Time flies and even though it seems to me like yesterday since I have attended my last summer school I found myself being sent back to England and the Muir Academy another time. This time, however, school was supposed to be quite different and I was more than pleased to learn that my guardian has enrolled me at a school term that was designed just for girls only.

The prospect of having no bullying boys around and knowing there would be no stupid lessons like maths, physics, or military history made me really looking forward to it. Even though I didn't exactly know what to expect I had heard rumours about ballet lessons, sewing, cookery, beauty care, etiquette, music and all the things that would make boys yawn in sheer boredom. Don't get me wrong, boys do have their qualities in one way or the other, but could one imagine Tranter mincing around in a pink ballet tutu or Steve Miller doing his nails and plucking his eyebrows into a high feminine arch? No way and let's be honest, we do not want them to be turned into sissies, do we?

Ma'am and Matron were already waiting for us when Sarah-Jane Thornton, Sarah-Jane Hilary, Jean Holland and I arrived late Monday night. As for the staff we had Andrea, our good old maid, always ready to please and mostly less than one step away from the next clumsy mistake. As there was no cook around another maid was on duty but strangely enough she disappeared during the first night obviously by magic. There are rumours she just ran away but I am everything else than sure about this. Or how did it come that a scary black dog was sitting in front of the main entrance the very next morning? The dog came back every day till school was over eventually by the end of the week.

Ma'am said that would be just a coincidence but I am absolutely sure it was the maid being charmed by the evil wizards Lord Prendermort and Lord Voldegast who both have been spotted at the school premises just recently.

So wow betide you maids, that's what will happen to you when running away from your work. After this incident poor Andrea was the only remaining maid but as we were four girls around, we tried to help her as good as lessons permitted doing the dishes and clearing the table.

Of course, most of the time we spent in lessons because that was what we had been there for after all. The lessons themselves were all about what one would call the feminine arts and although I can call myself a very, very well behaved girl I was amazed how much there was left to learn. Take Sarah-Jane for instance. How many demerits can a girl collect while trying to eat a silly single piece of toast? Plenty, I can tell you. The correcting remarks from Ma'am came like fire out of a machine gun: "Don't butter the whole slice! Put the slice on your side plate when you are buttering it! Don't push the whole slice in your mouth at once! Cut the slice in smaller pieces! On the side plate, silly girl! What's your egg doing on the toast? This is a finishing school, not a coalminer's pub! Demerit, demerit, demerit ..."

Don't get me wrong, this is not the collection of breakfast remarks of the whole term but it happened within less than three minutes and earned Sarah-Jane, as far as I can remember, at least five demerits in one go.

The young dancers practice their port de bras

Hope that gives you at least a little clue what it means when getting your manners and deportment honed to become a proper young Lady. There is no moment of letting yourself go, not a second you are finding yourself unobserved and not even for the twitch of one's eyes you may forget the feminine etiquette you once have been taught.

Lessons on the first day started with make-up and skin care, which made me quite happy as I was excused from this lesson. Not that I wouldn't need some handy hints on how to apply make-up or making it last longer, but as Sarah-Jane, Hilary and Jean were rather beginners and still needed some basic advice I was allowed to skip this part of the training.

Hey boys, stop rolling with your eyes and don't even think about starting to yawn! Girls have to be much tougher than you ever will be. Bet you'd start crying like babies when you'd have to have your eyebrows plucked or waxed, wouldn't you? It is fun to look pretty but it can be rather painful to achieve the look.

During the next lesson Matron starting to teach us playing recorders. Compared to Hilary, Jean and me Sarah-Jane is quite an advanced player and was even able to play the school hymn on her recorder. Gosh, as for me I was glad to find the different holes at all, let alone the right ones and more than once I had the impression there'd be more holes on the recorder than I have fingers on my hands. I only hope that we were far away enough from any being that has got senses to pick up noises, otherwise I am quite sure that someone must have been driven mad just by listening to the disharmonic sounds of our recorders. Amazingly our first desperate tries to play improved and soon we all played a sequence of several notes even in the right speed. Not that all the famous orchestras in the world suddenly would go nuts to get us on their pay rolls but keeping in mind that we were absolute beginners the improvement was not that bad.

However, my cramped fingers hurt and so did my pouted lips when we finally put the recorders back into our satchels and Matron came to next lesson: Ballet! I am not telling a secret when saying that was the lesson Sarah-Jane and I were looking forward to at most. Boys definitely won't understand what's so fascinating on ballet but almost every girl is dreaming to be a ballerina and so did we. Already the night before Sarah-Jane and I tried to picture what it would be like to dance tiptoes in our white leotards and pink tutus.

All the more it was absolutely disappointing when Matron started to teach ballet theory instead of the true physical exercise. All we wanted was to dance, to fly like a bird, gently moving like a swan, showing off our nice costumes but instead we were sitting in a dull classroom listening to Matron's words on exercise safety, feet positions and why girls are to wear tutus at all. As if I'd care about the reasons for wearing a tutu. I just wanted to wear it because it is so nice and girly and because it really makes me feeling like a ballerina - everything else was absolutely out of my interest.

Alas, we did not have any tutus yet but as Ma'am has told us in advance we'd going to make our own ones as a part of a sewing project, which was to start after Matron's lesson on ballet theory. Of course, every girl has sewn before and so did I but it is amazing how difficult it can be to make even such a rather simple item like a tutu. Each of us girls took four layers of pink fine net, which was to be gathered at one end to get the full effect of a wide sticking out ballet skirt. That night we came just as far as to start sewing a pink ribbon to the net, which was to tie the once finished tutus to our waists with a nice and girly bow.

Muir discipline still applies in dancing class

Did you notice anything so far? I told you about the whole first day of the girl's school and there was absolutely no whacking to report about. Not that we did not collect one or the other demerit now and then - I had already written about Sarah-Jane's breakfast incident - but none of us had to be called out to the front, no one had a temper tantrum and it was obvious that boyish misbehaviour was not a part of this school.

For dinner and prep we were allowed smart dresses this night and Ma'am wanted us to try out our newly learned make-up skills. So it came that four pretty young Ladies gathered around the dinner table and if there wouldn't have been the steady correcting remarks one might have hardly believed to be at a strict finishing school for young Ladies.

Did I already mention that I shared a dormitory with Sarah-Jane and did I already tell you that Sarah-Jane has two really kinky dollies named Poppy and Abigail? What Sarah-Jane didn't know so far both the dollies are quite into spanking and every night before bed time Poppy had to bend over and Abigail gave her a good thrashing.

Weather was quite pretty the next morning but Ma'am decided it would be too cold for summer dresses so we had to be back in gymslips again. As expected lessons continued this morning. At first we had to sew ribbons to our ballet shoes, then we had another recorder lesson and just before lunch we did our nails during another beauty lesson with Ma'am. It is really strange, so far I always found myself on defaulters and heavily caned when wearing nail varnish in school but now I did my nails straight under the supervision of the headmistress and I even would get stars for doing it particularly well. My, oh my, life is not even easy to understand when you are a schoolgirl.

After lunch Sarah-Jane and I were to change into our leotards and tights while Jean and Hilary had a cooking lesson with Ma'am.

Of course we were utterly excited. At last we would not just talking about ballet, but we would actually practicing. Our teacher was to be the very famous Madame Matronova who'd teach us the basic positions and movements and the cane in her hand told us unmistakably that she'd enforce our progress with any mean available. We started with the five positions of the feet. Ouch that hurt! Twisting the feet to the outside as far as possible was even more painful than receiving six of the best. Next we did PLIES, went over to the BATTEMENT TENDU, stumbled straight into the RONDS DE JAMBE to eventually collapse into the GRANDE BATTEMENT. We both were quite exhausted after the lesson but as we did very well - at least Madame Matronova said so - we were decided to write our application to the Bolshoi Ballet to enter the stages of the world.

While Sarah-Jane and I were sweating in the ballet class Jean Holland and Hilary had cooking lessons with Ma'am and they both did an excellent job. Hilary made a very tasty fish pie and Jean's Medlar and Apple Crumble was absolutely delicious.

Unfortunately our table manners were not as good as expected another time. I hardly can remember why we suddenly started to giggle, the only thing I know is that Hilary was the trigger and every time I tried to face her another spell of laughter made me unable to eat or talk. It took only a few moments till Sarah-Jane and I found ourselves facing the wall, hands above our heads. I wonder why Hilary was allowed to stay at the table?

After a while Ma'am gave us permission to finish our desert but being back at the table and facing Hilary again the whole thing started again and Sarah-Jane went back to the corner voluntarily.

That night we finished our tutus and of course we were looking impatiently forward to the next day when we'd dance all together.

It was the third day of the school we were allowed to wear our summer dresses at last. I don't think that the weather was in any way different to the former days but eventually the headmistress had decided it has to be summer now! The third and last day of the girl's finishing school brought a new subject: flower arrangement. Ma'am showed us how to arrange flowers in different ways and styles and of course we did our own arrangements. The results were quite impressive even though none of us has ever done this before.

As always the last day of a school was filled with tests and exams and so was our last day. I didn't have any difficulties with the practical part but my results in the theoretical cookery test were rather disappointing. However, I was much better in calligraphy and poetry. I got three stars in the whole for my poem, writing and illustrating it. Writing the poem was a bit tricky as every line had to start with a different letter of the either the word BALLET or COOKING. Except Jean Holland we all choose BALLET. No, we didn't do it just for the subject but I think it was easier to make poem with 6 lines rather than with 7.

Mine read as follows:

Ballet dancing girls,
A gracefully sight,
Leotards and tutus,
Laces and tights,
Every girl's dream is to stay on the stage,
To appear in the spotlight from her earliest age.

After lunch Sarah-Jane and I swapped places with Jean and Hilary. While they started their ballet exercises we did our cookery. My creation was to be a "Blackforest Slices". I think Ma'am thought it might be a suitable cake for a German exchange pupil to bake. Well, the recipe must have been slightly altered on its long way over the channel but it was still close enough to recognise the origins of the cake.

The most remarkable highlight of the afternoon was definitely our ballet performance. At last we wore our tutus and Madame Matronova directed a little dance to show what we had learnt. It was simply beautiful to dance like a real ballerina and although Jean Holland did quite well she had a little tantrum during the rehearsal. Madame Matronova became very cross with Jean and gave her a good hiding. There were more canings to come and it was this afternoon, when the title of the forthcoming blockbuster video "spanked in leotards and caned in tights" was been born.

We had just a little audience, Ma'am and Andrea the maid, to be exactly, but we were as nervous as if there would have been thousands of people watching us. Everything went fine and when we were dismissed eventually Sarah-Jane and I would have liked to scream out as loud as possible: "BOLSHOI, WE ARE COMING!!!"

Well, it is always a sad moment when a school comes to an end but we still had a whole last night to enjoy ourselves as girls amongst girls.

By the way, Jean Holland won the school prize, a tiny crystal ballerina dancing to the melody of swan lake. There were actually three girls with eight stars but it is the rule that the number of demerits would turn the scales. Amazingly Jean Holland had just two demerits over the whole course and so she won.

That last night Sarah-Jane's dollies get a bit overboard and Abigail gave Poppy a very good spanking. Unfortunately Matron was outside the door and heard the dollies spanking each other. I really can't understand why Sarah-Jane and I had to come down to the headmistress's study instead of the dollies. However, very soon we both found ourselves over Matron's and the headmistress's knee being spanked simultaneously. I don't think it was fair, but because Sarah-Jane had forgotten her punishment book Ma'am continued to warm up my behind. At last Sarah-Jane was back and after a while we had to swap places so Ma'am now spanked Sarah-Jane and I, on the other hand, was bending over Matron's knee.

We fell asleep very late this night as Sarah-Jane and I were chatting long after lights out. This course was really a new and beautiful experience and in a certain way we did not even miss the boys. Not that I would mind being with boys, not at all. They have their qualities, as I said, but this was a course for girls only and I dearly hope there will be more to come.