Charlie J Forrest

I can probably count the number of hours’ sleep I had this weekend without running out fingers.

It all began on Saturday morning with a horrifically early start from London to catch the first train of the day up to Manchester for the fun of Smut Manchester.

The conference was hidden down many a dark corridor at the Manchester Conference centre, one might almost think they were trying to hide us? Once arrived it was a delight to see so many faces, many familiar, some unfamiliar and grab some much-needed caffeine before things kicked off.

Ashley Lister gave a very fun workshop on erotic poetry. The kind of workshop that really breaks down a potentially intimidating subject and gets you thinking that you probably should give it a try. Here’s my attempt at a Quintain:

I took part in the erotica reading slam with an extract from my chastity play collection Keyholder Kink. I think my performance went down ok, at the very least it’s easier to assume the audience was laughing with me rather than at me… It was also a joy to be sharing the stage with a plethora of very talented writers (yay, reflected glory!), even if the menacing presence of a paddle wielding Zak Kier did keep everyone ruthlessly on schedule.

Speaking of which Zak gave an excellent workshop on different types of hitty things with a small selection of painful implements (a good number of which ended up being tried out by some very enthusiastic participants at the back of the room). It all got a tiny bit over-exciting, but what can I say, you take a room full of sexy, eager kinky people and hand out spanking implements, what on earth do you expect to happen?

A similar level of eager participation also greeted Cara Sutra’s workshop in which she demonstrated her beginners bondage kit. A more thorough review will be coming up in the near future (courtesy of the Kinky Brits podcast), but for the time being I’ll leave you with a couple of photos of some of the participants:

Yours truly was asked to demonstrate some of the myriad possibilities involving the rope in the kit (a lovely smooth, soft number with a surprising amount of spring in it). And after rigging a chest harness and lead on JB Miller (and parading her slightly unceremoniously around the room… such fun!), Melissa MacFarlane of Voluptasse volunteered for a quick and fun Karada:

It was an interesting and fun challenge being only able to work with one length as it forced me to really think about what is necessary to make a tie work, look good but not necessarily use huge amounts of rope with lots of body wraps and cinches etc. I had a few people compliment me afterwords (including Mr Lister… which kind of made me squee) so I guess my nerves weren’t showing too badly, although I think the gleeful enthusiasm of the volunteers really made the performance (thanks guys; you rock!).

There were other workshops including reviewing sex toys, co-authoring (how to make or break a friendship) and of course more smutty readings than you can shake a paddle at (including the joyful sight of Slave Nano being chased around the room by a paddle wielding Zak).

The evening saw three fo the Kinky Brits retiring to out hotel room and donning onesies for a podcast recording (which will be posted on the website as soon as I get around to editing the damned thing), followed by meeting up again with the Smutty attendees for an evening Chinese.

Utterly exhausting, but tremendous fun.

And that was just the Saturday…