cookery – Contemplating the divine

You make a grown man cry

Don’t worry: Janine would never let you be eaten by some cat on the street. She has her own cat whom she loves dearly.

You can buy her gifts too. Lots of them, to make sure there are at least a few she’ll like.

This is the wonderful, clever and creative Lady Sophia Black, who has occasionally had the bad luck to encounter Servitor in person, but managed to come out smiling an evil smile the other side. She is – needless to say – not at all like the personality depicted in the caption.

It’s going to be kind of like the Revenant but without clothes. Or the bear. And shorter.

I read a men’s lib magazine once when I was a teeanger – it was being passed around the boys at school, you know. I didn’t understand much of it, but it suggested that readers try to discuss some of the ideas in it with the women in their lives, so I asked one of my sisters and she explained it to me at length.

That’s the trouble with marriage problems – one day you think everything’s fine, that you’re in love and nothing can ever disturb that: then before you know it you’re hanging naked on a meat hook about to be castrated. You woinder where it went wrong, you know? The important thing to remember is that it’s all your fault.

Fear and loving

Oh, no. Not Lucy.

They do furnish a room.

It’s a good idea to have it written there on the fridge, to remind you both that it’s overdue. I’m sure she’ll get round to it, though – no need to nag.

Boring old politics. Still, you’d better go along to look pretty on her arm.

You could kiss and make up.

The four stages

It is a well known fact that the development of any skill passes through four stages. Let me illustrate:

1. Unconscious incompetence

The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit.

They may deny the usefulness of the skill.

The individual must recognise their own incompetence, and the value of the new skill, before moving on to the next stage.

The length of time an individual spends in this stage depends on the strength of the stimulus to learn.

2. Conscious incompetence

Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit…

…as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit

The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this stage.

… and then apparently there’s another two stages, but I have never got beyond conscious incompetence. I’m really good at that, as regular readers of the blog will know.

Short fiction: In the morning

Jennifer quietly stood at the door of the kitchen, having followed the aroma of breakfast cooking from her bedroom. Her husband/slave, Alan, standing naked but for a small pinafore which left his buttocks exposed to the air, hadn’t heard her enter.

She looked with satisfaction at her oblivious submissive, quietly getting on with serving her without specific instruction or fuss. This was how it should be. She caught sight of the marks on his lower left buttock, and she giggled softly.

Alan looked around in shock, and instantly dropped to his knees, crawling over to her to place his face against the ground just before her feet.

“You may.” she said quietly, after a moment, and he quickly placed light kisses on each of her feet, in the approved greeting.

“I’m so sorry, Mistress, I didn’t hear you come in…” he stuttered.

She smiled down at him. “That’s all right, I was just standing there.”

She looked down affectionately at the blackened marks on his buttocks: her initials JMV somewhat stretched and distorted by his kow-towing posture. She smiled again.

“You know, I just arrived at the kitchen door to see you preparing my breakfast so diligently, and I was so much reminded of the day of your branding. Do you know why?”

Alan nodded urgently.

“I think so Mistress. It’s that in my servitude to you, I know you are with me always. That I am your slave, in attendance to your needs to the best of my poor abilities even when you are elsewhere, because I carry your name for ever. The terrible pain from those red-hot brands not only seared your name into my flesh but burnt it into my very soul, and made me yours at all times.”

Jennifer leaned down and stroked his hair gently, thinking of that day and her husband’s desperate screams of agony and love.

Actually, she had been going to say that it was the smell of grilling bacon that had so vividly taken her back to it.

But a wise Mistress does not always tell her slave the whole truth, and so she merely murmured.

“That’s exactly right, my slave. How well you know my mind.”