The Changing Face of the Chinese Woman.

This is what Chinese women used to look like...

This is what they look like now...

This is how they used to beat the bad guys...

This is the modern method...

And this is how they're trained from an early age to hold a captive male with an inscrutable gaze...

Here's one such captivated male longing for the good old days when he was free to shoot some baskets with the lads...

And this is the unspeakable fate that awaits any male who declines to be captivated...

What a pity it is that I have no pictures of any of the three Chinese women I know personally. Still, they all look the same so what the hell. And just to prove what an idiotic statement that is, here are two more Chinese women with whom I am not personally acquainted...

A Darker Take.

When my daughter was a little girl she had an album of nursery rhymes which we listened to and accompanied together. It included a jolly, up tempo version of Over the Hills and Far Away. It seemed to be all about skipping across green meadows on the way to some non-hazardous adventure.

This version is a little different and I found it surprisingly moving. It reminded me of something I’ve often pondered – that sending people to war in any circumstance other than strictly defensive is slightly less onerous if the person doing the sending is at least in the front line with the rest of the canon fodder.

A Divided Mind.

I saw a dog in Ashbourne today which triggered a conversation.

‘Oh, look at that dog. Isn’t he cute?’

‘Cuteness is subjective. It’s in the mind – your mind.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The dog is a puppy, and so you associate it with juvenile innocence. It’s also fat and furry and probably triggers a subconscious memory of some cuddly toy you had as a child. Ergo, it evokes your distant perception of childhood naiveté when your world was protected, your adventures non-hazardous, and your responsibilities still an unseen cloud below the far horizon. So you see it as cute.’

‘You’re boring.’

‘Analytical.’

‘That’s what I said.’

Close Encounters of the Female Kind.

It was that sort of day in Ashbourne. Sophie at the library was the first. I hadn’t seen her for a couple of years, but remembered the conversation I’d had with her.

‘It’s Sophie, isn’t it?’ I asked.

‘It is, yes,’ she replied with a voice teetering on the edge of wonderment.

‘And how’s your singing these days?’ (She’s a folk singer who tours the local circuit.)

‘Oh, you remember me! That’s really nice. Thank you ever so much.’

Now, call me naïve if you like, but I would have thought that remembering a pretty English rose, who happens to be a folk singer and has a lovely personality to boot, would be the easiest thing in the world to remember. But I’ll take the plaudits if you insist.

So then she started telling me about having taken an intense course in teaching English as a foreign language, and how she’s planning to go to Italy next month to start work.

‘Watch those Italian boys,’ I warned. ‘I’ve heard they’re not as respectful to young women as they ought to be.’

‘Somebody else told me that,’ she replied with a subtle hint of ruefulness in her tone that was distinct nevertheless. ‘But I went there for a month recently and nothing like that happened. I’d just split up with my boyfriend, so I was a bit disappointed.’

Well, what does a gentleman say to that? He changes the subject and allows Sophie to talk a little longer, and then says ‘Have to go. I have a time limit on the car.’ It wiled away a pleasant fifteen minutes or so, and I learned that she wants to meet somebody called Federico.

*  *  *

Next up was Marilyn who works in the pet shop where I get my bird food, and who was a bit disappointed that the new knee she’s had fitted is still giving her a lot of pain. I always have time for Marilyn; she’s a good sort with good values and life hasn’t been kind to her at all. We talked about her daughter’s funeral which took place last week, and that’s only a small part of the picture.

*  *  *

And then it was the turn of Natalie from Nice. She lives in the village and I bumped into her outside Sainsbury’s. We talked at length about France, the French, Frenchness, and my moment of glory when I gave a French truck driver directions in French! (But that was a long time ago and I’ve forgotten it all now.) She also told me she’s half Italian, which explained why I always thought she looked more Italian than French, although I didn’t say so. But then she started talking to me in French, so I made a polite but hurried exit in the style of a true English gentleman.

*  *  *

So then, when I was walking back to the car, a little girl came rushing up to me.

‘Look at my shopping,’ she cried triumphantly, holding aloft a Sainsbury’s carrier bag.

‘Is it heavy?’

‘No.’

‘Good.’

*  *  *

And now for the sad bit. Did I get to pay my cheque in at Coco’s window? Nope. Somebody else called me first. Sometimes life and luck just aren’t on your side.

Mother Russia and her Daughters.

When I was a lad, Russian women had a reputation. We believed they were all built like sumo wrestlers, and were so hirsute that they must have been at least partially descended from Yetis. The fact that they always won the women’s shot putt at the Olympics just about confirmed it.

But here we are in the 21^st century discovering that it was all dastardly western propaganda. Russian women are actually as pretty as everybody else’s women, and when they speak English they do so with a delightfully seductive accent.

Next point:

Russians are capable of writing and performing music like this:

 

That being the case, what the hell are they doing invading Ukraine and supporting tyrants and crooks here, there and everywhere?

So come on, Russia. Fire the boss and give the job to a woman high jumper, then we can all be friends.

Sparing Coco the Joke-o

I have a cheque for £55 to pay in the next time I go to Ashbourne. It’s a little royalty payment for a couple of pictures I took centuries ago. It isn’t the money that’s important, though, it’s the fact that I might get to pay it in at Coco’s window.

I’ve thought of asking her to marry me, you know. I have – on the understanding that she won’t have too long to wait, and then she can inherit all my debts. So will I? No, of course I won’t. I’m far too much the English gentleman to presume upon a Chinese lady’s sense of humour. Besides, she just might agree, and the terror consequent upon that eventuality would surely send me to the next world long before the event came to fruition.

The Price of Low Awareness.

A Birmingham woman was sentenced to two weeks in prison today for breaching an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. She was heard shouting and screaming while having sex at 5 o’clock in the morning, thereby waking the neighbours – and not for the first time, it seems.

The BBC News report made a point of mentioning that her boyfriend’s name was Wayne. I wonder why.

A Weather Note.

The gale force wind and rain arrived dead on cue. ‘7pm to around midnight,’ said the weather forecast, and the show started at just about 7pm. Whether the duration proves to be accurate remains to be seen (or rather heard.)

Rain clattering against the window glass and wind roaring in the chimney disturb me a little, but not quite as much as having to don an extra layer of woolly clothing because the house is draughty and consequently rather colder than it ought to be in June.

And I’m especially concerned about the bats. I don’t see how they can possibly have obtained any breakfast this evening, but maybe they’ll get an early lunch if the weather forecast is right for a change. Spring is supposed to be resuming its fitful course on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, I seem to suffering from low blood sugar. I do occasionally. It's an unpleasant sensation which evokes that famous line:

'It's all up for me and I don't wanna weigh ya down, Jake. You and the boys leave me here and make your getaway while I hold 'em off.'

Hero at last.

Gender Musing.

I was sitting on a train this afternoon when a person approached and sat in the seat on the other side of the aisle. I was immediately moved to lean across and ask:

‘Excuse me. Don’t think me impertinent since I’m merely possessed of a natural and not unhealthy curiosity, but are you a man or a woman?’

Well, one doesn’t, does one? However natural and not unhealthy one's curiosity might be, one would expect the reply to be something along the lines of ‘It sounds pretty impertinent to me. Mind your own business.’ And even then, only if the individual was given to an unusual degree of politeness.

So I didn’t ask; I observed.

The hair provided no clue, being collar length and pulled back into a pony tail. The hands could have been a small man’s or a large woman’s, so no help there. The thighs had more of a masculine shape and heaviness about them, but by the same token there was no evidence of beard growth. I tried to ascertain the nature of the book that he or she was reading, but I wasn’t close enough. I could see that it was an unusually heavy book, but concluded that the heaviness of a book offers no certain indication of the gender of its reader. His or her jacket precluded any evidence being gleaned from a hint or otherwise of thoracic appendages, and there was nothing else to see. Eventually I decided that the energy I sensed was masculine, and left it at that.

I spent the remainder of the trip watching the increasing density of raindrops building up on the carriage window as the train sped west.

An Individual in the Hive.

I just watched a YouTube video which included a lot of shots of what you might term ‘tribal togetherness’ in one form or another. Most of it took the form of ritual dancing, but the central thread seemed to amount to various expressions of communal veneration. It made me uneasy and I’m struggling to know why it should.

The fact is, one of my favourite suspicions is that all human consciousness is connected – that every individual’s consciousness is actually a fragment of the Universal Consciousness. In that case, I should find the sight of a group of people engaged in communal ritual uplifting, since it can be seen as expressing one of my favourite suspicions. But I don’t. What I see is the hive mentality at work – people acting in unison towards a common end without giving the value and rightness of that end unconditioned and unbiased consideration. And isn’t the hive mentality also the root of white supremacism, unshakeable faith in dogmatic Communism, and the rise of Nazism? It seems to demean the individual, making us all mere workers for a cause dictated by somebody else’s will.

And yet this raises a difficulty of its own, since I also suspect that the cult of the individual is simply an expression of ego, and that ego is the principal barrier to enlightenment. And ego is also the rock on which despots found their unimpeachable status.

So it all comes down to whether individuality is a good thing or not. The answer isn’t as simple as it might seem, and maybe there isn’t an answer. Maybe I’m asking the wrong question.

OK, that wasn’t easy, so I think I’ve earned another scotch and maybe even another piece of toast. And just to engage further with the YouTube theme, I recently left a slightly disparaging comment about Jimmi Hendrix and got hailed on with bananas. Hardly surprising, really. I chose magnanimity and admitted I was out of order, because I was.

This is the first post in June and the Shire is still shivering under polar winds. I was out for a mere fifteen minutes this evening and my fingers were getting numb.