Rain of Fire

I love the new Restrained Elegance cage. It's perfectly spherical and beautifully designed. And it seems as though every RE model except me has had their chance to be photographed in it, looking like fabulous exotic pets. But not me. So when Hywel told me that my penalty for forgetting to serve dinner by candlelight would be to be locked into the cage - well, I was actually rather pleased!

Optimism at the Restrained Elegance studio is a very dangerious thing. When I came downstairs after preparing dessert, I saw that tall candles had been attached all around the top of the cage, and I realised that once inside, if the candles were lit I'd probably be unable to escape the drips of hot wax which were sure to fall.

In the past, my limited experience of hot wax hasn't been too bad. Each drip only hurts for a second or two before it cools, so compared with caning, for example, or electro-torture, candles have never filled me with particular horror.

Shooting this video has changed my attitude, probably forever. Playing with one candle may be mildly painful fun; being trapped under concentric circles of the same is utterly disorientating, scary and terribly painful.

The bliindfold protecting my eyes also served to make it impossible to anticipate where the deluge of wax might come from next, and it was impossible to escape it. Time stretched out, seemingly endlessly as the burning rain poured down, delivering hot stings everywere is landed. Pain doesn't normally make me cry, but fear does - and I was in tears well before Hywel finally unlocked the cage door and let me out....

Ariel