Hello everyone. Thanks Hywel for updating people on my medical dramas; but I wanted to write to you all myself – I feel sorry to have been so absent from Restrained Elegance this Summer and I want to tell you that I’m still here in spirit, even if my body will need to do some catching up.

Since I started modelling, Restrained Elegance has been absolutely at the heart of what I’ve wanted to achieve as a model. Far before Hywel and I started playing together, and WAY before we started an actual relationship, I started reserving my best BDSM ideas for Restrained Elegance. And over the last 7 years, I’ve spent lots of time and energy thinking of things to shoot. Even when it hasn’t been strictly necessary, it’s been easy to do – my personal fantasies are very in-tune with the Restrained Elegance concept (except that some of them might be a wee bit extreme, I suppose!).

Being ill, and not having a certain idea of when I’ll be better again has been horrible for a number of reasons, as anyone who’s experienced something similar will know. After years of travelling constantly, I’m suddenly stuck at home, in bed. After 7 years of making more money than I could spend (and fortunately, saving sensibly) I’m suddenly unable to go out to work, and it’s more of a shock to my ego than I’d have expected from a submissive! After being physically fit and active all my life, I’m finding climbing upstairs quite challenging. And after 3 years of being so happy to be Hywel’s masochistic slave girl, pretty much delighted to try anything if it hurts, I’m watching Hywel being all the things a fantasy Dom doesn’t have to be – careful, gentle, and not at all sadistic. It’s confusing, difficult and humiliating. And not in a good way.

And on top of everything else, I’ve been unable to model for Restrained Elegance since August. And I LOVE Restrained Elegance. Being being deprived of my involvement in the site has been very painful.

But yay, this is where the ‘new beginnings’ of the title fits in. Earlier in the year Hywel and I decided that we weren’t happy seeing so little of each other. I was away more nights of the week than I was home, and often I’ve been abroad for weeks at a time. Which left both of us lonely. So we decided that from January ’11, I’d start working for RE for a couple of days every week, then we’d take a day off together every week too, and I’d model part-time. All year, I’ve been looking forward to getting more involved in the ‘behind the scenes’ RE work, looking after the models, rigging, planning shoots and processing pictures. And doing more shoots for RE too, sometimes at short notice if an idea suddenly occurred to us, rather than having to schedule it weeks in advance.

So although it’s pretty devastating to be at least temporarily out-of-action as a model, I’m really happy that as of next week, I’ll be working for RE part-time. Working on my computer isn’t painful, and I’ll have more time to post on the forum, answer any Members’ emails and plan shoots. I really hope that people continue to enjoy pictures and videos of me on the site, and I’ll keep writing down my fantasies so that when I recover, there’ll be lots more to shoot. I don’t want to let Restrained Elegance down – it’s a hugely important part of my life, and I want to take this opportunity to get more, rather than less involved.

Thanks everyone for playing your part in making this site such a lovely place to be, and let me know if there’s anything you think I can do to make you enjoy it more. But please don’t let it be anything that involves computer programming. I don’t want to be put back in hospital.

Ariel xx