Crop, whip, cane

We went for a stroll in a small Cotswalds town, and walked past a window of an antique shop. And what did we find in the window but this interesting instrument:

I thought it was a walking cane, but Abel pointed out that the shop label actually called it a riding whip. This made it a lot more attractive. Although the stick’s thickness intimidated me at the first glance, Abel pointed out that it tapered towards the end, and so wasn’t that bad. And anyway, it was a very pretty whip, sold freely in an antique shop, and quite cheaply, too. We decided to buy it.

The shop woman offered to wrap it up for us. She struggled to find a piece of paper that contained its full knobbly length, but in the end wrestled it into a suitable cocoon. “Don’t worry about wrapping it too well,” said Abel.

“Oh, no,” said the woman. “I suppose, you’ll want to unwrap it and use it soon enough.”

She couldn’t know how right she was.

We devised a little scenario to help us try out the whip: I was a girl who knew her father wouldn’t like her school report, and so hid it from him when it arrived in the post. Little did I know, the school had actually sent him a copy at work, too.

I decided that the best position to try the whip would be to lie on the bed with some pillows underneath my hips, so I arranged myself with my bottom bared before Abel could get any say in it. He was a good sport, and when he found me lying thus, he launched straight into a short lecture, accentuated by a hand-spanking. This was painful in itself, but I could hardly concentrate on it, knowing that the whip was to come.

I was to get three strokes, which I thought was sensible for a first run of a new toy. And here’s a surprise: I burned like a hot poker. One stroke was bad, the second was harder and more agonising, and the third was worse of all. And Abel didn’t even use very much force. I was glad he didn’t go for a full half-dozen.

In the end, I decided that this was probably a decorative implement as far as I was concerned: I much prefer toys light enough to let me relax into the punishment and get more strokes, to the ones that get the whole scene over with in five seconds flat. It’s pretty, though. I’m glad we have it. And I’m sure we’ll have guests whose pain tolerance allows them to enjoy its many knots and ridges.