Image by the brilliant Stuart F Taylor

WHY HAVE I NEVER WRITTEN ABOUT RIDING CROPS?! I need to rectify this immediately, because riding crops are not only super-hot, but they also represent one of my earliest sexual memories. And by that I mean there was one time I spotted a riding crop on TV and couldn’t understand why I got all the funny feelings.

Riding crops, horses and toffs – oh my!

The first time I saw a riding crop in a sexual context was during a tiny glimpse of the opening credits of the TV series ‘Riders’. I understand it’s based on a Jilly Cooper book. For youngsters, Jilly Cooper was to my parents’ generation what E.L. James probably wasn’t to yours. Jilly wrote panting, breathy erotica that I believe was mostly about posh people. The posh people had torrid affairs, swollen members, and – of course – horses.

That, as I understood it when I was younger, was the life of a posh person: bit of horse riding before breakfast, then a torrid affair in the rose garden, before whacking a young filly with a riding crop and tally-ho-ing off into the distance.

So. Riders. I was at home with my sister and one of my Mum’s friends, who was looking after us because my Mum had abandoned us to go to the pub. We stayed up late, because the best thing about having a near-stranger look after you is that you can lie about your bedtime. She really wanted to watch a programme that she’d heard was very good, so we settled in to watch it with her.

You only need to see the first minute and thirty five seconds to get the idea, but it was this:

“Ooh! A bum!” Squealed the suddenly-very-embarrassed friend of my Mum, before ushering us off to bed, where I promptly lay awake for two hours staring at the ceiling and trying to work out how to persuade my Mum that I really needed horseriding lessons.

Riding crop: prettiness before pain

Although the flogger is my favourite thing with which to be beaten (Or the belt. Or a tawse. Or Oh God it’s so hard to decide), riding crops conjure some very specific imagery.

I love the sound of it, of course, and the sensation. The short, precise, tiny dot of pain when you’re whacked neatly with it. The ‘crop’ – a deliciously onomatopoeic instrument, as each stroke falls with a quick, cursive… crop.

But while all that’s delightful, I think it’s the general aesthetic I like. The idea of h0rsey young women sitting primly atop a saddle. Keeping a poker face to disguise the sensations in their tight jodhpurs when their filly breaks into a trot. Seriously, each and every one of these specifically horsey words is getting me wet as I write them.

I can practically smell the leather tack, mingled with musky sweat of a stable lad, topped off with a slight tang coming from my crotch after rubbing it on the saddle during a long forest hack.

I can almost feel the rhythm – UP-down UP-down UP-down – the slight pause at the top of each stroke, hanging poised in the air for a split second, before falling back and feeling the satisfying thud of the leather saddle between my legs.

And of course I can picture the crop – wielded by someone tall and older and authoritarian. Clipped tones, possibly ex-military – so British he sweats Earl Grey. Barking instructions to me as I trot around and around. Holding onto his crop and occasionally tapping the horse for encouragement, but more likely tapping the palm of his hand. Telling me to go faster, or slower, or to sit up straight.

Tapping the crop in his hand, and barking orders, just waiting for me to fuck up, or to tire. At which point he’ll order me down out of the saddle, put a bridle between my teeth to keep me quiet, and then use the whippy riding crop for the purpose he’d always intended: thrashing me through the fabric of my tight, white jodhpurs.

We were far too poor for riding lessons. It was probably for the best.