Planes, trains and floorboards
By Elizabeth Swan on
I don’t blog enough I thought as I opened my laptop. But the people who read my blog don’t want to read my ragings. I close my laptop again. Oh bugger it I think two minutes later as I open it and continue to write. I am at Gatwick airport. My journey was not particularly pleasant to this point. A female conductor on the South Eastern trains charged me first class because I accidentally sat in the wrong part of the carriage. I offered to move but she exclaimed “you are too late. And it says first class EVERYWHERE.” She pointed at the doily behind my head that did indeed say first class. Now I don’t know about you but when I sit in a seat I don’t face the back of the chair. In front of my face are the words ‘priority; be prepared to give up your seat for the elderly etc etc.’ And I was prepared! I kept checking for old people, people with sticks, children, ready to move! But nowhere on the wording about priority does it say FIRST CLASS. So I would have to have my head on backwards to see the words first class as they are, funnily enough, BEHIND MY SODDIN HEAD. Sigh. First class on Virgin is in a different carriage. Even London North Western, shit company that that is, has first class in a separate carriage. But not on South Eastern trains. She then charged me for the entire journey to Gatwick. At this point I was still in Kent. What a massive cockwomble…
I ordered some healthy food as the waiter came over. God the waiter was fit. It made me turn over my book on female serial killers that lay next to my computer. I continue to type. My food comes and I enter a zen state…
Later
The waiter asks me if everything is alright with my superfood salad just as I put a huge forkful in my mouth. I know why. I worked as a waitress and I also became skilled at timing. Arriving at the table at precisely the time the food enters the customers mouth. No chance of the customer complaining when they are at a disadvantage of mouth spillage. Now it is my turn as the customer to nod manically as I try not to spit food over the table. He smiles and disappears again. Why am I eating a superfood salad? In fact what IS a superfood? When did a turnip or an avocado become a superfood? It is a meaningless term. Like world renowned or master builder. How do you become world renowned anyway? Am I world renowned because I have spanked men in St Lucia and Stoke, Barbados and Birmingham? I ponder this. My rage from the twat on the train has subsided as I settle into writing and thinking. I had a bit of a wake up call last week and I have one of my friends to thank...
“What? You haven’t time to do a single art class once a week?” she asked whilst we walked around the Royal Academy. The question resonated more with me than any other question I have been asked this year. I had been commenting that if I had more time I would love to learn how to paint. How to draw. How to sculpt. I got a little defensive in my answer to her. This year I have been renovating a house in one part of the country, maintaining my domination business in another part of the country, and finishing a writing commission that I have had this year (not under my Elizabeth Swan persona). Not to mention all the other things that keep us busy as our parents get older and need more help. I know most people are busy. It’s relentless and it doesn’t stop until we retire or die…which I always planned to do by the time I was fifty five. Retire. Not die. I had my first job at fourteen and in twenty four years I have never stopped. Even at college I was maintaining full time hours on the side of my learning. Thank God I found sex work as it really did pull me out of poverty in a way that minimum wage jobs were never going to. Not glamorous for men to think that a domme used to be poor but there you are. The adventures I have had along the way with all my jobs! I wouldn’t change a thing. My life experience has shaped me, as life experiences do. A colleague from my old vanilla job in the theatre once told me that something I had written was ‘woke’. What a bloody insult that was! Woke is another nonsense term used to virtue signal the user or the receiver. As is empower. Women are always writing that this and that empowered them. Men rarely do. If you have to tell people something empowered you it probably didn’t.
Another election looming. Many of my friends will vote Labour but with those two mental henchmen at the helm how could I? Spouting on about millionaires until they realise that they are millionaires and so now their Sauron gaze has moved to billionaires like John Caudwell. Missing the point as always. Caudwell may have wealth I can’t imagine but he pays his tax here in this country. Push him and he’ll fuck off and take his tax with him. How about going after the huge companies that are making money here but are registered in Liechtenstein?
Every time they open their mouths they make themselves more unelectable. I am a landlord. I have a house in Stoke I rent out. Having no pension that IS my pension. And there are many people like me. A woman in Brighton once took me on because I said on social media that I had a second home that I rented out. She said she wasn’t greedy like me. What an absolute plank. Put together five houses in Stoke and they won’t be anywhere near what a house in Brighton costs. But you can keep Brighton with its inbred vegans and its boring beaches. If they ran out of avocados there would be a protest. In fact, thinking about it, Brighton is probably where the word superfood comes from.
So when the owner of two houses McDonnell said that tenants should have the right to force the house owner to sell I listened with disbelief. Again, one rule for the rich who don’t need to rent out their second homes and one for us. Like Emma Thompson lecturing normal people about carbon footprints when she has just stepped out of a first class seat. I am not sure when the left became so hypocritical. If they were all like Dennis Skinner I would vote Labour. But they are not. Each year wearing a poppy feels more of a protest against people who would call us fascists and war mongers. It is only a matter of time before we wearers start having red paint thrown on us. Would they prefer it if we all spoke German? Probably. At least then we wouldn’t be leaving the EU (if we ever do).
Lately I have become a bit tired. I’m irritable sometimes and have a much quicker temper than I used to. I am happier that I am not living in London any more as I don’t have rent to pay (because who can afford to buy in London now?) But my train journeys have increased massively. When I did my expenses the other week I saw I had spent 6k on trains to and from work the past year. And the hours spent sitting/standing on them! I could have learnt Chinese in that time. Or how to play the ukulele.
Do you know when the conductor charged me a penalty for accidentally sitting in the wrong seat I wanted to graffiti the train. Or at least nick all the loo roll.
You see that isn’t normal is it? Here I was talking about ukuleles and now my mind has whirled back to being swindled. We are used to being screwed over by smirking jobsworths ‘just doing my job’ ‘rules are rules’ type of people. So when did I become a little, well, unstable, that I would even consider petty revenge? Now years and years ago I am not ashamed to say I did nick all the condiments from a pub in London Bridge. They had sold me some wine that was corked and they wouldn’t change it. So I nicked five English mustards, one red sauce, two brown sauces and three salt shakers. In my mind that covered the nine pound buttfucking I had got for the undrinkable wine. But I thought I had grown up a little since those crazy days.
My superfood salad isn’t helping. I shouldn’t have had three coffees alongside.
And suddenly it hits me. The realisation that I need to make a change. Now my domination is perfect at the moment. My handful of lovely regulars. Four of them I have been seeing since I resided in a car park six years ago and we are not bored of each other yet. As they are getting on I often don’t have sessions per se every time I see them. And before the time wasters circle thinking I see them for free then think again. I have monthly arrangements. They understand that I am not a charity so in whichever capacity, whether I am spanking, watching films, travelling or having dinner with their neighbours I charge a set fee for the month. Cause I do! I’m not bloody Oxfam. Easier for me, easier for them and easier when it comes to doing my tax return.
So my domme life won’t change. Which leaves my house renovation. Mmm. Do you know I also love doing this. Yes it isn’t very glamorous when I’m covered in plaster dust, hiding in a corner because a spider bigger than GOD has launched itself at me. But I do love it. Knocking down walls and planning kitchens. Pulling up carpet and discovering BEAUTIFUL floorboards underneath. So I want to keep doing that too.
Then there is my writing. Which, despite evidence to the contrary from this blog, has really improved over the last few years. My commission is almost done and then, who knows. Maybe more writing? It calms my mind. It is challenging but satisfying when it pulls together. I couldn’t possibly give it up.
Which leaves me with one option. I need to move. I need to live where I renovate. Which will lead to less trains. And less tweets moaning about trains. Everybody wins! I want a proper home. With a dog, a cat, a dungeon and a swimming pool. Okay the last might have to wait but I have drive. I’ll get there. You know what? I feel better already. Gotta rush. I have an Easyjet flight to catch. Will the glamour ever stop?!
Elizabeth Swan