A few days ago Abel showed weakness in the face of an antique walking stick gorgeously capped with silver. It’s crook-handled and cane-shaped – being, you know, a cane – but it’s also extremely thick and dense, and I wouldn’t say it’s particularly suitable for corporal punishment. Unless you like being beaten with a stick.

And yet, Abel was completely charmed by the thing, and frankly, so was I. Give us anything cane-related, and we just can’t keep our dirty mitts off it.

This stick just goes to prove what a load of rubbish the apocryphal “rule of thumb” is – the one that goes that a man can beat his wife with anything that isn’t thicker than his thumb. The new stick? Is terrifyingly thick. If you were to play with it, you could really no more than gently tap, for the sake of bone safety. As a new top, I’m too wary of even attempting to use it.

And yet, it’s thinner than a thumb. Abel’s, or even mine. So in theory, if the rule were true, it could legitimately be used for the correction of wives. Hmm, I really don’t think so.

I do like the terrible, unusable, dangerous thing, though.