Lowewood Academy

November 2006
Dashwood is the oldest and best school house and Richard Farthingdale is its house Captain as well as being Head Boy. Richard looks down on Jessica Davies, the scholarship girl, because of her background. He wants to win the Lowewood Challenge Cup, awarded for the most house points at the end of the year. Jess finds the points thing a drag and loses lots. As does Beth. And Sylvie. Anyone who loses more than 25 house points in a week gets an automatic detention. Jessica is best mates with Beth Somerton, who is a sports freak and very good at all of them. Sylvie, the third member of the triumvirate is not. She is also rather poor, having had her allowance stopped by her guardian, so has taken to doing other people’s homework for money.

We are introduced to Amelia Fox-Knightly, in the Dashwood Lower Sixth and a sex-mad nympho. Amelia is also Richard’s ex, and he has dumped her for a much nicer young lady called Gina Henshaw, colloquially known as ‘Gorgeous Gina’. Richard is asked by Mr Fingerham (the school caretaker) to look into the fact that the drainpipes are coming away from the walls – could it be feral squirrels? Jason Oak, the Lowewood Games Captain, also runs the school booze lines – for fags, booze, mags, condoms etc, just see Jason, or his room mate, Daniel (Dan) Johnson. Jason is also seeing Madame Couchette, the rather louche French Mistress. Our final introduction this month is to Louisa Grantley-Knighton, the Deputy Games Captain. She has a sadistic interest in girls……

December 2006
Richard canes Gina before drawing her nude and is disgusted that Jess has been assigned as his assistant director for the upcoming play. Jason notes the Mme Couchette is paying him an unusual amount of attention in French. Jess is strapped by Mr Shaftebotham after accidentally sending Richard an email saying he has the clap instead of sending it to Beth.  Beth discusses being turned on by spanking and her concerns that Jess has never been with a boy. At the same time Jason admits that he and Dan spied on Jessica’s tawsing from the ‘room with the view’, Room 2D, and that she is one of the twelve girls he and Dan have an eye on. Sylvie bemoans her lack of pocket money so she can’t bribe people to do her homework or buy friends. After a spanking from Richard, Jess decides to audition for ‘The Boyfriend’ to earn some housepoints and gets the role of Maisie.  She will have to kiss Dan Johnson on stage so decides to ask Beth for some lessons on a pillow.

The sixth form girls decorate the Christmas tree; this doesn’t quite go to plan after Emma Howarth tries to pull down Beth’s knickers as she places the star on the tree, resulting on them both falling down and Beth flashing.  Richard, Celia and Beth all give Emma the slipper in front of the rest of the sixth, then they all go to the pub.

After a night drinking with the 3Ds (Dashwood Dorm Drinkers – or Dashing Dan’s Drinkers) Beth’s performance on her horse at the Formington Show is a disaster when she gets lost on the course, resulting in Lowewood losing the competition.  Beth’s carted off to the San, while Amelia snitches to Mr Tough that Beth had been drinking and he is furious. Beth is told to dress in full dress riding kit, and having been spanked by Richard she then receives her formal punishment: a full dozen of the senior cane, applied over the horse in the gym whilst being held down by Richard and Jason.  Afterwards she is required to apologise to the rest of the team and is determined not to repeat her behaviour.

Sylvie ponders bizarre Lowewood traditions such as it being the done thing to negotiate with prefects to deal with you instead if they send you to the head.  She decides to become the best informed girl in Lowewood but isn’t sure what to do with all this information.

And then term ends for Christmas, after Jason has been summoned to Mme Couchette’s study where he receives a ‘Christmas Present’ in advance. Richard receives a bath brush from Santa, to his great satisfaction, whilst poor orphaned Jess is lonely, spending her holidays alone at Lowewood.

January 2007
Jessica is offered a singing job in the Black Cat Club by Mr Black (who supplies Jason Oak with the illicit alcohol he sells to the rest of the school). She likes the sexy pianist Christian Carter, and soon has her first kiss with him. Beth is in disgrace with her family over the Formingham show, and gets thrashed by the butler before returning to school for the term.

The Headmaster reinstates two Lowewood institutions: the Challenge Cup and the Prefects Council. Sylvie submits a test piece to ‘Glory in the Fight’, the school newspaper. Jessica is given the starring role in the school musical, opposite Dan Johnson. Richard is to direct it. Less pleasantly, she is forced by Jason to try out for the netball team which Mr Tough has freshly created. She and Beth both gain places on the team. Beth has a crush on the English teacher Mr Croft after seeing him spank another girl, and decides to deliberately fail a test in order to get his attention.

From his viewpoint on the roof, Jason spies on Beth masturbating, and brings her for his lover Madame Couchette to punish. Richard meanwhile is appalled to discover that rumours of him and Celia having the clap are still alive. In order to get the name of the person who’d started them, he and Celia gang up on Jessica. Having got Sylvie’s name out of her, they get their cruel revenge. Jess, Beth and Sylvie get deep into planning Jess’s upcoming birthday bash. To acquire the necessary alcohol, Jessica approaches Jason, and has to pay his and Dan’s saucy “commission”. It takes the form of a spanking from both of them which she unexpectedly enjoys.

February 2007
Sylvie earns a place in the Lowewood school orchestra. Following Mr Shaftebotham’s decision to reinstate the use of Prefects’ Councils as a disciplinary option at Lowewood, Richard describes how the current batch of prefects all receive a standard-issue cane, and lessons from the great man in how to use it. Beth hacks into her mother’s online M&S account to order supplies for Jessica’s secret birthday party!  Jessica, meanwhile, continues to plot and plan for the event of the term.  Alcohol is purchased through the usual sources, clandestine invitations issued and the secret venue in the Lowewood cellars is revealed.  Even though Richard knows exactly what’s going on, he is prepared to turn a blind eye – in return for some time with Jess over his knee, of course! Meanwhile, back in the classroom, Beth deliberately fails an English test to get whacked by Mr Croft – and they end up snogging afterwards!  An affair is born…

The day of the birthday party dawns!  All goes swimmingly till the early hours, then the revellers are busted by an evil combination of Celia Matthews and the Reverend Jenkins.  Someone has grassed them up!  Jess, Beth and Sylvie hold them back whilst everyone else escapes but this leaves the three of them to take the rap.  Following an audience with Mr Shaftebotham, they are sentenced to appear before a Prefects’ Council.  Jessica is unhappy at this outcome and rows with Beth for the first time.  All three are terrified over what their peers will do to them, especially given the composition of this Council: Richard, Celia, Jason and Louisa Grantly-Knighton. 
The Prefects’ Council lives up to its victims’ worst nightmares: they are stripped, thrashed and humiliated in a series of punishments by the four prefects which as good as break Beth and Sylvie.  Jessica remains stubbornly stoic throughout – but suffers agonies to do so.  Jason subsequently comments on how, even as one of the prefects dishing it out, he was uncomfortable with its severity.  The others, however, relished it.

Subsequently, Jess is comforted by Christian before their performance at the Black Cat Club, and their relationship becomes increasingly hot as the sexual tension builds between them.  But things take another turn for the worst for her before half term.  Celia contrives to have Jess made her principal fag, and thus begins a campaign of bullying her which will have far-reaching consequences. Half term proves to be as lively as term-time for the Lowewood pupils, and memorable indeed for Jessica.  After a day in Oxford with Christian, being treated as a lady, she is seduced and loses her virginity to him in spankingly erotic circumstances!  Meanwhile, Glory in the Fight’s editor, Angus, exhorts Sylvie to assert her journalistic pride and write up the Prefects’ Council as a scoop, even though she suffered at its hands. As the pupils return to school, Jess is plotting revenge against the prefects who enacted the council.

March 2007
Jess successfully wreaks revenge upon the four prefects in a series of pranks, whilst remaining undetected.  Jason’s humiliation does not prevent him consummating another staff-student relationship though, in his case with Madame Couchette. Meanwhile, Jess’ delight is soon overtaken with secret misery as Celia bullies and tortures her in the course of her fagging duties.  Richard is frustrated on both fronts: he can neither identify the prankster nor fathom Jessica’s poor performance in general and persistent lateness for rehearsals in The Boyfriend.  Rehearsals do at least give Jess the chance to snog Dan in role though, and to discover they have chemistry in real life too. 

Jason and Dan uncover what Celia is doing to Jess when they see her forcing sexual favours from her fag from their secret vantage point in Room 2D.  Rather than report her, Jason decides to deal with Celia himself and hopes that this solves the matter.  However, Celia continues to torment Jess, whose only outlet for her suffering is her secret diary.  We hear directly from Amelia Fox-Knightley for the first time – and she really is a bitch-on-heat in reality too!  She enjoys seducing Richard and plots to lure him back from Gina Henshaw.  Meanwhile, Beth’s father discovers her fraud with her mum’s credit card and has her thrashed by Mr Shaftetbotham in loco parentis  and Angus takes Sylvie in hand over her salacious reports of the prefects’ fates in the school newspaper.  Preparations for Lord Fawcett’s annual soiree for the Lowewood sixth form are underway.

April 2007
Beth’s family is holding their annual Easter event, the Somerton Revels. Jess, Sylvie, Richard and Amelia are all invited. Richard confesses to Gina about his dalliance with Amelia, and hears no more from her all through the holidays. In the meantime, his parents insist that he should court Beth, who is considered a suitable match for him. At Somerton Hall, Jess discovers that her boyfriend Christian is, in fact, the son and heir of an Earl. He is staying at the Hall at the invitation of Freddy Somerton. But Beth’s equilibrium is shattered when she discovers Jess’ diary and realises what Celia has been doing to her. She tells Richard, who gets a reluctant confirmation on the phone from Jason. During the Revels, Freddy and Christian spike the punch with vodka and brandy, and Beth unwittingly gets falling-over drunk. To avoid her getting into trouble with her parents, Jess manages to haul her to her room, having begged the help of the first person she happened upon – Richard. The drunk Beth blurts out something about Jess having been the one behind Richard’s incident with explosives at assembly, but he takes no action. Amelia tries to listen at the door of Beth’s room as this goes on, but is caught by Henry, the oldest Somerton brother, and gets a spanking from him. Sylvie isn’t pleased to find herself in the same house as Freddy. She is happy to flirt with him over the internet for the sake of having a nominal boyfriend, but actually has no wish to date him or anybody else. She uses the convenient punch-spiking incident as a pretext to dump him.

Back at school, Celia resumes her bullying of Jess.  Richard has girl dilemmas, having confessed to Gina about his unfaithfulness with Amelia and then been captivated by new girl Laura Featherstone.  Then Jess suffers another blow: her guardian, Mr Courtney, dies suddenly, leaving her alone in the world.  She will, however, remain at Lowewood due to Lord Fawcett’s endowment and he will become her official guardian.

May 2007
Jess is the centre of attention as May begins as Richard (with the help of Beth) devises a plan to end her torments at the hand of Celia, while Dan reveals he’s in love with her. Unfortunately for Jess, Lord Fawcett also shows an interest and demands to see her after the soiree to discuss her grades. The soiree proves an interesting affair for both Beth and Amelia, who both strike it lucky with the boys, and also for the fifth formers in the orchestra who get drunk and suffer at the hands of Mr Bangham.

Richard’s plan comes at the right time, as Celia stoops to new lows with both Jessica and poor Polly Perot. The plan involves a whacking for the game Sylvie, but at least she is able to take comfort from the fact that her friend has been saved and that her own whacking was nothing compared to the public caning that Celia receives. Celia is demoted from her position as Head Girl, and Margaret Seymour takes over the reins.

May is also the time of year that Lowewood’s annual medicals take place; and we hear all about the experiences of Jason, Beth and Amelia. Sylvie has other things on her mind though, when Uncle Tad informs her that he intends to make a large donation to the school if she gets good grades, at which time she starts to have serious concerns for her bottom! Relationships prove to be a tricky business for both Richard and Jessica. Gina agrees to give Richard a second chance - on condition that he gets a taste of the spankings he so enjoys dishing out. Dan plucks up the courage to reveal his feelings for Jess, only to discover that she’s already with Christian.

However, it is on an illicit night out to the Black Cat Club that Christian tells Jess “there is no us”. Dan, Jason, Beth and Sylvie also break bounds to visit the club, and getting back into school undetected proves tricky. Those who are caught are punished, but the evening doesn’t end without Jess and Dan finally getting together.

Richard feels the stress as performances of ‘The Boyfriend’ draw near, but his efforts as director produce a good show. He is even more pleased when Jessica is awarded 200 house points for winning the drama prize. As the month draws to a close, Sylvie is told by Uncle Tad that she doesn’t have to stay at Lowewood if she is unhappy and Jason gives thought to the question of who should be handed the keys to the secret drinks stash when the time comes for him to leave.

June 2007
Mr Croft thrashes Beth’s thighs after finding out she’d been out to the Black Cat Club, and Jess also receives a thrashing after going to Fawcett Hall to meet Lord Fawcett, for not trying her hardest.

Amelia sends a letter to Mr Shaftebotham about Jess’s job at the Black Cat Club; the headmaster goes to the club with Mme Couchette but Dan, Beth and Matt Golding (Beth’s current squeeze) rescue Jess before she goes onstage. Afterwards, Amelia gets strapped and ducked in the swimming pool as revenge for tipping off Mr Shaftebotham, Jason canes Mme Couchette for standing him up with Mr Shaftebotham, and Dan spanks Jess, who decides to leave her job at the club. However, Jess agrees with Christian to do a private gig in return for a large fee and worryingly for her, Richard finds note from Christian to Jess about it; he does indeed catch her there, but agrees to punish her himself instead of sending her to the Headmaster.

Sylvie is confused about whether she should stay at Lowewood or not. She finds out that Angus is protecting her over the ‘fortune cookie’ story (scurrilous gossip about Mrs Maker being part of a Chinese gambling ring), but eventually confesses all to Mr Shaftebotham, resulting in Mr Shaftebotham getting Angus to cane her; she decides to stay at Lowewood after all.

Robert Trelawne agrees to lend Richard his video camera to record Gina and Laura together on condition that Richard lets Robert also punish one of the girls. Jason chooses geeky Martin Rose as his successor and lets him witness a punishment of poor Anna Pickering; we then see Martin getting into trouble with Mme Couchette.

Planning continues apace for  the Upper 6th Leavers Ball with Jess as chairwoman of the planning committee and we are introduced to the Irish terrors (Mary Blake, Theresa Malone and Carmel Docherty from From 5) when they drop a bookend on her head.

And in sporting news, Mr Tough discovers that Jess is good at sprinting and makes her join the athletics team, Mr Shaftebotham encourages Beth to start a Lowewood rowing team, especially as her father, Lord Somerton, will be funding it, and we meet Rufus de Lacey when Amelia chats him up at a cricket match!

July 2007
July opened with the announcement (a surprise to some, including the new incumbent herself) that the new Head Girl would be Jessica Davies. Among others promoted to prefectship were Beth Somerton (Games Captain) and Rufus de Lacey (Head of Byron). Sylvie Barnable, as well as being a prefect, takes on the editorial responsibilities of Glory in the Fight. The announcement brought much merry-making to the Dashwood camp, where gin and tonics flowed in the last 3D bash of the term. As the bubbly flows, Beth is expertly pulled by Jason Oak.

Jessica’s own congratulation from her predecessor was a darker affair by far, with Richard subjecting her to a humiliating flogging before an imaginary audience in the school theatre. Even more alarming, Richard admits to a certain fondness for the incoming Head Girl. If only the term could have wound down quietly, in a sun-basking, honeysuckle-aired fortnight. But exams, the inter-school cricket match (won by Lowewood), and the school picnic all stirred the emotions and loins of the sixth form.

Amid the high-jinks there was sadness too. Emma Howarth realised - at least five minutes too late - that her love for Richard would never be reciprocated; and - far worse - the couple who promised to be the belles of the Leaver’s Ball, Jess and Dan, ended their relationship.

And then it was goodbye… with the ranks of Lowewood returning home - or going overseas - on holiday. While some old favourites said goodbye (with Jason enjoying one last liaison with Mme Couchette), other new characters were introduced, including Faye Dennington-Glass (from the leafy banality of middle-class suburbia), and Philippa Beaumont (aristocrat, with no love of sports).

August 2007
It’s the holidays - but there’s no let up in naughtiness or punishments for the denizens of Lowewood…

Notting-Hill groomed Lydia Seymour finds her evening viewing of Ugly Betty interrupted by her father’s announcement that she will be going to boarding school - at Lowewood. Reading the prospectus she is alarmed to read of the school’s use of ‘corporal punishment’. How will she cope? While Lydia considers her future,  posh Pippa Beaumont is trying to relieve the boredom of her isolation in Beaumont Grange by strolling through the sunny meadows - and sunbathing nude. It’s not long before she’s discovered, by the head gardener, and spanked… Not long after that, it’s the family cook that gets the pleasure. Jess is enjoying Paris - where she has travelled with Dan (back together now), with Lord Fawcett’s half-blessing. For poor Beth, however, the holidays do not begin so well. Her end of year report has been deemed ‘disappointing’ - which means a caning from the butler. And it’s the strap for her while holidaying in sunny Siena. Out too late earns her a second whipping - this time from brother Henry.

Faye’s summer doesn’t begin much better - being grounded for returning late after a hazy afternoon snogging Paul. A late-night attempt to break curfew (and snog some more) goes awry as she forgets to take her key. Martin’s holidays aren’t shaping up too well either - he’s bored of the village and he’s bored of re-reading Lord of the Rings. The church fete changes all this, where he meets Annie, the vicar’s daughter, who thinks him both “funny” and “cute looking”. A girl? Interested in Martin? It’s almost too much… Sadly it is not long before she gives him the flick (and a slap around the face), for attempting to get to base one in the cinema. The Rev Jenkins is on retreat - with a group of aspiring ‘persons of the cloth’, including former pupil Hazel Caswell, whose behaviour post-Lowewood has fallen short of her once high standards. Lucky that the man of God is on-hand to offer much-needed atonement…

And what of Richard? He’s at his villa in the Algarve, enjoying thrashing his father (at sport), and refraining from the ‘dirty’ locals. He’s filling the hours by sending postcards to all and sundry - including one to the Lowewood cook, informing her that his toast had been underdone approximately “34% of the time”. Needless to say, the communication goes unanswered.