Stories of Tie Up Games

Beth’s Story Part 2: Counter Prank In the weeks that followed my prank, there was an uneasy truce between Mum and me. I continued my habit of leaving the house door and the workshop door unlocked when I was doing work that involved repeated trips in and out. Mum stopped complaining every time I did...

Beth’s Story Part 1: Prank My Mum is a security freak and that’s what started all this. My parents and I live in a small house (two former farmworkers’ cottages knocked into one) some distance outside a village which is itself quite isolated. ‘Middle-of-Nowhere, England’ in other words. Definitely ...

Beth’s Story: Prank and Counter-Prank Introduction This story belongs in a completely different fictional world to the New Hobby series with a completely different cast of characters. I began writing it long before Covid-19 or lockdown had come on the scene, but I got stuck and have only just blown...

The English school system (can't speak for other parts of the UK) used to place huge emphasis on clear and concise writing skills. (And the exam system tended to penalise people whose skills lay elsewhere.) I've just turned 70, so my school years were 1955-1968. I wonder what ages the writers you me...

A New Hobby by Weird Aunt Ettie Part 4: The Sock Incident The combination of the UK’s Covid-19 lockdown and my daughters’ school Easter holiday, gave the middle of April an unstructured feel, especially when I took a few days leave from working at home. There were days when we had to think hard eve...

A New Hobby by Weird Aunt Ettie Part 3: Liz Has A Close Shave The third week of the UK’s Covid-19 lockdown was a bit different for us. The Easter school holiday started on 6 April. There was still some schoolwork in hand as the teachers had provided optional packages of non-curricular work for the ...

I'm trussed up with rope
Escape: not a hope
It's all my own work
(Call it a personal quirk)
But I still feel a bit of a dope

I'm no spring chicken either, and memory ain't what it used to be (if it ever was). I knew Gillian briefly as an email correspondent in the last couple of years of her life. (We were both Scooby Doo fans.) Even at that, she was a very private person so I really can't claim to have known her at all w...

Hello KP I'm aware that you're the custodian of most of Gillian B's work (and it's great that so much of it is still around). However, I'm not convinced by your assertion. Two reasons: 1 I remember those images being in place in Eoshi's story on www.restrainedtastes.com and the image copyright notic...

Thank you, OldTUGger, I personally value the story telling and the craft of writing as much as the actual TUG interest, so I really appreciate being appreciated for it.

Ettie x

I remember those pictures. The stories they illustrated were hosted on the long-defunct Restrained Tastes site, which was partly curated by the late Gillian B. I did some digging and found it on the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20031204041553/http://www.restrainedtastes.com/tc/tod/i...

I'm enjoying the way you portray these two. Good, mischievous fun!

Hogties are undoubtedly going to come up in my story A New Hobby. I'll need to make sure I do a different take on them.

Looking forward to reading more

Ettie x

Ettie - also from England

Part 2 continued The girls helped me clear the table and then load the dishwasher. I went looking for them just before 2 o’clock and found them in their bedroom. They had their skipping ropes and the new rope laid out on the floor and had selected a bandanna each as gags. “We’re not sure what lengt...

A New Hobby Part 2: Learning the Ropes by Weird Aunt Ettie While we had adapted surprisingly well to our new routine under lockdown, it still had an other-worldly feel to it. Although I seemed to be as productive as ever working from home, there was still time for contemplative moments staring out ...

Thank you all for the kind comments. I left the end fairly open ended precisely so it could be sequelled or extended. I was a little unsure how my fairly low-key narrative style would go down with readers - it takes a good 2/3 of the story to get to any actual tying. I'll start think about where the...

I've been lurking here for ages, so I thought it was time I paid my dues and posted something. So here it is... Ettie A New Hobby So, coronavirus and Britain is in near lockdown. It’s not so bad for my family. I’m a single mum living with my two teenage daughters and our dog in a small house on the ...