Stripping Stories

"Oh Mama!" I expostulated, "surely you cannot mean that I must live with Great Aunt Piddleton in her hovel in Weirdstone!" "I'm afraid you must dear. Your dear Papa lost his all when the business collapsed." "You mean he lost everything Mama!" "No - he lost his awl. And when you are a cobbler you cannot survive without an awl." "But how did the business collapse!" "The roof was too heavy and the walls weren't strong enough. I told him corrugated cardboard wasn't the same as corrugated iron but he wouldn't believe me." "But the people in Weirdstone. They are so...." I hesitated unable to bring to mind the word I sought. "Peculiar?" "No Mama. Not peculiar. Like peculiar but not peculiar." "Strange?" "No." "Odd?" "No" "Bizarre?" "No Mama," poor Mama was running out of synonymic epithets,...

Girls in a maze I don’t know if universities still have Rag Weeks like they used to in my day, and indeed for my American readers I don’t know if you have such things over there at all, or perhaps they go by a different name, but back in the 70’s they were a big thing.  For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, this was a week in which students at the Uni did crazy things to raise money for charity.  I was 18 years old and in my first year as a student of botany, horticulture and landscape gardening.  A strange subject you may think for a modern girl, but things were changing back then and the ‘new’ universities were introducing degrees in all sorts of new things.  I had always been keen on botany and it seemed like a good course. We had only been there a few months in our first year when Jack, a boy from the year above, came in to our lecture theatre with an announcement.  Rag Week was coming up he said, and it was tradition that the firs...

Chocolat by Joris Sprout On a hot summer day in 1892, one of those days when the canicule strikes Paris like the blast of the depths of Hades, Gabriel des Esseintes made his way slowly along the Boulevard St Germain, his jewel encrusted tortoise at his heels, seeking, as was his wont, those pleasures, which to him were like the nectar of the Gods, but which were to others of such a nature that had his purpose been known, he might have found himself entrusted to the care the guardians of the law which in that day patrolled the streets of the great city in their never ending quest to quell the causes of social disorder among the heaving masses. Seating himself in Les Deux Magots by the parvis of the ancient church he looked across at the Café de Flore where two jeunes filles en fleurs sipped coffee in the shade of the great hornbeams which cast their sombre shades over the convives who gathered at that early morning to watch, in the way of all French people, the world as it pass...

Why didn't you wear a coat Cassie? That's what I expect you're going to say. As if anybody wears a coat going out clubbing. I mean it's not like there's anywhere to leave a coat, it's not like you're going to die of cold going from club to club, it's not like it's cool to have a coat! Then you'll ask why I wasn't wearing underwear; well I'll have you know with boobs like mine a bra is superfluous to requirements - and not because they're small if that's what you’re thinking, it's because they're firm and are perfectly all right without support thank you very much. And as for knickers, I haven't worn them since I left the school netball team, and I've never really seen the point of a thong. So that was why I was dressed in nothing but my lovely crimson sparkly party dress. Tight enough to show off my trim figure (no panty lines), short enough to show off my legs and low enough to show off my boobs. I loved that ...

"Bug-a-me!” It was a favourite expression of Georgia O'Hara, class tomboy, and captain of the school wrestling team, as the blast of freezing cold water hit her.  She had learnt the phrase from Old McDonald, school gardener, who used it whenever he saw her going into his allotment for a pea. He had complained about it to the Rector of St Ethelfrida's Academy for the daughters of gentlefolk, otherwise known to all as St Freddie's. "She sits among the cabbages and peas!" he had said, but Dr Aloysius Golightly, the Rector, had simply replied that it would help them grow big and strong. "Bug-a-me," repeated Georgie, "don't you think we could have a hot shower after wrestling practice Miss Pettigrew?" Miss Pettigrew, the games mistress, scowled. "Certainly not.  St Ethelfrida's girls aren't weaklings.  You need to be tough.  Anyway cold water gets the mud off best." Georgie had to admit she was right.  The co...

It may be thought that a lady possessed of an independent fortune errs in maintaining her own household and not placing herself under the protection of either some near male relation, or, failing the existence of such, obtaining for herself the guardianship of a husband; for it is an undoubted truth that such a lady, be she ever so plain, will not want for male admirers. Miss Martin was however, neither plain nor desirous of male tutelage; released at last from the dutiful care of an ailing father by the timely demise of such, she found herself free in the world and possessed of a fortune, which carefully placed in the three percents, yielded an income to her of close on six hundred a year. Her long period of suffering at the hands of her intemperate parent had left her desirous of leading a life of independence, and with that in mind she betook herself into the county of Barsetshire and the small village of Denbury where she leased a villa of modest proportions, for be her fo...