The group I’m hosting up in the mountains is going fine. Numbers are low, but that means I get to finish off the champagne and runny cheeses afterwards. But it’s a talky group, with interesting people in it. And they spend the time chatting, sometimes about bdsm and sometimes about other topics. And they all get on.

I mention that because this is actually the second time I’ve run a group. The first time I was still living in the city. I agreed to take on the running of the group because the guy who’d been doing it for years had got a bit sick of it, and I was feeling public-spirited. 

Like this, only with guys

The venue was an old pub that was once what was called a “bloodhouse”, the sort of pub that – in its day – had sawdust on the floor for soaking up the patrons’ blood, also urine and vom. There was a trench that ran down the edge of one wall, and at the bottom of the bar, so that when the evening was over and the bouncer had frog-walked the last drunk out into the small cold hours, you could clean the place with a hose.

In the morning you’d put out new sawdust and you were ready for business. People would say that the morning’s sawdust was last night’s furniture, hurr hurr hurr.

But that was then. These days the place was quiet except for the gambling machines at one corner of the room, and the occasional cackle or groan from the old men and ladies who sat nursing a single beer as long as possible while feeding coins into the machines.

Some time ago some optimistic manager had put in comfortable leather chairs and dark wood tables. But they never succeeded in getting new clientele. The old people slumped in front of the machines weren’t going to be shifted, and it was never going to be a trendy wine bar while they held their corner.

So I liked the place. We were welcome customers, and no-one was going to hear us talk, or object to discussions about soft versus hard floggers and comparing notes on ropes and so on. 

I advertised on-line that the group was still going, and I sat, as promised, with a bunch of artificial red roses propped up in a beer glass.

I’m going to tell a story about a woman who turned up wearing a fishing net, and two little flashing lights, one over each nipple. But I’ll do it later.