The Birch swings no more

During our last exchange, Alex Birch and I were having a very emotional debate on the soc.sexuality.spanking Usenet newsgroup about terrorism and the requirements for a liberal society. Try as we might to stay on topic (i.e. spanking), politics is never far from the list of current discussions on the newsgroup. That particular discussion did not end with any sort of agreement between the two of us. Indeed his conclusions left me in despair. Had I known it was going to be our last conversation, I sure as hell would have talked about something far more cheerful. Far more related to spanking.

We never had the pleasure to meet in person, though I always assumed we probably would at some point. When I was better and could get on a plane and go to England finally. He and A. would talk about football and the Midlands and we'd all talk about spanking and his library of out-of-print spanking fiction.

Not that we had the lengthy, ongoing Conversation that he and Mija had. I've only been reading and posting to the newsgroup for eight years (on Saturday), making me a newbie compared to them. While I'd read plenty of his posts on SSS, we didn't really interact all that much until he was setting up his wonderful blog in 2005. As I had -- at least in his mind -- already mastered blogging on Blogger, he asked for my help, earning me far more gratitude from him than was worth my certainly earnest, if not always helpful, assistance. After that I felt more comfortable talking with him both on the newsgroup and in email, though it had dwindled over the last year or so, as have most of my other correspondences, due to illness. Meaning that I didn't know about his illness...

I can't imagine the newsgroup without him. The stories. The arguments. The jokes. The arguments. The encouragement (scolding?) each and every summer to do your part in the annual Short Story Contest. The arguments.

And where will the spankosphere get its fix of out-of-print spanking fiction and pictures of spanking models from the 1970s?

I hope he's somewhere with a sassy lass across his knee, giving her the hiding they are both enjoying.