The great thing about living in a small town is that if you aren’t in when parcels are delivered, the postman/DHL man just leaves them with someone else: your parents, for example, or the vet. This is nice, because it means that you don’t have to wait until the weekend to pick up your parcels, but it can be a bit awkward pretending to your mother you have no idea why you’d be sent a “handheld massager”. I have to confess to a bit of heart-sinking when the vet rang my buzzer on Friday evening to tell me he had a parcel for me: I love and revere him, and am endlessly grateful for all he has done for generations of my pets, but I don’t particularly need him to know about my choices regarding my own entertainment. So full marks to Vibrator.com – when they say their packaging is discreet, they mean it. I wasn’t sure it was even the right parcel until I had got it up upstairs and withdrawn the now familiar black box.

Is it irredeemably shallow of me to feel more turned on by sex toys that come in beautiful packaging rather than impenetrable plastic casing? Quite possibly, but I prefer to think of it in terms of the girl can drop out of art college, but you can’t take away years of training in aesthetics, and when it comes to form versus function, anything that doesn’t tick both boxes doesn’t get my vote. I didn’t own a sex toy until about a year and a half ago, but it didn’t take me any time at all to develop a penchant for the high-end ones.

All of which is a long way of saying that I really love my new Lelo Ella, which I have been lusting after since I first saw it. It is a sleek and tactile double ended silicone dildo: one end straight and pointy and one with a blunt, slanted end. It’s not very big – this is not a toy to try if you have a gaping hole to fill – but it’s big enough to feel, and smooth and narrow enough to insert easily, and both ends found my sensitive bits with unerring accuracy. It doesn’t vibrate or do anything fancy, but it works beautifully with my Lily when I fancy a bit of buzz, which is by no means all the time. I like the buzziness of vibrators, but I’m wary of them too, and am instinctively drawn more to dildos. If I’m using one on my own then I know what I’m doing, and if it’s being used on me in conjunction with something else then it’s perfect when I want something inside me but don’t need the distraction of having to wriggle around making sure the buzz is hitting the right spot.

Like all things Lelo, the Ella comes with a year’s warranty and a little satin carrying pouch, and like all things Lelo that I have tried out, it gives great orgasm – and it’s just a gorgeous object (mine is black, to match my Lily). I preferred the pointy end (I like a bit of thrust with my penetration) rather than the one intended for the g-spot, though I had fun experimenting with both, and look forward to trying it out with the help of a tongue.