"Elder woman's patience exhausted harsh words of command uttered blue trousers wrestled down posed over dusty barrel bare nates tasting the early afternoon sunlight."

This I don't guarantee to be true - a sort of Friend of a Friend Story. Worse, its a Friend of a Friend of a Friend story.

Someone I knew years ago also into S & M told me that someone told his sister that his Brother-in-Law said it had happened to him when he was travelling in the East, (i think Hong Kong) as a young Man. So cinema vérité this ain't it has as much provenance as the latest National Inquirer piece. So on with the story, such as it is:

This happened End of the 40's 48-49. War was being forgotten Western travellers were no longer a novelty but the East was still not Westernized. Life in the poorer parts of town was still "keep the cops out of it - you'll have to bribe your way out if you're fool enough not to settle things yourself".

Guy was saving money by staying in a Chinese Hotel. Good food but threadbare sheets and being treated with a combination of deference and distaste as a 'Foreign Devil'. Guy was not supposed to be in the hotel at the time otherwise the story would not have happened. Believe it was matter of being horizontally friendly with a bar girl who also had a room there but this has nothing to do with the story. Anyway apres sex the guy was towelling himself off after a makeshift shower with a piece of rubber hose and a cold tap in an upstairs washroom. There was a jammed broken shutter couple of slats missing in the corner such that you could if you crouched down and squinted you'd get a partial view of the yard below otherwise blocked off by high walls and the back of the building which happened to have only one window boarded up and the main gates of the yard and one heavy door from the main kitchens both being barable from the outside. In short it was with the one loophole of the upstairs washroom as private a place as you could get in that cheek-by-jowl part of town.

Noise of the main gates being opened aroused pardonable curiousity. Guy peeks. Group of young girls who do the scutwork around the hotel manhandling girl 2-3 years older than themselves. On the cusp of adulthood, maybe 19, and others driving a rabble of young girls and boys, & when i say young here i mean young, maybe 6-8. Older girl is dressed a cut above the rest; a faded silk outfit in this district it passed for genteel. Blue pyjama outfit girl doesn't go quietly is stronger than any one of those dragging here but they mobbed her. Much gutter language and threats.

Older woman (the cook)- with aura of authority- appears from inside house and bars door from outside on command the main gates are barred too. Effectively a pocket universe has been set up. Anger faces down anger sour anger vs. shrill outrage. Elder woman's patience exhausted harsh words of command uttered blue trousers wrestled down posed over dusty barrel bare nates tasting the early afternoon sunlight.

Spanked surprisingly unruffled takes reasonable chiding tone with Spanker using respectful ending to word conspicuously absent before older woman apparently mollified until impasse is reached. Another bark of command and the young girl drags the urchins over their knees as the older girl begins to be spanked. Surprised gasp from 19 year old, she apparently expected to win the argument much more stoically than an European girl would; the caddies wail and shriek like well like spanked kids. Continue for a good twenty minutes until exhaustion forbids. Parties depart out of the gate they came in from ruffled and tear-stained. Cook gives a look around to check that the whole process has been unobserved and re-enters the house.

Guy realises he has been witness to a private event of some sort and is in danger of making some very touchy people lose face and feeling a mixture of cold fear and arousal- blue pyjama girl had a very pretty ass- sneaks off.

Well, what the hell was going on? By the standards of a court we will never know. Guy was curious tho & rich by the piss-poor standards of the district. He very cautiously greased some palms and asked some very indirect questions.

The explanation that satisfied him - the truth at this stage is as unknowable as what Cleopatra had for birthday breakfast on her 15th birthday - is that the girl in blue was the top dog in a kid's pickpocket and casual thieves ring - the urchins being the common soldiers - she had been being a nuisance above the tolerable level of petty theft expected. & the solider citizens had got together and arranged vigilante justice. Ironically the gang were not driven out of business - nobody expected them to starve but agreed to restrict themselves to foreigner in future - as I said previously who cares for foreign devils.