my perspective. Again, it was such a high to find so much, effortlessly, in common with these girls. Although I've enjoyed the company of other models in my mainstream career, this felt different - we could talk about the stuff that felt really important immediately - I loved the feeling of intimacy.

As I did more and more shoots, this feeling of belonging to a community grew. I met girls who had proper jobs, and whose only modelling work was for CP productions. I met scene players who didn't do any CP production work at all, but wrote extraordinary, intimate blogs about their lifestyles. I met men who offered their considerable skill at no cost to top for CP productions - just for the love of it. And when I was invited to play with some of these people, just for fun instead of for a movie, I realised I was actually becoming part of a real community, not just an industry.

And one of the things I love about this community of producers, bloggers, models, aficionados, anonymous commentators, fans, photographers and writers is the diversity of the fantasies they share. And the fact that this carries over into the way that the performers in CP movies can look.

If I look at an average catwalk show, I see models who are between 5ft8-5ft11 tall, and UK size 6-8. If they're caucasian, they won't be tanned, and they'll rarely have breasts above a B cup. They'll have long limbs and slim hips.

In an average glamour magazine I'd expect to see lots of girls with C/D cup breasts, even, symmetrical features, long, full hair and small waists. They won't have any body hair, but they'll have super-long eyelashes.

When I look at successful spanking models, I see diversity. Of course, there are lots of conventionally pretty girls in this industry too, but the rules of prettiness seem more fluid to me here. Our height can range from below 5ft to over 6ft. Size 6 is ok; so is size 16. You can be 18 years old, or you can be in your 50's and still have people who love your work. You can be soft and vulnerable, you can be toned and ripped. Of course, different people will have different favourites, and no one model will suit everyone's tastes. But I'm very happy to have found that in this industry, my looks are not the only thing that makes me bookable as a model - my fantasies, ideas and ability to take fairly hard CP are as important as my good skin or my toned abs.

So, thank you to all the people who help make this community/industry so inclusive. And well done to everyone (top and bottom, male and female) who has the courage to play their fantasies out on film. I'm sure I'm not alone in doing this despite having physical insecurities, rather than doing so because I have none.

A/a

I've been irritated for ages by my habit of not posting on my blog unless I have time to post an essay. This is hardly ever, so I'm having a go (and do bear with me if I fail) at posting shorter posts, more often.

This picture (for Restrained Elegance) is what I want to talk (briefly!) about today, because I really like it. The near-symmetry of the composition, the nudity in a formal-looking environment, and the fact that it's not awfully clear what's going on appeals to me (even though it's a picture of me, which normally guarantees I won't find it terribly sexy). As time goes on, I find myself less and less keen on images that give you everything on a plate (in particular, sexually explicit shots, although I'm certainly not telling you that you shouldn't like them) and I find myself getting a great deal of pleasure from the subtler BDSM elements you can sometimes get a glimpse of in mainstream movies. I've been watching The Tudors and finding it fabulously hot in the clandestine way I used to, way before I knew about BDSM erotica. The king is allowed to have sex with anyone he chooses! When the ladies curtsey to him, they never seem to actually get up again! All the actresses look like Met-Art stars! (err, even when they're meant to be 40+, but no matter).

Now, obviously nothing we shoot for Restrained Elegance can afford to be quite so elliptical as mainstream work when it comes to referencing BDSM, but I'm quite keen on the idea of a little subtlety, nevertheless.

Hope you're all well, and thanks as ever for visiting.

A/a xx

I love being a model, but I'm not a natural producer. My new project, which I'm going to try to talk about now, has actually been available to download for a few weeks, and I've put off saying anything about it. Because, while I'm confident about telling you about films I've appeared in made by other producers, this one feels pretty personal and I've had all sorts of producer-related anxiety about whether we should just re-film it all over and over again until it's a Hollywood Epic with crane shots and extras and tailored Roman Centurion costumes....

Well, it doesn't have any of those things, and I'm going to tell you about it anyway.

The BDM (Boyfriend/Dom/Master, who owns the site I help him run) and I have always loved spanking. And while we do shoot a fair amount of CP-related action for Restrained Elegance, that's not really the focus of the site. So last year when a friend of ours suggested that we maybe branch out into making feature-length productions as well as videos for Members of our site, it seemed like a brilliant opportunity to widen our fetish horizons a bit.

Which is why the BDM has launched Elegance Studios. We want to have a go at shooting fetish movies with the highest standards that a niche producers budget will allow. Have a look at the trailer for the first movie to see what I mean. My experience of the fetish film industry is that locations, camera work and editing are quite often a lower priority than the quality of the BDSM action, and while that's totally understandable, we like the idea of aiming for something with the highest production values we can achieve without the BBC's budget (though, naturally, if anyone would like to give us the BBC's budget, we'll try not to blow it all on catering).

So once the first movie was edited, we had a go at Amelia's Sunday Spanking which is an idea we'd wanted to do for ages. I love the idea of formalised discipline sessions, and I also really liked the idea of shooting a whole spanking movie where all the punishments were on unmarked skin (which obviously isn't possible if you shoot multiple scenes in a day, unless your model is made out of enamelled tin or similar). So for a month, we spent consecutive Sundays catching up with all the spankings I'd earned according to the punishment diary I was keeping.

The result is an hour-long domestic discipline movie, with loads of spanking, a number of rather brazen negotiation attempts, and an awful lot more strokes of a leather strap than I'd have agreed to if I'd had director's control! I think it's probably a one-off; future CP movies we produce are likely to be multi-location, more film-style productions with a less close-to-home storyline. But I'm really hoping that some of you might like it; it's by far the most personal project I've been involved with, and while that felt a bit uncomfortable at times, I hope that the result justifies the rather difficult and painful month I spent involved in production. Which is now, blessedly, over; and I can concentrate on my work over the next few months. Which, OMG, includes no fewer than 7 full-day spanking shoots. Which has to be a record for me.

A/a

In case you're interested I thought I'd put a blog post together for those of you who may be curious about booking a fetish model. This post is about bondage modelling and I'll try to follow it up with one about booking a spanking model from my perspective soon (and by soon I probably mean in about a year, cos I'm rubbish at posting...) I know plenty of professional fetish models with different guidelines and limits, so this is only a personal perspective. But I hope it may be of interest to anyone who wonders how this industry sometimes works.

So here are some FAQs, some of which I may have made up to entertain myself. Pictures are all by kind permission of Restrained Elegance this time round.

'Can I actually book a real life fetish model?'

You certainly can; we like it when you do, actually. And some of my best work has been done by people who started out as bondage fans, not as professional photographers.

'Do I need to tell you what to expect before we arrange a booking?'

Yes please. The more detail the better really. Knowing where I'll be, for how long, and whether I can see samples of your work somewhere are all very reassuring. That's not to say it's impossible to work with a model if you're new to photography, but if that's the case I'm likely to want to shoot at a studio where I'll be sure of being safe if I can't check references for you. And if you've never tied someone up before, I'd recommend getting some training or booking a rigger because it's easy to make dangerous mistakes as a beginner, even with the very best of intentions.

'Is a photoshoot a bit like a play session?'

No, it really isn't . Pretending you're not going to let someone go once they're tied up might be very good fun if you're in a long-term relationship with the tied-up person (though not necessarily) but it won't go down awfully well with a professional model. And it might make you sound a bit crass, really. Expecting your model to drop into subspace or have an orgasm is possibly over-ambitious, but aiming to get good quality pictures and video of bondage which will hopefully be very sexy for the viewer is absolutely realistic. Many models, whether or not they like bondage in their personal life, are wary of working with people who make them feel as though what they really want is a play-date. I do my best work with photographers who seem clear as to where the boundaries between work and play lie. And I tend to be more conservative with anyone who appears prone to over-excitement at the prospect of having a real-life girl in his studio.

'Can we do suspensions?'

Yes please! I love them. I reserve the right to see evidence of your previous work before I let you hang me up from the ceiling, and to be sure you understand the safety implications (and that you have plans in place for if something goes wrong). But go ahead, they're super fun. Brilliant! Bear in mind that doing multiple/very tough suspensions during one day is likely to bruise your model though, which could effect her other bookings for the week. Do pay attention to her body type (taller models are often heavier, so a position that works for a 5ft, light-framed model may be unfeasibly painful for a 6ft model). And please, please plan rigs that take account of pre-existing injuries or medical conditions. It's not rude to ask!

'Can we do outdoor work?'

Yes, we certainly can. Not in a busy shopping centre, and not for 8 hours in the snow without a break, but if we can scout out a great location then lets have a go (it might be good to have a plan B in case it's horrible weather though).

'What about gags? Will you wear them?'

Absolutely - any kind really. I like them to be clean, so I might wander off and wash them if they've got bits of carpet stuck to them, but the more the merrier, frankly. Hoorah for gags.

'What about nipple clamps?'

Oh, alright then. I'm happy with all different sorts, and I'm lucky that although my nipples are sensitive, they're not so sensitive that I can't endure nipple clamps for the course of a photoset or video. But please take them off carefully!

'How about girl/girl work?'

Well, I'll stand next to another girl. I like my fetish work to be a truthful depiction of my personal tastes so while I'm absolutely happy to model with other girls (love them, yes indeed) I'm not really the model to try sexual girl/girl work with.

'And will you dom?'

Hmmm. Again, I like my fetish work to reflect my interest, so I primarily like to play submissive roles. But I'm learning to rig, and I love it (in a dress-designer kind of way). So if you're looking for a model who can rig while doing domly sort of faces or saying domly kind of things, then absolutely, yes. If you're hoping for a pro-domme who'll inflict actual pain or verbal abuse then absolutely no. Unless you want it to be really, really lame. And I certainly, under no circumstances will dominate the photographer, studio owner, or makeup artist. That'd just be unconscionably rude.

'How about sexually explicit work?'

I can't speak for all other models of course, but my philosophy (which many other models in my acquaintance share) is this;- I'm entirely happy working nude, and I won't spend the shoot freaking out about keeping my legs glued together at all times. But if your primary intention is to get explicit 'open leg' shots, I'm not the model for you. My favourite photographers are those who aren't obsessive about featuring genitalia; work that makes the viewer use their imagination a bit is my preference

'How much do you charge?'

Since as a customer, I like shopping in places where the price is clearly displayed, I like to be transparent regarding my own pricing structure, so that people booking me will be reassured that they can't buy me cheaper if they search price comparison sites. My rates are £50 per hour, £300 per day (based on 7-8 hours) or £1000 per week. This includes travel within the Greater London area, and also includes a model release (which some producers use to keep a record of the identity of their model, and also as evidence that the shoot was conducted properly). I normally ask that travel further afield in the UK and worldwide is covered by the photographer, unless I'm already touring in their area.

'I'm worried about booking a model on my own, what should I do instead?'

There are various group-shoots, workshops and tuition sessions run by photographers that can be a huge help to people starting out. The BDM runs regular photographic tutorials focussed on bondage photography, and there are plenty of other photographers worldwide who offer tuition. If you like bondage but photographing a model yourself seems scary, unappealing or too expensive, then why not jolly well join Restrained Elegance this month, where we've done all the work for you, and you can enjoy the finished product without having to fumble round with bloody F-Stops, flash triggers and slippery models covered in body lotion.

(frame grab from a recent Restrained Elegance shoot with the super-fab Pandora Blake)

WARNING - This post goes on forever. Sorry!

Hello to all who read my blog. Actually READ it. So far in my career as a fetish model and blogger, I’ve had a pretty easy ride really. I’m not generally interested in scene politics and I never feel well-informed enough to comment on wider political issues impacting the BDSM world. I enjoy my kink-related work and my D/s lifestyle, but it’s a frivolous, fun part of my life so my blog is a place where I generally keep the tone fairly light, and where the people who kindly post comments tend to reply in similar style.

But recently my blog attracted a long, abusive comment about my work and lifestyle. I consider my blog to be rather like a sitting room in my house, where people are welcome to come and visit, but where rudeness is out of place. So I deleted the comment, feeling that my virtual sitting room shouldn’t be misused as a platform for such ill-mannered ranting.

But although I started this blog in order to talk about the kinky side of my life and had expected it to only be read by people who liked similar things, I’ve been aware for some time that my blog is also visited by vanilla people. Most of these are good friends and colleagues who’re very welcome indeed. But just in case there are other people who visit this blog and similar ones in order to enjoy a bit of prurient moral outrage, I thought a bit of nailing colours to the mast might be in order.

I’ll use the original offensive comment as a framework for the following thoughts. I’ve left it exactly as written, except for erasing names.

So, apologies in advance for the unpleasant nature of some of the comments, and further apologies for my limited wisdom in reply.

‘Hmm, where do I start, Well, first understand where I come from. My childhood, and that of two of my siblings was completely wrecked by the kind of behaviour shown in your Restrained Studios site. I found it by accident when I Googled your other persona, *NAME REMOVED*.’

To what ‘kind of behaviour’ was the writer alluding, I wondered? Having your childhood wrecked is a dreadful shame. But Restrained Elegance is a bondage site, depicting consenting adults roleplaying BDSM scenarios. As it happens, Restrained Elegance doesn’t even depict adults dressed as (or pretending to be) children. I doubt the writer’s childhood was wrecked by any kind of consensual behaviour at all, since abuse tends not to be consensual.

‘I have to confess I find some of your comments on this blog and your other one a bit strange, you repeatedly say you are reluctant to 'show too much' but you appear happy to sell what is basically porn!’

I was interested by the writer’s apparent attempt to shame me by pointing out that my work could be viewed as porn. Indeed it could. I try to create work with some artistic merit, but I’m not averse to the idea of turning people on, and I wasn’t sure why anyone would think this the case. However, that doesn’t mean I’ve thrown away the right to choose what type of photography I’m involved with. Page 3 (of tabloid papers in the UK, where traditionally, a pretty girl with no top on appears daily) is ‘basically porn’ in that it’s there to titillate. But Page 3 girls are under no obligation to shoot hard pornographic videos just because they’ve appeared topless - and quite right too. I’m a spanking model, and that doesn’t mean I automatically lose the right to choose what parts of my body I show at photo shoots. I’m involved in CONSENSUAL activity; just as an independent shop owner chooses the merchandise they sell, I choose what sort of productions I want to be involved with. I’ve chosen to do work that isn’t sexually explicit and which doesn’t involve anything I consider to be sexual contact. That’s my right as an independent trader.

Furthermore, its important to make a distinction between aesthetic choices and moral ones. I like spanking, so I shoot that. My decisions about which work to take are rarely primarily moral ones. Nor is my decision not to shoot more sexually explicit work. I shoot what I enjoy looking at. It’s an artistic choice, which I’m sure is somewhat governed by my sexual preferences. It’s not because I think my work is morally superior to more explicit work.

'Does it occur to you, or your 'BDM' that the kind of people who enjoy this material, especially the CP part, would probably be the same kind as the one who made our lives a misery for 10 years (actually, it was longer for my younger brother).'

I did feel a certain amount of despair upon reading this comment. Did it occur to the writer that there is no ‘kind of person’ who enjoys CP, or any other type of sexual activity? What ‘kind of person’ is gay? What ‘kind of person’ enjoys the missionary position? Actually the BDM and I are not the same ‘kind of person’ if by this, the writer meant ‘of the same sexual identity’. The BDM’s a dominant sadist, I’m a submissive masochist. He’s not interested in spanking random vanilla women or tying them up. I’m not interested in randomly submitting to people, or trying to entice passers-by into spanking me. Both of us spent years of not engaging in the activities of our choice because we hadn’t met a suitable partner who’d enjoy them too, and we didn’t deal with our frustrations by making anyone’s lives a misery. We dealt with it by looking at porn (depicting consenting adults) and by reading BDSM erotica . Now we’re involved in creating this type of material and I hope it’s used in part by people who are still waiting for their perfect match to come along. I also hope it’s used as inspiration by happy couples who like the same things that we do.

Of course, I couldn’t be sure of the type of abuse the writer was alluding to, but taking a shot in the dark, it sounds as though he was talking about physical abuse, which may have involved being beaten. If that’s the case, then it’s horrible, very sad. But in my 7 years of involvement in the kink community, I’ve yet to meet anyone who thinks that the activities we engage in for fun would be good ways of disciplining a child. Actually, just writing that sentence made me feel a bit ill; its so OBVIOUS that even putting it into words feels a bit inappropriate really.

So the short answer would be ‘yes, of course I’ve noticed that the activities I engage in sometimes would be very wrong indeed if they were visited upon a non consenting individual. As would having any kind of sex, actually. Fortunately, I don’t want to, neither does the BDM. Neither does anyone I know, to the best of my knowledge.’

'None of us had been unaffected, and our ability to have relationships has also suffered as a result. So to find you glibly talking about actually enjoying your bruises is pretty insulting.'

I suppose it would be rather glib if I used my blog to talk about how much I enjoyed being spanked by an abusive father as a child (which I wasn’t). But I’m not; I’m talking about my (adult, consensual) love life. Since the writer chose to read a BDSM blog which is clearly marked as such, I didn’t think he really had a compelling right to be insulted by the things I talk about here.

'The fact that you are a beautiful, intelligent and talented woman makes it worse.'

And why on EARTH would it make it worse that I’m beautiful, intelligent and female? By that logic, would my desire to enjoy CP somehow be less offensive if I was a bit uglier, and maybe not very bright? Again, even writing that feels pretty unpleasant. Being intelligent (which I may or may not be) doesn’t steal my right to write about the things I enjoy, on my own blog; and it certainly doesn’t give me a responsibility to only find certain things sexually appealing. Being beautiful (or not) is, surely, also irrelevant?

'You mention that in the cp world none of the togs is interested in your body parts and all are very helpful, even working for free, that's probably because they all enjoy watching you in pain.'

It took me a while to work out where the writer were going with this, but I think I eventually figured which bit of my blog he was mis-quoting from. I think that he meant ‘tops‘ when he wrote ‘togs‘, although he may have been trying for an abbreviation of ‘photographers’. Again, I got the impression he was trying to shame me with the idea that people might enjoy watching me in pain. However, since I enjoy being watched while I’m in pain, I feel a distinct lack of shame at this idea.

I’m fine with people enjoying watching me in pain! Since it’s CONSENSUAL pain, which I’m enjoying too, it’s all good. That’s kind of the point of my BDSM work, after all. Of course, anyone within the BDSM industry will know that there’s a lot more to a spanking shoot than that. The collegiate spirit, the long-term friendships and emphasis on mutual respect and consensuality, for example. I do hope that most of the people who watch BDSM films will see the evidence of this, and not be alarmed.

'Yeah, bondage is ok, I've seen some great shibarte (sic) pics, but your pc (sic) stuff disturbs because it brings back memories, which is why I am writing.'

This opinion just horrified me, frankly. Bondage is NOT magically ok. It’s only ok if it’s consensual, just as CP is only ok if its consensual. Images of different things have differing effects on people, depending on their tastes and experiences. The writer might find that CP stuff disturbs him, in which case I’d suggest he didn’t look at it. Someone else might find that images of shibari disturb them a great deal more than depictions of spanking. Pictures of spiders upset me so I don’t seek them out. If I’d recently been raped, I might not want to watch a production of ‘Death and the Maiden’. If my parents had died when I was a baby, I might find reading ‘Harry Potter’ too sad to enjoy. If my father had been remote and uncaring, the first half of ‘The Sound of Music’ might have an upsetting resonance for me. Memories can be upsetting. But the blame lies with the person who gave you the memories in the first place, not the people who happen to create art that you don’t like.

'Also, there are no checks on entry bar a warning that the site is not for minors (yep, I can see my son taking note of that one)'

I can’t actually face getting into the online censorship debate. Apologies to anyone who’d like to read one, but if I tried to take that on I’m not sure this blog post would ever end. In fact, Restrained Elegance does have a warning that the site isn’t for minors, and always has.

'Look, if you enjoy being spanked, as you claim (though how anyone can claim to enjoy having their body bruised and scarred is beyond me) then at least your don't have to sell it. It's porn, and you appear to have double standards.'

A thorough understanding of party politics is beyond me. Particle physics is largely beyond me. So is the ability to crochet successfully shaped baby bonnets. And so, I don’t post comments on blogs dedicated to those subjects. This isn’t an important point, do forgive me for being briefly pedantic and irritable about being harangued on my own blog (sitting room, don’t forget).

But I wondered, why on earth I shouldn’t I sell a product that I enjoy consuming? It’s such a logical thing to do. People who like chocolate sometimes open chocolate shops (I went to one today). People who like books sometimes work for publishing houses. People who love computers work in IT. And sometimes, people who love BDSM, produce BDSM work that they find beautiful.

'Also, it makes your 'BDM' nothing more than a pimp. God help if you have children, I'd be terrified to leave a child of mine with him. If he preys on you, who can at least defend herself if things go to (sic) far, what about a child.

I'm glad I typed this, I couldn't write it my hands are shaking.'*NAME REMOVED*

This part of the comment was where I briefly became really angry. Where, I wondered, were my double standards? Was he harking back to my desire to only shoot the work I’m interested in? Actually, even if I DID have double standards regarding my work, I don’t see what business it is of anyone who doesn’t hire me anyway. I won’t force anyone to deal with the nightmare of a model who only wants to do the work she’s CONSENTED to.

And lawks, can I actually face explaining the ways in which the BDM isn’t a pimp? In brief, I don’t give him a percentage of my earnings; furthermore, he doesn’t have the power (or desire)to make any decisions regarding the bookings I accept, or the level of BDSM work I choose to do for the site we run together. Actually, why does HE get to be the pimp, suddenly? We appear on-screen together. Many of the story lines that we shoot are mine. And actually, he does pay me. So maybe I’m the pimp, if I’m suggesting things he could do on-screen, and if I’m taking money from the business? Or maybe the ill-informed commenter just picked a word with negative connotations out of the air.

And to wrap it up, I was incensed that the writer would dare to make such offensive assumptions about us as parents or prospective parents. If a person truly can’t perceive the difference between what a couple enjoy doing as part of their consensual sex-life, and what the same couple do to their non-consenting children, then God help HIS children.

And lastly, the BDM does not ‘prey’ on me. I guess he might say I prey on him, but he manages to handle it with admirable fortitude. And for the record, I’m against the use of corporal punishment in any context other than between adults, for mutual pleasure.

The above notes will of course be nothing new to most of the people who read this, but I do hope that if you’ve found my blog by chance and are shocked by what you see, that this post will maybe help to set your mind at rest.

Ariel x

Before I start, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who commented on my last post. I was both comforted and enlightened by many of the articulate viewpoints that you expressed and I'm really happy to say that I feel I could make a better case for tolerance of BDSM lifestyles in future as a result. Lovely.

Anyway, this post isn't very well thought out. But I've been thinking about how much I like both 'enjoying' BDSM and 'not enjoying' it recently. The above picture which the BDM took for our site last month falls firmly into the 'enjoying' category, both because I was having a marvellous time (until a walker with a dog who LOVED handcuffs turned up) and because I was having a chance to display what fun it was to be in the sun, under a china blue Autumn sky with my BDM, doing one of our favourite things.

In the same month, I had all the fun in the world being a captured pirate, not 'enjoying' myself in the least.

Here's the angry pirate lady. I loved being her, all haughty and determined.

But I do know that some of the people who view my work on Restrained Elegance and sites with similar content get worried when they see work that looks as though I wasn't enjoying myself, so recently I had a go at making a video that was fairly dark subject-wise (political prisoner, scary prison cell, interrogator with unspeakable devices hidden in this suitcase)

but was narrated by another version of me, a nice safe one talking about her fantasy while drinking tea and eating cake.

I wonder if people will like it. I hope that the cheery framing device won't turn off the people who like serious scenes, and that the voiceover explaining how my fantasy is developing will help to reassure people who generally like low-threat bondage fantasies. The video's up on Restrained Elegance this month so do go and see what you think if you're interested. I hope that the narrated/enacted fantasy scenario might be one I can explore further; I really loved the opportunity to shoot something quite menacing and down-beat while using my voiceover to explain what made the scene hot for me.

I'm generally feeling very jolly and looking forward immensely to Christmas. I do hope that you are too, and thanks as ever for visiting.

Very best pre-Christmas wishes,

Ariel and Amelia xx

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 :)

'Ariel' from The Tempest. Courtesy of William Shakespeare, Dangerpics and Evie Wolfe

Hello everyone! I'm sorry that this'll very likely be a horrible dull post, because I'm freakily busy and my head is a bit buzzy and confused. So I'm probably going to write nonsense. But I didn't want to abandon my blog for too criminally long a period of time after everyone's lovely kind comments about being engaged to the BDM. So I'm writing to tell you that I'm alive, still being tied up and spanked a great deal, and enjoying making wedding dress prototypes.

I think I'm going to write about something that concerns me quite often. As my profile as a fetish model has grown (which I'm not complaining about in itself, nope, I'm very happy, thank you) and I've become busier and busier as a result, I frequently feel as though I'm almost drowning in busy-ness. I know this isn't unique to me, I think lots of people in the busiest period of their careers probably feel similar. But I do feel guilty that there are lots of things (both personal and work related) that I simply don't have time to do. Here's a list of the work-related ones (I'll never stop loving lists).

1) Link exchanges. Oh God. I know these are probably important, but it's too, too slow and boring...

2) Writing about recent shoots. Actually, I'd love to be able to write about pretty much every fetish shoot I have, since almost all of them are great experiences. And yet, I hardly ever have time, or by the time I do the shoot's so far in the past that it feels a bit mental. And I'm scared of insulting all the producers I haven't written about. So I'm abysmal at this.

3) Buying outfits. That really would be a lot of fun; searching eBay for fun clothes to wear at shoots is something I love doing, but I hardly ever have time. Fortunately for me, I've got a good wardrobe built up already and I do grab new clothes whenever I'm going through airports or have a few hours free between shoots, but I'd love to devote more time to it.

4) Writing scripts. I already do write scripts, most often for Restrained Elegance and for Firm Hand Spanking because both companies have a budget to pay for script-writing time. But when I started BDSM modelling, I used to contribute ideas and fantasies to many shoots during the pre-shoot process. I'd love to be more helpful, but increasingly I have to answer requests like that by saying 'I'll give you ideas on the day, honestly; but I don't have time to write anything now'. Which is absolutely true, but I don't feel great about it.

5) Doing interviews. I get asked for these a lot, and I've got nowhere near enough time to fulfill every request. I tend to choose to do them for people I have an existing relationship with, or people who've put the most effort into the questions they want me to answer. But ideally, I'd do every interview I was offered; it'd feel more polite and it's always nice to be asked.

6) Probably most importantly; socialising with the lovely people I've met through working in this industry. I count some of them amongst my closest friends, but it's rare to see them unless we're doing something work related. And it makes me feel very sad sometimes, that meeting the super, kinky people I now know as a result of my job is one of the best things that's come from being a BDSM model; but it seems to have come at the cost of not actually having time to see any of them regularly.

7) Oh GOD; emails. I feel like I'm drowning in them. And somehow Twitter, Facebook et al seem to have turned into extra inboxes for me. I dream about them.

At home, it's also tricky; the BDM is super, and I'm so happy to be marrying him. I just wish I saw more of him, and I wish that I could promise him I'll be home a lot more once we're married. I'm certainly trying; I'm cutting back on long trips abroad and I'm taking a day every couple of weeks to do admin so I don't have to catch up with it on on days off cos that feels rude and intolerable. Gosh, but wouldn't it be lovely to be an aristocrat or something? I feel as though I could fill a whole lifetime doing nice things with the BDM without getting anywhere near bored enough to need another form of entertainment. I'm sure lots of people would feel the same; when did we all start working so bloody hard, I wonder?

At present, these seem to be the things I do most;-

1) Answer emails. And many of them are to lovely people, discussing tremendously fun projects, but golly, it's hard work staying anywhere near up-to-date if you also want to get enough sleep.

2) Pack suitcases. Every job requires different clothing, and hours a week of my time are spent unpacking, laundering and packing again. I'm wondering about instituting a personal policy of permanent nudity, and not bringing any clothes to any of my shoots at all.

3) Drive. Actually, I love driving, which is a blessing. And audiobooks save my sanity. But it turns 8 hour shoot days into 14 hour marathons, quite often.

4) Book hotels. Like, every day. LOL, I'm sick of it, do any fetish models have managers, I wonder?

Ohhhhh Lordy, I sound like such a victim. I do apologise; bleating about relative success is a ridiculous thing to do and I do love my job. But finding the energy to do all the things associated with shooting is hard at the moment. And as a result, a lot of my fantasies are pet girl related. Very little responsibility sounds like just the thing.

Happy Easter everyone, am hoping that you're a bit less stressy than me at present. I'm wondering about how to simplify my life a bit in order to achieve a clearer head :)

Good heavens, I am indeed alive. I actually have proof of this, having done a million things in the past 3 weeks. I think I'll tell you about some of them now :)

First of all, oh my goodness, I scripted and directed a bastinado movie. Bastinado is something I have an uneasy, love/hate type relationship with. I love the BDM . He loves bastinado. I, therefore, have experienced lots of it, with various implements. Foot caning works beautifully for me, hooray, but I absolutely hate, hate, hate anything with leather straps involved. The BDM loves leather strap bastinado beyond all other things as a result. BDSM's awfully complicated, isn't it?

So writing and directing my own bastinado movie seemed like a good opportunity for me to explore my feelings for and tolerance of bastinado. With me as the lead actress, it was inevitable that I'd have to. (I know this is horrifically Kevin Costner-esque but I don't know any other models who're keen to try foot torture). I hoped that, by writing a story that appealed to me, I'd give myself the best possible chance of making it through the painful scenes.

So that's what I did. I've been exploring the 'visiting professional disciplinarian' idea in fantasy and play over the last couple of years and it appeals to me massively; I love the idea of an incredibly detached, disinterested professional being in charge of administering carefully calculated punishments, so that's the role I wrote for the BDM (I think it suits his scientific nature, so I had a good excuse for it). His character appealed to me enough to help me through the most painful bits of the movie.

I'm not clever enough to be able to capture the peculiarly cumulative, inescapable fire-y pain of bastinado in words alone, but in my experience it can be far, far more all-encompassingly painful than any kind of spanking I've ever experienced. If the potential success of a BDSM movie could be measured in the tears of pain shed during the shoot process, then we might have a blockbuster on our hands.

Here is a teaser trailer;-

(For a lovely big version, go directly here)

We shot a final scene today, and I'll be editing the whole thing myself over the next few weeks. I've been editing videos for Restrained Elegance for the last 6 months, but a feature-length movie will be a fab new challenge. It's particularly exciting because the BDM has upgraded all his equipment, so the whole project was shot on a super new camera called a RED which frankly I don't understand awfully well. Except that;

a) its really easy to use, so I can operate it and get the shots I had in my head without feeling all sweaty and asthmatic.

b) it makes everything look absolutely beautiful, even suburbia in the rain.

c) it has a touch screen so you can pretend it's a phone.

Lordy, that was a lot of talk about only one of the things I was planning to talk about. So I'll finish (I'm baking our wedding cake at the same time as blogging, and I don't want to burn it) by talking about last week, when Restrained Elegance kindly took me on a week-long location trip to a lovely (except for the strangely ill-equipped kitchen) old house in the English West Country. And here are some frame grabs from the movie we started making there.

The girls. From left to right - Hannah, Sophia, Scarlot, and meeeeeeeeee.

Scarlot is failing her slave-position test, and it's my job to tell Mistress Kate...

Here I am, considering whether I can face cleaning a customer's shoes without the use of my hands.

It's all about slave training; I'm the 'resident slave' who belongs to the auction house, and it's my job to get the new girls ready for the sale. We were joined by the luminous Sophia Smith, delicious Hannah Claydon, patrician Anita de Bauch, and ingenuous Scarlot Rose, who got the lead role of the uncertain newcomer into the hedonistic auction-house world... Hooray, Temptress Kate appeared too, as the icy-cool head slave-trainer!

It was a splendid week (punctuated by trying to prepare food with knives that'd probably be blunt enough to be sold at the Early Learning Centre ) and I've got high hopes that the videos we shot will be as fun to watch as they were to make.

Thanks as always for reading, and I'll update again within the next few weeks with news of various extra-fun projects I'm working on.

All the best,

A/a

PS Re-reading this post, I discover that I've forgotten how to write anything that makes sense. And how did I end up writing such lonnnnnnnnnng sentences? I need some sort of strict tutor to help me with my grammar. Mmmmmmmmmm.

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Oh my goodness, I need to be a better writer than I am to tell you all the things I’m thinking and feeling today. I’m writing this in the brief, 2 day gap between getting married to Hywel (the BDM is the HDM now) and holding our reception, which is a tea party for our family and closest friends.

Our wedding day was absolutely perfect for me (I don’t want to speak for Hywel, who I’m sure will blog about it himself, but he certainly seemed very happy too). We just had our two witnesses there, since we really wanted the smallest wedding possible. I’ve done a fair number of bridal shoots in my career as a model (and plenty of bridle ones, of course) and I didn’t want our wedding day to feel like a performance, or like a modelling job. Hywel was in agreement, so we just had my lovely sister, and our wonderful friend Steve, who shoots for Restrained Elegance as well.

The wedding itself was extraordinarily lovely to me, but possibly a bit boring to read about so I’ll be brief. I was barefoot at Hywel’s request (brilliant, I thought I’d be horrifically embarrassed but actually it felt perfectly natural), I wore a dress I’d made myself, and the vows were beautiful. I cried a bit, but not in a horrific embarrassing manner, as far as I know. Here’s a picture Steve took right after we signed the register.

And once it was over, we headed to a gorgeous hotel that we eat at a lot but have never stayed in. We’d booked a suite with a four poster bed and some fabulous, usefully shaped furniture in it. And that’s all I have to say about that ;)

So now, I’m Mrs Phillips, and I’m stupidly, impossibly happy about it. And it’s made me think back about how we first met, so I’m going to give you a brief history in pictures;-

Here’s a shot from our first set, at my first Restrained Elegance shoot. I’d had to pester a bit in order to shoot for RE at all, and I was determined that Hywel would like me. At the time, I’d only done a couple of bondage shoots, and had been modelling for less than a year; hence the schoolgirl hair and the minimal approach to makeup. I was so sorry when the shoot was over (it had passed with me in a lather of excitement, trying not to show that the whole thing was hopelessly erotic for me) and so glad when Hywel re-booked me almost immediately...

After a year or so of working together, in which we got to know each other well enough for me to confess that I really was into BDSM (I don’t think it was a great surprise to Hywel) Hywel took me, Hannah, Sabrina and Temptress Kate to France for a week’s shoot. The pleasure of modelling for Hywel every day for an extended period was absolute heaven for me; I remember rushing my hair and makeup dreadfully, in order to be the next model in line whenever Hywel was ready for one. Consequently, he ended up with more sets of me than anyone else, which was a bad business move for me, since in theory it meant that he wouldn’t have to re-book me for ages. But I couldn’t help it, just as I couldn’t help fantasising about him coming to my bedroom to tie me up and spank me at night. He didn’t, he behaved like a consummate professional. But by now, he’d become my absolute favourite person to work with.

Later that year, Hywel booked me to work with Chanta Rose as the rigger.

Which was interesting in many ways. Chanta is very experienced, both as a professional and as a lifestyle player. And she’s totally comfortable with talking frankly about BDSM. Which meant that the shoot with her made me feel more relaxed talking about my fantasies in front of other people. I think this is what led to Hywel and me deciding to do a series called ‘Restrained Elegance Nights’ in which we explored the harder side of BDSM, which I’d not actually experienced, but was desperate to try. We shot our ‘Long Term Bondage’ project as a result, followed by ‘Bondage Driving Test’ by which point I was struggling to keep our relationship fully professional - basically I’d begun to tell Hywel all my fantasies, and we’d play them out in front of the cameras as a way to justify what we were doing since we hadn’t negotiated an actual relationship yet. As a result, parts of those videos make me pretty embarrassed - they’re still available to watch on Restrained Elegance but I’m uncomfortable watching something that exposes my feelings so clearly.

And then Hywel invited me to be the model for his first bondage photography tutorial. I flew back from New York and took a taxi straight to his studio (my flight had been delayed) but once I got there, the lack of sleep made no difference whatsoever to my excitement. Here’s a shot from a set that Merlin (who we met that day for the first time, and who’s since become a very valued member of the RE crew) directed;-

And which Steve, who we also met for the first time that day shot. I’m afraid I behaved in a rather sluttish manner that day; being tied up and photographed by 4 people while Hywel told me what to do, stepped in to gag me, and generally took control of the whole thing, was very sexy for me indeed!

And finally, after at least 3 years of shooting together (and probably more, my maths is hideous) we made the decision to play together as well as work together. This picture’s from the first time we shot together after we’d made that decision.

Hmmm, I don’t think my facial expression was put on for the camera. I’m rather ashamed to say that our new arrangement made for some rather excessively sexual photo sets...

And after playing together for a few months, neither of us were happy with the parameters we’d set for ourselves, and we became a proper, real-life couple.

And photosets of me from around that time seem to me to have a pervasive sense of happiness!

We moved out of the studio, and into a house we bought together...

And things got better and better. Of course, our lives aren’t magically charmed, and we’re as effected by ill health, work stress, and all the real life problems as any other couple. But I’m so happy with Hywel, and being married to him feels so perfectly right.

And of course, being married won’t stop me also being Hywel’s slavegirl. That’s too important to lose - we’re in the middle of working out what our new rules will be and we’ll be figuring it all out properly on honeymoon. I’m very excited about that - the rule Hywel’s already put in place for the new married me is perfect :)

Here’s a picture to finish with, of the dress I made as a practice wedding dress earlier this year, just in time for our shoot in Scotland. We’ll be shooting a set for Restrained Elegance in my real wedding dress as soon as we’re properly back at work.

So for now, thank you to our friends and supporters, who joined RE and made it possible for us to meet in the first place. I’m sorry this wasn’t a very edgy post, I’m just full of happiness and wanted to talk about it. Thank you for reading!

Here's a wedding-themed picture by our friend AP Sheep who made the metal dress!! He is brilliant.

In an unprecedented move, I'm blogging very soon after my last post. I feel like a proper blogger, but obviously, never in the league of Pandora Blake . I have hopes that one day I'll grow up and blog like her. By the way, thank you so much to everyone who posted comments to my last post (especially Michael - that's a very interesting subject that you brought up, I'd like to blog about it some time).

Anyway, the reason I'm blogging is because everything was too darned exciting to not talk about over the last couple of weeks for me. So I'm writing it all down (actually, I wrote this on honeymoon, so I'm just copy typing now, in the manner of a sexy 1950's secretary. Except that I'm wearing a massive orange polar fleece and drinking hot Ribena.)

Right, here's the actual post. It's about my honeymoon with the BDM, who is now the HDM. I wanted to drop the 'M' for master to give him the same initials as 'High Definition', but he wouldn't let me. Oh well.

'This is what happened after we got married;-

We went back to work for a couple of days. I know this sounds odd, but we're in the middle of creating some new projects as well as improving our work on RE so we needed the time. A lovely commentary ran through my head as I worked;- 'I'm just editing a video for my husband's website.' 'Mrs HDM is stopping work for a cup of tea with her husband.' Awfully grandiose of me, but lovely one-off fun.

We held our reception on the Sunday three days after our wedding. And it was really rather a kinky affair, at least according to the guest list. A number of the people I think of as the British spanking aristocracy came (less than we'd have liked due to the small space we loved so much we chose it for the party) and the first one we saw that day was the tremendous Lucy the Matron of Northern Spanking along with her brilliant husband Paul Kennedy and lovely child. Lucy had kindly volunteered to do my hair, and as is her multi-skilled way, she did a beautiful job of making me look all vintage-y and elegant.

Of the lovely kinkies we were able to fit onto the guest list were Amy Hunter of Northern Spanking fame, Stephen Lewis (also of Northern Spanking), my beloved friend Katy Cee from Restrained Elegance, brilliant Temptress Kate, RE's publicist, model and location photographer, RE photographer Steve and his lovely wife, RE model Sammie B, the wonderful Leigh and Zena from gorgeous boudoir photography service Mighty Aphrodite and my favourite non-gay best friend Ben Davies

In retrospective, it seems silly of me but before our wedding party I'd been a bit worried about how our vanilla and kinky guests would all get on. Of course, the HDM and I had family members in attendance, and while they all know exactly what we do for a living, I wondered whether anyone would end up in awkward conversations. But midway through the party, I looked round and saw Stephen Lewis and Paul Kennedy talking to my sister and her family, Lucy-the-Matron sitting with one of the HDM's university friends, and Temptress Kate and Katy Cee deep in conversation with my super-cool fashion writer friend and her husband. I felt so happy, and so proud of our friends, the vanilla ones who are liberal enough to cope with people making unconventional career choices and having varied sexual identities, and the kinky friends who were able to understand that you don't need to dress in PVC and wield canes around at all times. All this seems very obvious now, but it was a lovely discovery nevertheless.

Since the HDM's not over-keen on public speaking, having possibly burnt out from his previous life as a lecturer, we decided the main speech would be my responsibility. I'd been worried about it, but on the advice of a friend I decided to be honest rather than trying to be clever, so I mostly just thanked people. My (our!) niece who'd decorated our wedding cake with a cascade of autumn leaves, Lucy for my lovely hair, the HDM's parents' for bringing up to have the confidence to abandon one career in favour of being a bondage photographer. And Hywel himself, for everything, really.

Then we struggled home under the weight of all the cookbooks we'd asked for as wedding presents, stumbled to bed, and were awoken at 3.45am in order to go off on honeymoon.

I'd kept my beautiful wedding hair-style overnight - since it was a gift from Lucy, destroying it prematurely felt vile and wrong. It wasn't until we were sitting in a lakeside cafe in Italy that afternoon that I realised the silver star-shaped hair ornament was still in my hair too. It felt like a good omen or something (I've become very sentimental temporarily, do forgive me).

Our honeymoon (on Lake Maggiore - its beautiful in the extreme) has been mainly spent sleeping, eating enormous ice-creams, going on cable-cars, sharing pasta dishes (Like in Lady and the Tramp) and attempting to speak Italian. And of course, there's been plenty of time for all sorts of splendid kinkiness.

Now we're about to go home again (I'm writing this from our hotel's lounge while Hywel sleeps next door) and launch into our lives as a married bondage producer couple. I expect it'll be similar to before in lots of ways - I find myself reaching for something profound to say, but can come up with nothing. Except that, as always, when I think about my life with Hywel, the chances we have to engage in activities we both thought we'd never get to do, and the way we don't have to sacrifice 'normal' romantic love in order to do so; I want to send a postcard back in time and tell my younger self that in 2012 everything turned out ok for me.'

We're back home now (sorry for the jumping around in time through this blogpost) and we just went out and shot a two part photo-set for Restrained Elegance as a thank you to our Members for joining the site, which allowed us to meet in the first place. The first part of the set is in my wedding dress, the second part is at home without it on :) Here's a sample shot - we're editing the second half now and it'll be live on Restrained Elegance tomorrow!

Thanks to you all as always for visiting, I'm very happy and hoping things are well with you all too.

As always my blog post is starting with a tired apology; I'm not a good blogger. All I can say in my defence is that as a model, I'm rather assiduous and prolific. I wish those words could be used to describe my blogging, but at least I have insight into my condition and I know that they really, really can't be.

Nevertheless, I've been being busy and useful elsewhere, and this is what I've been up to;-

Lots and lots and LOTS of modelling. I've been in Scotland, Belgium, Holland, Portugal and all OVER England since I last blogged. Lots of the work has been of a non-kink sort but in the bondage genre I've worked for Chimera PetandPonygirls Bondage Chronicles Bondage Bob Jack Bond Limited Audience and, naturally, Restrained Elegance That's only the ones I could think of off the top of my head by the way, I'm sure there were lots more than that but my diary's on another floor of the house so I can't be bothered to fetch it (bad blogger, you see)

For fans of spanking, I've also been busily shooting with all the best producers to make sure that the supply of ghastly Amelia's wickedness doesn't dry up. Check out Spanked in Uniform SpankingSarah (who has the best picture of me ever on her masthead) www.northernspanking.com and Dreams of Spanking for lots of lovely updates with me in them. Yep.

And whilst I've been doing all these shoots, I've also been finding my feet as a rigger. Until last year, I'd only rigged for Restrained Elegance, and hadn't really regarded myself as a rigger at all - just a model who'd picked up enough knowledge to help out when no one else was around to do the rope work. But then, a couple of studio owners who were aware of my bondage work asked me to come and do a bit of self bondage for some of the photographers who used their studios regularly and were interested in shooting fetish images. That led to my actually teaching a couple of interested photographers the basics of western rope bondage, and I've gradually found myself adding bundles of rope into my modelling bags on more and more occasions.

Finally, when I was booked by a superb photographer Carl Grim for a full day of bondage rigging/modelling and I decided it was time to actually buy my own rope. This shows just how horrifically spoilt one can become as a model - I'm sure that for most people who want to learn rigging for photography, they have to start by buying their own rope, then pay to get some tuition, then do lots of unpaid practicing and then finally, maybe, get paid for their skill. Naughty, lucky me, eventually buying some rope of my own made me feel that now I could maybe start calling myself a rigger in my own head.

A note of caution; I know most people reading this won't jump to conclusions, but please please, to those people who think this is a good opportunity to ask me to be their Domme, I'm still not dominant. And in all honesty, I do find that repeated requests along these lines feel a bit bullying. Sort of the same as being gay and being continually pestered by people who know you to 'just have a go at heterosexuality', and not to be such a stick-in-the-mud because you 'can't know what you're into until you try it'. I'm not a Domme, just a rather tall sub with a fantastic new collection of gorgeous un-dyed cotton rope which I cut into lengths myself, all giddy with the freedom of choosing lengths that were convenient for me rather than for someone else's rigging style.

Anyway, so the Carl Grim shoot was fantastic fun for me; the responsibility of tying up a model who hadn't done much in the way of fetish work before weighed quite heavily on me but both she and Carl Grim were so energetic, thoughtful and talented that I got happily swept along with the whole thing and these pictures are the result;-

And I love them love them love them. Thanks to Kayleigh and Carl for such a lovely day, which made me feel brave and hopeful about doing more of this in 2013.

And the very next week, I had the chance to try out my ropes again, this time as a result of the wonderfully experimental Pandora Blake who booked me for a joyous, 2 day shoot for Dreams of Spanking with Caroline Grey (yes, I loved her so much I'll go all hyperbolic if I try to count the ways) and my own lovely BDM Hywel Phillips . Pandora had wanted to shoot a male bondage photoset and had booked male model Will Savage (can't find a link for him, if you have one let me know and I'll credit him properly). I was kind of nervous about tying up a man for the first time because the bondage I'm used to doing for Restrained Elegance relies a lot upon the models' having a fair amount of flexibility, especially in the shoulders. Indeed, it proved fairly challenging; positions that are sustainable for many female models proved painful for Will and it forced me to tie faster than I normally do. The results, however, are beautiful and I'll most certainly hope to tie men up again in the future - I'm sure that if I think it through carefully I can find ties that will be comfortable for even the most musclebound chaps. Anyway, here's a picture, courtesy of Dreams of Spanking and shot by Hywel .

I've got more rigging in my future and I'm very excited about it; modelling is my first love but I'm hoping that in 2013, ropework will be something I also concentrate at getting better at. We've got a lot more shoots for Restrained Elegance planned over the next few months, and I'm going to see if I can do ropework that improves upon these examples;-

(thanks to Natalia Forrest Fawna Latrische Hannah Claydon and Scarlot Rose)

I've been so keen on my whole new rigging life, I've created a pictures-only blog here;-

I know that I need to be sensible about this venture; as a model its hard to injure people but as a rigger I need to take on responsibility for other peoples' safety and I want to take that seriously. Modelling feels like a wonderful giddy, childish pursuit in contrast, which is making me love it even more than usual.

Thanks as always for reading my blog posts, I appreciate it very much.

And OMG, hysterical news flash, I've been invited to Fetishcon in Tampa this year! Do get in touch if you'll be there too; I'm a bit incoherent with excitement about it all and can't find a normal way to finish this sentence so......

Best wishes and Happy Easter everyone,

A/a

Hello dear lovely kinky everyone who visits my blog. I'm writing this because the virtual ship my blog has been granted safe passage on may be sinking. It seems that Google is becoming non-kink friendly and that my blog here is likely to be shut down.

Many people are writing more intelligently than me on the subject; all I'll say for now is that I'm alarmed and disappointed in corporate society's apparent prejudice towards sexual diversity. I'm grateful that my blog has been granted free hosting space for all these years, but sad that it's being taken away for such a frightening
reason. I'm not part of a separate dangerous species of person who expresses their sexuality online and damages all the normal people. The people (like me) who do this are normal people too. Between us all, kinky and vanilla, pornographers, dentists, politicians, nail technicians, astronauts or whoever; I think we create an internet that reflects our interests and needs. Kinky blogs form part of that reflection. Therefore, I feel they have the same rights to belong on the internet as a sci-fi appreciation forum, online sewing-bee or whatever.

Lawks.

In the meantime, Hywel's kindly exported my blog here;-

while I decide where future posts will go. Bless you as always for visiting, the online kinky community has never seemed so precious to me as it does today.

Well, I’ve been having an eventful time; let me tell you about it. It’s a bit of a painful story with no neat ending to it so far, but it does involve a healthy portion of fun kinkiness somewhere in it. This will, true to form, probably be rather long, so I’m breaking it down into multiple posts that’ll appear here over the next couple of weeks. Sorry the first installment is kind of downbeat.

First of all, I have to come out. Some of you will know me from my mainstream work but for anyone visiting who doesn’t, I’m not a full time professional fetish model - I’m not sure anyone in the UK really is, given the limited number of employers in the genre. So, when I’m not a fetish model, I work as an ordinary model. Shocking isn’t it? Now, anyone who works for long as a model will tend to start finding their career being shaped by the work they’ve already done. Photographers tend to choose models for their new projects who already have a body of work in a similar style - it makes sense to book models with a proven track record in the genre. For me, this genre has been dance.

Image Courtesy of the fantastic Orson Carter

I trained as a ballet dancer and gymnast throughout my childhood and teenage years. An injury finished my hopes of turning professional and after picking up the pieces of my rather shattered hopes, I diversified into acting instead. Later I became a model, and a photographer who knew I’d once danced bought me a pair of pointe shoes and photographed me dancing again. It felt wonderful and I liked the images. Armed with the pointe shoes, I started offering ballet-style modelling as one of my USPs. It worked well, and gradually over the last decade I’ve been booked more and more frequently for ballet themed pictures. It’s been great fun and very profitable, although it’s far more taxing on my body than any other style of work I do (including hard bondage). My original back injury has flared up from time to time, and two years ago I sustained an upper back injury too, which rumbles on, never quite going away. Then a year ago, after taking up running in an effort to make myself stronger for my dance work, I sustained first a foot and then an ankle injury. It’s made all my shoots harder, painful and subsequently less fun, which has been sad because I love my job.

Dance modelling is most certainly kinder to your body than being a professional dancer, since you’re rarely required to actually dance continually for more than a few minutes at a time. On the other hand, photographic studios can be much colder than dance spaces since they’re so often situated in poorly insulated industrial units. And crucially, they almost always have concrete floors, which makes jumping uncomfortable and ultimately damaging. That’s probably partially accounted for my failure to heal from my various niggling injuries, and the fairly relentless schedule I’ve set for myself has been a contributing factor too. Poor Hywel has done his best to suggest I take a gentler approach to my work but I’ve been grateful to have a dance-related career snatched back from the jaws of defeat after having come to terms with knowing I’d never be able to realise that particular dream, and it’s been hard to turn stuff down. And I’ve been proud of being offered so much work; my schedule’s been booked around 6 months ahead for the last couple of years, and it’s allowed me to tour the UK, Europe and beyond. Not bad when I remember the 18 year old I once was, in an orthopedic surgeon’s office being told I’d never dance again. I’ve wanted to shout back to her across the years that it’ll be ok.

And it has been, sort of. But then in May this year, I felt a sudden twinge in my right knee while I was coming downstairs.

I ignored it, I was about to shoot a contemporary dance movie for a director I respect very much, and I didn’t see a reason to cancel. The shoot was painful and frightening, my knee flared warnings at me every time I knelt on it. But I got through and hopefully delivered a useable performance; the production stills look cool to me.

Images courtesy of BikeshedTV

The drive back down South was painful, my trip to the Isle of Wight for shoots the following day nearly unbearably so. My doctor was able to give me some generic knee exercises but they seemed to make things worse if anything. The following week I asked if The Kantakas would mind postponing a shoot, to allow me to get to a sports physiotherapist. They kindly consented, but the sports massage didn’t help much, and over the next couple of days I found myself repeatedly apologising to photographers (including Chimera Bondage) that I couldn’t kneel down.

I literally limped through the next couple of weeks. A wonderful ballet themed shoot with in an empty mansion house in London produced beautiful images, but I got through the shoot by standing on my left leg whenever possible to spare the sore right one, and by taking the strongest painkillers I could find, which didn’t seem to do much.

Two days later I was booked for a day of bondage and dance work. I awoke in pain, and driving to the studio helped matters not at all. This time, painkillers seemed to do nothing and by mid afternoon, getting up from where I’d been seated on the floor sent a bolt of pain through my knee, making me gasp. By taking a double dose of painkillers I got through the last bit of the shoot in what I now recall as a haze of unreality. I drove myself the few miles to my hotel for the night and called Hywel.

In a miserable conversation we agreed I should cancel all my bookings for July; a decision which cost me thousands of pounds in lost earnings and felt like tearing down all the carefully constructed business relationships and friendships I’d spent 10 years building up. It was ghastly and I don’t know how I’d possibly have got through the last few weeks without Hywel, lucky me to have married a man who doesn’t require me to be a calm and perfect physical specimen at all times. I am not.

After two days of emailing apologies to everyone and receiving their unfailingly kind responses to my cancellations, I was left with an empty month in my diary. For the first time in a decade, I didn’t have anywhere to be.

And with utterly vile timing, Hywel was going to be away from home. This never happens; I think I’ve spent 2 nights alone in the house during the whole of our cohabitation. As webmasters reading this will know, running a pay site does tend to tie you to your office. But Hywel was working as Director of Photography on a mainstream film, and I was very proud of him; without a question, he had to go. I thought I’d be fine; I could walk, climb upstairs if I was careful, and I could work for Restrained Elegance in his absence. Various lovely friends and family members offered to stay with me if I got lonely, but I thought I’d be fine - actually I thought it might even be fun once the pain started to lessen; I could bake, sew, book shoots for 2014, revamp my blog, publicise our Clips4Sale store. I even had grandiose ideas of making self-shot clips on my own and writing an autobiography.

But what I actually did was to have a lot of physiotherapy and sports massage appointments but not feel any improvement. Kind friends kept checking in, but I kept having to tell them that nothing had changed. I swam, but it hurt too much to do more than 4 or 5 lengths. I went to Pilates classes with old ladies who seemed in a better physical state than me. I limped round supermarkets, picking up the minimum amounts of supplies before the pain got too much and I had to go home and use ice packs on my knee.

I sewed in the meantime; here's a kimono I made for a photographer who commissioned me.

Let me know if you need anything outlandish made for you by the way, I think it might be my secondary career because I LOVE it :)

Hywel came home at the end of the week to check on me and my lack of progress. Then he came home on the second Sunday, and things were still no better. I started to get very scared.

In my third week at home I started feeling rather strange emotionally too. Still in pain from my knee, but the stress of dealing with a possibly-career-ending injury began making me feel a bit divorced from reality. Driving began to scare me, I felt as though I couldn’t concentrate. I felt unhappy around strangers, and I didn’t want visitors either. When the phone rang, the names of concerned members of my family and friends on my display made me feel anxious. My best friend re-iterated her offer to come and stay with me, but it was the last thing I wanted although I always love her company. Then, abruptly, my arms started aching too. Typing suddenly became untenably painful, as did texting. I felt cut off; holding my phone up to my ear was painful; when Hywel called I’d prop the phone on the sofa, and lie over it to talk.

Then I had a panic attack; I’d gone swimming, but my knee was too painful for me to achieve much. I was overwhelmed by feelings of despair - my whole life, all it seemed to amount to was a dingy local authority swimming pool frequented by the elderly and infirm. I hurried into my clothes and rushed out of the building; I took refuge in my car but still felt panicky - I realised I was crying and that taking in breath was suddenly very hard work.

Although I fervently wanted to get home, I didn’t make it out of the car park. I was crying too hard and I couldn’t see so I pulled over, blindly, to the side of the path.

After some time, a knock on the window made me snatch in my breath and jump backwards in my seat. A concerned lady had come out of the sports centre and seen me. Unfortunately, even when I’d remembered how to wind down my window I found myself unable to speak to explain what was wrong. She eventually retreated; courtesy is important to me and I felt ashamed not to be able to thank her for her kindness in trying to help me. I’m hoping to recognise her one day so I’ll be able to explain and say thank you. But by now a small crowd seemed to have gathered and I felt horribly exposed so I started my engine and drove home. As I drove down the hill to our house I realised I was screaming, over and over again. The sound scared me.

Talking to Hywel on the phone helped; he was going to be home again that weekend. He said that I should probably look at cancelling my bookings through August and September too, and I couldn’t help but agree - I couldn’t imagine being able to stand up for long in heels, walk in hoof boots or kneel in a frogtie, let alone dance en pointe, or jump and land on my injured knee. So I started burning more bridges (or at least that was how it felt) in a series of mails which were significantly shorter than the first ones I’d sent out - my arms were too painful to type much.

Then a second stupid panic attack came along ; I’d been planning to go to the local supermarket in preparation for Hywel coming home the following day, but somehow, I kept putting off the journey. Finally, late in the afternoon, I realised that if I didn’t go soon the shop would be shut. I only needed to grab a sweater and my shoes from upstairs before leaving the house, but that journey felt insurmountable. I felt panic building in my chest again. Then I was bent over double in the kitchen, screaming and screaming over again. I couldn’t stop and I felt as though I’d gone crazy.

Then I was curled at the bottom of the stairs with the telephone in my hand. I telephoned the UK’s emergency medical advice line - I thought calling an ambulance was probably overkill since my arms and legs were all still attached to my body and because despite the feeling in my chest, I did appear to be breathing more or less effectively.

I’m suspicious that I probably sounded quite mad in the ensuing conversation. The health professional I spoke to was very kind and helpful and suggested I take a taxi to the hospital. I agreed, but once I’d disconnected the call I knew I wasn’t going to; the Emergency Room would be crowded with people and I couldn’t cope with that idea. Furthermore, I didn’t want to get back into the car.

I waited for Hywel to come home and it was a great relief when he came back, all calm and resourceful and rational. Then when Monday came I made an appointment with my doctor. She took blood tests to rule out any systemic condition that could be causing all the various symptoms I’d been having (I'm waiting for the results), and gave me anti-anxiety medication to hopefully arrest any further panic attacks in the short term.

And it was with this dreadful month only just behind me that I embarked upon my trip to the USA, to appear as a Guest of Honour at the fetish industry’s biggest annual event - Fetishcon in Tampa, Florida.

Which I’ll blog about next time, and it’ll be cheerier. Thanks for reading; I wondered whether this was appropriate to post really but hopefully it might help someone somehow one day, and I do like being honest about bad stuff as well as good stuff.

Thanks as always,

A/a

(this post makes more sense if you read the previous one)

I wondered if I should perhaps cancel my trip to Fetishcon, but the idea of letting so many people down in one fell swoop felt impossibly horrible - I’d never be able to explain to every fan attending the event why I couldn’t come; they’d think I was a big flake. Also, the event had been extensively advertised and I felt it was probably a chance in a lifetime; I imagined that if I cancelled the trip at short notice I might not be re-invited. Furthermore, I’d bought expensive peak rate flights to Los Angeles in order to work with West Coast producers while I was in the USA. They were non-refundable so I felt as though I might as well go, and at least try to get through my professional commitments.

I warned the relevant producers that I wouldn’t be any use for long standing poses, or for kneeling down. All but one of them said they were happy to go ahead regardless, knowing that I have limited opportunities to come to the USA. I was grateful that they were prepared to be flexible in light of my own lack of flexibility, and I was excited to see them again, most of them have become friends so I thought that even if all I could do was turn up and visit with them it’d still be worth doing.

So I packed my bags with modelling clothes and physio equipment. And despite all my worries about getting through the trip, I felt excited to be setting off to the airport. I still love international travel, the longer the journey, the better.

And something went right, rather surprisingly so. When I got to the front of the check-in queue, the clerk checked my ticket and told me I could use the priority check in. Puzzled, I did so; my luggage was checked in and I was ushered through the priority security screening and straight into the British Airways business class lounge. I was baffled; my ticket had been for ‘Economy Plus’; a normal economy seat with extra leg room. Maybe the ‘Plus’ customers were allowed to use the lounge but I expected to be ushered out again at any moment. In the meantime, I poured myself a pot of tea and helped myself to a bowl of lovely fruit salad. I relaxed in a comfy seat, resting my sore knee and feeling sure that this peaceful start to my journey would help me endure the long and probably uncomfortable flight.

When the flight was called, I found that it had been no mistake, I really was flying business class. My seat was in a gorgeous pod; it elongated to a totally flat bed when required, and screens came down to shield me in a private cocoon. I very rarely drink, but accepted a glass of champagne since I decided it’d anesthetize me. As I drank it, I toasted my mysterious benefactor if he or she existed - if you upgraded me and are reading this, then thank you thank you thank you. The 8 hour flight was over too soon; I extended and retracted the seat as many times as possible, ate everything I was offered, watched a documentary about ballet dancers (and sympathised since naturally all of them had injuries) and had a go at living in the moment. I’m awful at this.

Once I arrived in Tampa, more fun was to come. I’ve been corresponding with my friend Joe for several years, as well as exchanging Christmas presents. But till this trip, I’d never had a chance to meet him. We’d decided to have a go at converting our friendship to real life, and he’d come to the airport to meet me. It was wonderful to see him; he’s just as thoughtful, kind and good natured as I’d guessed from his mails. We went out to dinner (yum, American food. I had a massive dessert with cream and pineapples) and then back to his neat condo. And we did our physio exercises together - we both have the same foot problem and it was nice to exchange notes. Joe lent me a helpful book about it.

I slept beautifully despite my sore knee, and when I woke up we went and bought two different flavours of cookie dough and then ate it raw, greedily, for breakfast. We’d promised each other we’d do this some day, and it was great to do so in his sunny kitchen, whilst talking things over and finding out more about each other.

Then, via a quick lunch out, Joe took me back to Tampa airport to board a flight for Las Vegas, where I was working with VegasBondage.com and Tomiko. I was sorry to say goodbye to him so soon, and my anxiety about the shoots I had ahead of me started to rise again. The plane was cramped, and changing flights in Atlanta involved a long walk across the terminal. By the time I arrived in Las Vegas I was very, very sore, and worried about managing to do a good job as a model.

Actually, my day with Gerald Saunders of Vegasbondage was surprisingly manageable - I did stretching exercises between sets and think I did a reasonable job; he kindly had invited me to stay with him which made the whole thing more relaxing - we talked a lot between sets, which was lovely. And he let me be tied up on the bed or sofa all the time, which helped loads. The following day, I drove over to Tomiko’s beautiful house and had The Most Fun In The World being eaten by her giant pet worm, as well as dressing as a super heroine with her. It was fantastic to meet her; she’s inspiring as a fetish model who’s built her own brand and fetish empire with a combination of beauty, talent and sheer hard work as far as I can see. She’s a fantastic entrepreneur; she made me feel rather lazy. I was happy to realise I’d be seeing her at Fetishcon the following week.

And once our shoot was over, I drove across the desert to Los Angeles. I’d never done this on my own before and I loved it. The desert looks magical to me, having grown up in the green, leafy and rainy England. I wound the windows of my hire car down so I could feel the wind in my hair and smell the desert heat. I felt that the trip had been worth it now it even if I couldn’t do the rest of my shoots.

The next day I was scheduled to work with Joe Anton, for the first time in 4 years. I was looking forward to catching up with him anyway, but I’d forgotten how much fun he is to work with; his damsel in distress storylines are often creepy and serious, and require proper concentration and a realistic performance. He pulled, as always, appalled faces at most of the costumes I’d brought with me - I’d forgotten about this aspect of shooting with him. I sort of enjoy introducing him to cardigans I’m particularly sure he’ll hate, it feels similar to being at home with Hywel. And I appreciate his lack of apathy; he still appears to be interested in every element of his shoots, which makes his movies great, I think.

And this time, he’d also hired Tim Woodman, which was a marvelous treat because improvisation is a group effort and it’s much easier to do a good job if you’re working with someone who’s good at it himself. I know this industry provides more opportunities for women than men but Tim’s a perfect example of why paying male actors makes sense - he’s properly highly skilled both with rigging and dialogue, as well as being such a warm, easy-to-get-on-with person that it’s really relaxing to work with him. I do hope the videos we made will be successful, I feel as though they’ll deserve to be. Here’s a picture of me, triumphant in a particularly gaudy sweater, with rope marks from our chloroform storyline.

Lovely Joe Anton then took me out for dinner, and since he offered me a choice, we went to Denny’s. Which is one of my favourite things to do when I’m in the USA, I always make sure I go there at least once, and when I do I order pancakes. I have no sophistication. But it was a super evening for me so thank you Joe!

And then, off I went in my car for about 5 miles, and arrived at Jon Woods’ and Lorelei’s studio, where I was working the next day. This blog is turning into a bit of a hyperbolic feast of sycophancy but I’m afraid that I have to go on, because I love Jon and Lorelei. They were the first people I worked for in the fetish industry who called themselves ‘producers’ rather than ‘photographers’ as most people in the UK would say. At the time it conveyed to me an idea of professionalism that appealed and it still does impress me, as does their large and lovely studio. I like the way that in the USA, bondage video production is a well established industry and that people over there have been making a full time living from it for 20+ years - it means that things tend to run smoothly on shoots, and models (in my experience at least) get treated well. Possibly that’s just Jon and Lorelei though, I do enjoy their company, and I was sorry to leave them when our shoot was over. I particularly loved appearing in Lorelei’s Land Shark movie; this trip introduced me to a fetish I wasn’t aware of, and I desperately want to shoot more of it; it appeals to my desire to act in a thoroughly over-the-top, hammy style.

Before I flew back to Florida I also managed to squeeze in shoots with the fantastic Ikaras Jones (who had the most beautiful selection of knee-high boots for me to wear) and the always-glamorous Chelsea Pfeiffer who shot a couple of lovely spanking videos with me before I headed back to the airport; I loved catching up with her. She’s so beautiful and a freakishly hard spanker given her delicate frame. And shooting spanking is such a GREAT way to prepare for a long flight, I always think....

Urgh, I dreaded taking my first genuine ‘Red Eye’ flight back across the USA to Florida, especially given that my knee was still sore. Everyone had been very careful and considerate through my shoots in California, but nevertheless, being active after my month off had stirred it up rather. Actually the flight worked out more or less ok and I arrived back in Tampa to find my lovely new-to-real-life friend Joe waiting for me. He took me back to his place for a few hours sleep before we headed to Downtown Tampa for my very first Fetishcon....

TBC

NB - Sorry to those of you confused by comments not appearing immediately. Since someone posted a cerrrrazzzzy anti BDSM rant here last year, I've turned 'Comment Moderation' on so comments appear once I've read them. I'm not keen on offering a platform to trolls.

Wow, what to say about Fetishcon. Lots of people had tried to describe it to me, but still I had no idea of what to expect. It feels inconceivable until you get there that a whole, corporate, downtown hotel can genuinely become a 3+ day fetish party, with play sessions happening downstairs whilst upstairs the world’s top fetish models rush from shoot to shoot in the hotels numerous rooms and suites. But as soon as I walked through the hotel’s doors, I was plunged into a new world. I was shy about explaining who I was when the check-in staff couldn’t find my booking. ‘I’m here for the, errrrr, convention’ I stammered rather foolishly. The clerk gave me a kind but slightly pitying look and found me a room.

And on the 14th floor, overlooking the city’s towerblocks and the hotel’s pool, I found the room I’d be sharing with Hywel for the next 6 days. It was beautiful. I didn’t have long to appreciate it though - I had a shoot to get to.

After returning from 3 fun hours with a gentlemanly photographer who was extremely careful to work around my injury and who turned out also to be from the UK (he’d done a fantastic job of turning his room into a dungeon studio, with ropes and restraints hanging all over the place) I got back to my room to find my husband waiting for me.

Gosh, it was good to see him. We’d both been anxious on parting, I’d been particularly concerned that by the time I saw him again I’d have got myself into an even worse physical mess and that he’d feel he had to pick up the pieces. And I really wanted both of us to have fun if we possibly could; being here felt like a chance in a lifetime and I didn’t want to wreck it. I was so happy to be able to reassure him that yes I was in pain, and yes I was still anxious, and frightened about the future; but I hadn’t done myself any further damage since everyone had adapted their shoots to my limitations. It gave me some hope that I’d still be able to shoot for Restrained Elegance in the near future if we were careful and maybe did part-day shoots rather than full weeks. It felt marvelous to be the USA together, ready to experience Fetishcon.

The next day, we both woke up before 6am because Hywel’s jetlag had mysteriously infected me. We decided to get up and go to the pool to watch the sun come up. It was beautiful with the sunrise’s pinkish light reflecting off the mirrored glass surfaces of the surrounding tower blocks. And, at risk of sounding a bit (massively) sentimental, I felt safer with Hywel there, as though I’d be more likely to be able to get through the rest of the trip ok now that he was with me.

That night we went out for a splendid dinner (with massive desserts) with my friend Joe and with Isobel Wren, a beautiful American model I’d never had the chance to meet before. We met in the bar which was by now filling up with the most fabulous assortment of glamourous people who weren’t yet dressed in full fetish wear since the event hadn’t officially started yet, but who were most certainly not the typical clientele for this downtown hotel. I started seeing faces I recognised and felt the beginning of real excitement for the opening ‘meet and greet’ party the next day. We watched dusk falling over the bay, and I felt a bit more peaceful than I had in a couple of months.

The next evening, Joe arrived for the Meet and Greet

and we also met up with our British friends @fantasydabblers They kindly admired my see-through glittery dress which I’d made especially for the convention; out of EXTRA kindness Joe had also brought me a box of Hostess cupcakes which I love beyond almost anything and which I was absolutely sure would have medicinal, knee-mending qualities.

Once the convention started, I was stationed at a booth (with a chair, I was extremely grateful to discover) with other models/producers as neighbours. A quietly spoken, courteous gentleman next to me introduced himself as ‘Jim’ and after a ghastly moment in which I said nothing but peered at his name badge, I realised that he was the great Jim Weathers, whose work both Hywel and I have been fans of for a decade plus. I became rather puce and spluttery through admiration; how awkward. Poor me, this kept happening. Lew Rubens appeared, as did Candle Boxx, Jewell Marceau, Sandra Silvers, Vivian Ireene Pierce... it was all rather overwhelming, but in a thoroughly splendid way. I couldn’t stand up much, which feels ghastly and rude when being introduced to people you respect, but everyone was kind about it, and Hywel kept me company for much of the time and kindly explained my limitations (well, not all of them thankfully) to people.

And meeting fans was absolutely awesome. Not all of them were fans of me, I hasten to add; some of them didn’t know who I was of course, but almost all of them were polite, interested, and interesting to talk to. I certainly feel as though I’ve learned more about what people who buy our work appreciate most about it, which is a valuable insight. And signing photographs of myself was also illuminating - seeing which pictures were the most popular gave me more knowledge about where my future as a fetish model should maybe go (if I can get back to something approximating fitness that is).

I got to join in with the annual Superheroine Showdown (fantastic) and the Fan Photoshoot (also great fun) and hid in my room with Hywel and ordered room service in the evenings - talking is tiring even when one’s in the best of health, and eating dessert in bed is always a good idea I think.

With the kinky fabulous Sarah Gregory, pictures courtesy of Joe.

And on the last full day of the convention, after being tied up by Jim Weathers AND Lew Rubens (golly) the vendor’s fair (and my booth) shut at 3pm, which gave me an hour to get ready for my Dallas Spanks Hard shoot, which had, of necessity, been scheduled last in my trip.

I do love Dallas. He’s the first spanking producer I ever communicated with, and it was the free pass he gave me to his site that convinced me that I really mustn’t pass up the chance to be a spanking model. So I’ll always have a soft spot for him, I think. I also love shooting with him especially these days because his delightful partner, Sabrina Starr, is so creative with storylines. For this movie (coming out on BluRay, oh my goodness) my character was a commoner about to marry into the Royal Family, but who’d had a hitman sent after her because she was common (me???) and therefore undesirable. For some reason, the hitman decides to spank me too - I’m sure the plot makes absolutely perfect sense but I was a) too scared; and then b) being spanked too hard to concentrate much. Ow; Dallas really does have the hardest hand in the business, 8 days on my bottom still feels like sandpaper. I think it’s going to be a fabulous movie; I’d been worried that having been in such a lot of non-sexy pain over the last few weeks might have drained my resources for taking kinky-pain. And it probably has to a certain extent, but the story sucked me in, and Dallas is really great at improvisation so taking the spanking soon seemed to be a matter of life and death. Which is just how I like it.

It was a great way to finish my US trip. The next morning we watched the sunrise from the pool again, packed our cases, had a final massive American breakfast, and prepared to get a taxi to the airport. At which point our amazing new real-life friend Joe arrived and insisted that he’d take us there. Which was a wonderful end to our trip; Joe and I talked ALL the way to the airport (Hywel rolled his eyes and let us get on with it) and I was very sorry to leave him, especially since he’d promised me that there are dolphins in Florida but hadn’t made any actually appear yet.

We’re home now; Fetishcon is a happy memory I’m extremely grateful to have, especially cos I could share it with Hywel, and I’m grateful to have met many new friends as well as being able to catch up with old ones.

I don’t know what my immediate future’s going to hold; I know I have to get back to physio and resist the temptation to book any shoots over the next couple of months. It was great to discover that I could limp through a few without any dramatic ill effects, but I don’t want to make a career of doing that - if I can I want to heal fully because in the long run I’ll do better modelling that way, but more importantly I’m pretty sure that it’s easier to enjoy life when you’re not in bad pain. If I can I’d like to get to a state where I’m not having to take codeine and paracetamol to get through my shoots; I hope that if I work hard at physio, and equally hard at relaxing (which is probably going to be a great deal more difficult) that I can maybe achieve this. My arms are still painful but I’ve managed to type this by taking plenty of breaks, so I hope that I’ll be useful to Restrained Elegance behind the scenes while I wait to be able to take up my role as a model again properly.

Thank you for the support from producers, fans, friends and family alike. It’s an awful cliche but I’m grateful to discover for myself that at bad times you realise that some of the people in your life are prepared to put themselves out far above any call of duty to help you. I’ll be forever grateful to those of you who’ve kept texting when I’ve stopped returning messages, who’ve carried on emailing even when I said I couldn’t email back. Those of you who’ve phoned, who’ve offered to visit, who’ve sent cards, flowers, and chocolates which helped me feel I hadn’t been forgotten while I was home alone and feeling like the world was ending for me. Thank you, thank you. I’ve been in a bit of a crisis; work has taken over my life too much over the last few years and I’ve been deaf to friends (and Hywel, who’s been sending out distress signals about it for half a decade now) who’ve tried to suggest that I stop insisting on leaping round the world in pointe shoes without cessation. If this experience is teaching me anything, it’s made me realise that health and friendship is worth protecting, even if it means working less. I just hope I’m not learning this too late.

Thanks to everyone who’s helped me over the last few months, and I’ll be trying to be a less absent friend in future.

As well as concentrating more on my fetish work, and less on the ballet stuff, if I get better.

(picture by Joe; I don't exactly look well, but I do look happy. Which I am, despite everything)

A/a

Well, alright it's not really a broadcast; I'm experimenting with audio blogs for Restrained Elegance's new Tumblr blog and I decided to share it here too. I don't know if it will be fun to listen to, it's about seven minutes long and I'm talking mainly about this month's updates on Restrained Elegance as well as our recent location trip.…

0h, LOL, I can't work out how to embed the audio file, so I'm afraid you'll have to listen via the Tumblr blog. Sorry for all my technical failings!

If you like the format though, I'll certainly consider doing more; maybe discussing more personal things like how I got into fetish modelling etc. Actually, maybe answering readers' questions would be fun so if you'd like more audio blogs and have a question for me please do leave a comment. Moderation is turned on to prevent trolls but rest assured I will publish your comment unless it's likely to be offensive to other readers.

All the best as always,

A/a

Hello everyone and a belated Happy New Year to you all. Well, 2014 is starting very interestingly for me. For regular readers, you'll know that I've been recovering from a modelling-related knee injury, and while I'm back at work, it's not back to full health yet, so I'm still not taking bookings that require jumping or ballet.

Which means that 2014 is a perfect time for me to focus more than usually on my fetish work. What fun! I've always considered myself to be a rather dilettante, slap-dash fetish model, because a large part of my modelling career has been spent on non-fetish projects, and I've only rarely managed to fit spanking bookings into my schedule because of not being able to be marked very often.

But for now, that's not so much the case. Hooray! So this year so far almost all of my shoots have been very fetishy indeed. And I'm planning to spread my wings a little with trying to represent some fetishes I've not tried shooting before. Stay tuned - I'll try to do them well!

So here's one of the shots from lovely US photographer Busby Wilder, who travelled over from New York for this shoot (well, not only for this shoot, I don't suppose, but I wish to flatter myself with this idea). What lovely fun! It's a tribute to Man Ray's famous photograph, but with added kink.

Hmm, that's not very big, is it? Lord knows why, I'm sure it's not his fault. I hate computers. Hate, hate, hate. It is not Computer '14 for me though, so I can wallow in ignorance with impunity. Hope you have good eyesight! Anyway, what a lovely idea, and I liked having the fun body paint applied!

And Busby Wilder, not content with doing a stills shoot, also shot this interview with all sorts of surprising questions, some of which made me hide behind my hands, blush, or make weird shrieking noises. Golly. Hope you enjoy it!

Oh God, it won't bloody upload. Why?? WHY??? I'll try to get it up here later, with the help of people who have more skill than me. I'm like a bloody gibbon when it comes to my laptop. Off I go to smash it against a window sill, whilst jumping up and down and hooting.

Hahahahaha, I fixed it! Ha! I am an IT genius and am available to hire as such. Whoooooo! Whoooooooo!

Oh Gah, I have not exactly fixed it. You can't see the whole screen, and therefore may not be able to deduce that the name of the piece is 'Restrained Eloquence'. Which is rather clever, unlike me this morning.

Hello everyone! I suddenly have 1000's of things to blog about, but realise I really can't let this subject go without a blog mention. So here we are.

My big current news is that Hywel, I, and Restrained Elegance have moved house. We were getting awfully cramped in our old quarters, and though it was a convenient location for London, none of us actually visit London very often really, since Hywel works at home, I work all over the world, and Restrained Elegance is technically in Chicago anyway.

So we made a list of things we all needed from anywhere new. This is what it would need;-

1) To have an outbuilding to house Restrained Elegance, so that it could spread its wings.

2) To have plenty of outdoor, private space to facilitate outdoor shooting, and peaceful nude sunbathing.

3) Be near to a station so collecting models wouldn't be an issue.

4) Be near enough to motorways and airports that I could get to work without trouble, and come home again regularly.

5) Be beautiful, our old house wasn't really.

6) Be within reach of good quality walking; both of us love hill walks.

7) To have a big kitchen, since we cook and entertain a lot.

8) Not be 'Listed' and therefore under the control of local Conservation Authorities.

So, armed with this, we started our search in Shropshire, one of the UK's most rural and beautiful counties, and bordering on Wales, which is of course where Hywel is from. Gradually we found ourselves looking further and further West, and nearer and nearer to Wales, since the countryside gets lovelier and lovelier, and the houses get cheaper too.

And finally, we found the particulars of a house that simply didn't seem as though it could be real. Twice the floor area of our Berkshire house, beautiful in the way that only Georgian buildings really can be, and with the sort of grandeur that we can normally only get by hiring a place for a Restrained Elegance shooting week.

The downside was that it was over the border into Wales, which made me suspicious that it'd simply be too far from a motorway for me to be able to ever make it home between shoots. But we decided to go and look at it amongst other houses in the area.

We waited for the agent in the drive, gazing at the grand glazed porch with rambling roses growing around it. Something must be terribly, awfully wrong with it I thought, and vowed not to get excited - the agent would have to disclose anything that'd come up in previous searches, so I was guessing that there was some kind of catastrophic systemic problem with the fabric of the house. I also noticed that the front door, while wide, was extremely short; anyone over 5ft 9 or so would have to duck to get in.

But the agent arrived, we did indeed duck as we went in, and we found ourselves standing on a fine, patterned, tiled floor, with a wood-floored study to our right, and a gorgeous little sitting room with marble fireplace to our left. Down a few stairs and we came to a large kitchen with more than enough space for a big dining table (which has been our wish for ages). Down a few more stairs and we were in the utility room; a massive space with three, THREE floors. Restrained Elegance couldn't have asked for more storage space anywhere really.

I gathered myself to ask the question. 'Why hasn't it sold? And why isn't it on the market for more?'. The estate agent looked a little embarrassed, and we waited to hear about rising damp, beetle infestations, hauntings... 'People don't know what to make of this...' he said, pointing to a small door in the utility room's wooden wall. We followed him, and found ourselves in...

A stone dungeon. Seriously. A network of tunnels with a cave-like cell through an archway, and a wooden staircase marching up towards the ceiling. Hywel and I couldn't help it, we started to laugh. 'What would you use it for?' asked the courteous but slightly baffled agent. 'Well, we're fetish photographers' Hywel explained.

Up the staircase we found a bedroom which had been decorated like... Ancient China. Of course? What ever else? The other side of the landing, there was a master bedroom suite with huge dressing room and old fashioned bathroom (with pale green fittings - odd indeed). 'This is my favourite bit!' enthused the now excited agent; he showed us through a door in the dressing room. Beyond lay a huge square room, lit only by skylights, but bigger by far than any of the other bedrooms. 'And look!' the agent was in a corner, tugging on a ring in the floor. A trapdoor opened, which led (I'm not even lying) down to the DUNGEON!!

On the third floor we found offices with views of a far-off castle. And exploring further downstairs, we discovered a dining room with carefully painted murals of Japan on all the walls - with bright birds, blossom on trees, and mountains in the distance. It was extraordinary.

In the Victorian conservatory, I could bear it no more. I tried to make an offer, but Hywel quelled me before the estate agent noticed. He was right, we needed to discuss it really.

The garden was another lovely surprise. It's not big, but it's close to being private, with only a couple of trellises needed to make it totally so. But best of all, it has a canal running along at the bottom. Just so romantic - and we have a boat we'd be able to launch straight from home (a privilege that'd cost somewhere around a million pounds in the South East, I think).

So lunch at a local cafe was a rather rushed and fraught affair, and we went straight to see the agent after lunch and made an offer.

And several months (and lots of boring awful legal stuff later) we've moved in. It's worth noting that there is no outbuilding, we're an hour from a motorway and the house is, in fact, listed. So our list got a bit ignored in the end. But my goodness, so far we're all happy. Hywel has space for all his books, and places to walk when he needs thinking time away from his computer. I have a house which has a more beautiful architectural style than I ever dared to hope I could possibly own. And Restrained Elegance hosted its first shoot here yesterday. And the house is, so far, a dream to shoot in.

Not only this, but our super friends, Strict Mistress Zoe and Michael Stamp (who runs www.bars-and-stripes.com) have moved just down the road. So we have ready made kinky neighbours. Michael actually kindly crewed for us yesterday, and we're hoping to do lots of stuff together professionally as well as for fun.

So I feel as though we're living in Wonderland. Of course there'll be problems, and the problems will be expensive given the age of the house. But I feel very happy and content for now, and as though I'm really home for the first time in years. Which is ironic since I've so far managed only 6 nights sleeping here, I've been working in China as well as all over the UK. But I don't care. It's lovely.

And the whole wonder/Narnia-ish ness of the experience so far is only exacerbated by the fact that Hywel opened a hatch in a downstairs ceiling just now. And discovered a hugely high, vaulted roof with ancient pulleys and rusted industrial equipment screwed into the huge old beams. So we have a room we didn't even know about.

We'll do our best to help this house translate itself into higher level work for Restrained Elegance, Elegance Studios, and for fun for our friends, so that we won't be the only people enjoying it. You'll be hearing from it very soon :)

Thanks as always for reading,

Amelia/ariel (who is more or less used to ducking to get through the front door now)

We’re living in scary times. As many of you will know, UK law changed in December 2014, making it illegal to show a number of (perfectly legal) acts on video if you’re a producer in the UK. For the record, I disagree with every single one of the bans, but the ones that affect Hywel and me most directly are the banning of showing models who are bound and gagged, and the banning of hard spanking. Many people more articulate and informed than I have blogged about this; a good place to read more is on Myles Jackman’s excellent blog. It occurs to me that if we don’t fight back now, there’s every chance that additional laws will soon make it entirely impossible to live in the UK while producing fetish videos.

So, feeling scared and unhappy, Hywel and I started wondering what we could do to help. It seemed to us that getting a documentary maker involved might help to raise awareness (and hopeful public sympathy) and consequently get changes made to the way in which fetish videos here are censored.

I contacted the splendid Chris Atkins, the BAFTA nominated documentary maker who’s work includes Taking Liberties and Star Suckers, two documentaries Hywel and I had previously been very impressed by. His kind and lengthy response included a suggestion that we make a short viral video of our own, to hopefully explain the situation we’re in. We followed his advice.

So I’ve made a little video, with Hywel’s always-tremendous help, and with the support of many friends who made suggestions, watched rough cuts, and helped give the movie as much clarity as possible. Particularly helpful were Fantasy Dabblers, John and Jill Tisbury, John Forest, Fetisheyes, Cobie, Mistress Zoe, and Michael Stamp. Thanks everyone.

I’d like to show this project to people who previously had no idea the law has changed. I want to show how crazy it is that people shooting ‘sex works’ like us are held to standards and rules that mainstream movies aren’t remotely affected by, and that this is unfair. For example, using bondage with gags is no problem if you’re making a gangster thriller, but a gentle consensual bondage scene on a fetish website is now illegal. Showing a bloody execution in a war film is totally ok, but showing a hard spanking in a romantic CP movie like one of Pandora Blake’s is not legal any more.

I began searching for violent scenes from mainstream movies on YouTube, to contrast our work with for this project. My research was short lived - I’d not actually seen any ‘torture porn’ before, so having watched one compilation of ’10 worst torture scenes’ my eyes were opened, and not in a particularly good way. I felt quite sickened that the things you can see for regular entertainment (and which you can obviously masturbate to if you feel so inclined) are sometimes so utterly grotesque. And in contrast, if you as a producer are honest about your intentions to produce something designed to be sexy, you can no longer be trusted to even gag your tied up model and make sure she doesn’t, umm, die, while you’re shooting the scene. The unfairness of this is staggering to me.

I guess we all know about torture porn - what was perhaps more interesting to me was that it was so incredibly easy to find stuff from 12 Rated, PG Rated, and even U Rated movies that feature bondage with gags. And once you’ve seen a clip from Disney’s Pocahontas, featuring both rope and a big cloth gag, it feels especially distasteful that such stringent anti-gag laws now apply to even the most gentle of bondage work.

You can also rest assured that the scenes of mainstream violence I’ve used in this movie are by no means the worst that I found - they were merely the ones I could bear to watch multiple times as I edited. And it’s worth pointing out that I found all of this easily on YouTube - a site with no age barrier whatsoever to entry. And I’m not saying that there should be. But in contrast, now you can’t watch our movies (legally), even if you pass our age verification, pay us, receive a password and enjoy our work in privacy.

So here it is, my tiny little attempt to help the cause of sexual freedom in the UK. Hope you enjoy it; and if you’re not into BDSM, I hope it maybe gives you something to think about. I’m worried that by banning certain sorts of pornography and erotica, the message that’s sent out by the ban tells us that our desires to watch it (or to participate in the acts involved) are wrong too. Which means that our government is basically telling us that being into BDSM is wrong. And this just isn’t acceptable; once we were told that we shouldn’t be gay, and people bravely fought back - today, you can marry your gay partner here in the UK. I don’t want to see people with other alternative sexualities marginalised like this. So please, if you can, do something to help; share my video, donate to Backlash, write to your MP, or just keep supporting your favourite fetish producers as they fight the good fight to stay afloat. Thank you!

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An Excess of Good Cheer

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