It's all about convenience to please a Gremlin.

So, I am sat here with an easter egg which I bought in March seeing as commercialism is a big thing in England, happily munching away my £1 bit of chocolate after a long day of fun and frolics. I went to a little kinky market gathering as a complete whim to go see about buying something new from a random vendor.

My hope was that of a new rattan cane, surely a simple task with a space full of kinky vendors.

Instead, I ended up with low melting point candles for wax play, a block of conductive candle wax, a conductive glove for electric play and a purpose made wax knife for removing wax from the skin. I have come to realise I have just bought awesome things but at a convenience due to not finding what I originally had hoped to find. Bloody Gremlin has been at it again.

This got me thinking further, the stalls had canes, but synthetic ones such as carbon rods. I have plenty like this and they have their uses but natural rattan wood canes have a certain feel about them. I am a bit of an old school kind of person at times.

People that know me are aware I appreciate older items that are still in use and even new items which are made in a traditional way. I have canes I have had for ten years or longer. They are still straight as the day I bought them.

A lot of items have a certain feel to them, after years of handling various items of similar, less or higher quality I do pay attention to things for sale and the story behind them.

For example; I feel tell the difference between low-grade thin leather, decent suede and faux stuff as well as thick well-tannered hide quality. I can also tell if sounds are in fact plated Chinese ones and whether a paddle is made of wood that will split over a short period of time.

A lot of people I talk to, I included recently and particularly younger generations have one or two convenience toys at the very least in their toy kit. Items you think, well that could be so much better but the cost of production has obviously been a factor. Add the convenience of it being available at the very moment and said item at a price that would be attractive to a wider audience spoke to the gremlin in a tongue it understands.

Sitting on the back of the neck looking over the shoulder whispering in your ear it speaks in a language only you can understand which appeals to your subconscious.

It isn't the vendor's fault or the new owner, it's society pressuring people to settle for what's available at the time due to seeing pretty things online or lust for what others have as well as media pressure not to spend money on things to make users enjoy life better but to buy with impulse to feed the gremlins. It is also due people wanting things right now, this instant settling for adequate rather than waiting and searching for something better as that thing on the back of your neck hates putting up with patience.

Take natural material cuffs for example.

Anyone looking to try kink will generally sway into leather cuffs as they are softer than mechanical handcuffs and often a good place to start for kinky bedroom spice up or for harder play scenes. When you look to buy a set of cuffs people often just look at cost and how quickly it can be delivered or whether what you are currently looking at is available right at that moment.

If looking at a stall it generally comes down to a small percentage of thought into whether the vendor has charm and a larger percentage of thought goes through whether the item fits the wallet. The voice on the shoulder generally has the final vote if the item is right in front of you as it knows everything about you and likes to add peer pressure. The new owner then has a new set of cuffs either via the post or right in front of him or her at the cost of the convenience gremlin.

Now, when I look at leather cuffs, experience has made me a bit of a snob and now I look for more than convenience in this area. I look for quality and an item that I know has been made well with the design and practically. I look for thickness of leather, has it got a good thick feel to it, has it been cut well and a slight stiffness that good quality new leather has. along with that fresh dead cow smell, all leather enthusiasts can appreciate. If your vegan I don't care this is my thing, not yours, cowhide is amazing.

Have the eyes of the buckle been stamped out with a hole punch or poked through with a sharp spike? Does it have studs holding it together or is it machine stitched with a commercial grade leather sewing machine. Is the strap designed in such a way that it won't tear out of itself with a bit of force and is it comfortable to wear and easy to keep clean?

This kind of searching is what makes the difference between a £10 pair of cuffs to a £50 pair of cuffs and what separates them from a £100 pair of cuffs. It also separates whether that voice is quiet for a few days or passes out from an explosive orgasm and goes into a coma leaving a bit of a sticky mess called serenity.

I'm not saying you have to spend a lot of money to get your kink on. It is easy to find quality without a large price tag but you need to learn to hush that voice with some Haribo until you find your serenity. There is certainly compliance of lack in quality around some areas causing a high level of convenience toys which either break, look mediocre or simply fail in their role down the line when you decide you no longer wish to use it due to seeing something better and getting that lust issue again.

All I want to do is hold a 28-inch senior rattan cane with a rounded top and simple rubber grip handle in my hands, compare it to the one next to me and see which feels better. Then proceed to smack my gremlin on the ass rather than catalogue ordering online or seeing hours put into braided handles jacking the price up.

Which again is nice to see but it's like buying a cup of tea from a little coffee shop and then going a restaurant and spending three times as much for the same tea bag but in a fancy cup. You get the same result but with less money in your pocket for that cookie, you also wanted. I tend to find long braided handles on canes affect their balance and the swing but that's just my opinion.

I can see the incentive to choose synthetic canes. They cost less, easier to keep clean for the novice or even the experienced. They hardly ever break and look nice. However, it's still a convenience of science, they feel different compared to natural wood and I just find it a shame they are being phased out from the kinky generation in favour of fakes much like a lot of other items.

Ratten is sustainable, its basically a weed and is not destroying the rain forest. It is a really interesting natural item with a long history and it should be seen more in the kink scene.

My gremlin cries I carry on looking to fill the gap. My serenity will guide my thoughts not the voice.