nourishing obscurity

A behavioural scientist would have a field day where I work, especially if studying women. The reason I concentrate on women is that they’re a richer study than men – if any of you ladies wish to blog about men, feel free and I’ll mosey on over and have a look.

Now, how to run this – best to worst, worst to best? Think I’ll go best to worst.

The pinnacle

Unknown woman in trenchcoat

She was of indeterminate age, no younger than 30, nor older than 50, she was neither particularly tall nor short, she didn’t speak with a plum in her mouth, nor was she harshly spoken, she did not wear highly expensive gear nor was she ornate.  I didn’t notice her shape all that much, nor did I notice the shape of her face.  She wasn’t particularly made up, nor was she bejewelled.

And yet the moment she walked in, in that simple trenchcoat, with that translucent scarf, the quiet way she moved about and the way some women have when they rest their eyes on you and speak – the sun came out and you bathed in it.  I tend to say stupid things in these situations and so I mumbled something along the lines of, “Forgive me if this is out of order – I’ve no right – but when you walked in just now, I thought to myself – they threw away the mould.”

I hadn’t intended for her to go bright red and buy another three items – it was sincerely meant – and when she said it had set her up for the day, I was thinking that that’s what she had done for me.

Nice ladies

Into this happy category I’d put any woman I associate with – by definition, she’s sheer class. There it is.

There were so many in this category today too but  two were of note – well four really – a German, an American, a Romanian and a Hungarian.  The Hungarian taught me [sorry to leave the accent marks out] “jo reggelt” [good morning] and “visz lat” [goodbye].   The Romanian with the unnerving way of looking into a person’s eyes, whilst a smile played on her lips, taught me “buna dimineata” [good morning] and “la revedere” [good bye].

Now, I had no idea Romanian was a Latin language with similarities to Italian.  I always thought it was Cyrillic and yet it sure seems to have similarities to Italian.

And I wish they wouldn’t open and close the eyelids that way.

The complete miss

She was 5, going on 6 and she came in to check out the reading books.  At one point she asked, “Is this one for babies?”

I said, “Well only you can answer that.  If it’s too easy for you, it’s for babies.  If it’s too hard, it’s not.”

She thought about that and decided, “It’s for babies.”  She came up with two books and bought them, I put a bag near them while her aunt was searching around for whatever and she then said, with a deeply serious expression: “You should put those books in the bag now.”

Naturally I obeyed.  As a reward, she sang me the first stanza of “Jesus loves the little children …”

The nice but frustrating lady

If there’s one thing which does frustrate me, it’s when they come up, with the goods in hand to buy, knowing precisely what they cost and then, when it’s all rung up, only then decide to start searching around for the money.  They rummage in one compartment, then the other, zip that one up, unzip another, say, “Ah, there’s no money in there,” then unclip a third and meanwhile I’m just gazing at all this unfolding, giving a quick, apologetic smile to the lady next in the queue who, when her turn comes, does exactly the same thing.

I asked the third in the queue, “Why do women do this?  Why don’t they have the change ready?”

She replied [and this is verbatim because I wrote it down on a slip of paper straight afterwards]: “Well, you don’t keep it all in one place, do you?  Not when you come to town.”

I had no reply to that “logic” but did mention it to the boss [a lady] later.  She looked at me and said that that was right.  I looked at the boss and mentioned that we might well be two different species.

The brusque Anglo-Saxon

This type gets up my nose.  She walks in, in the most sexless manner, drak hair uncared for and hanging straight from the side of her head, absolutely full of herself, with zero dress sense and with this attitude where she wants to draw herself to her full height, gaze on the low-life at the counter, desperate to say, “Well, you could hurry yourself up a bit, couldn’t you?” and when you say, “Just these, yes?” meaning the items she’s buying, while still looking at others, she gives you a look and says, “Well I wouldn’t have put them on the counter unless I was buying them, would I?”

Those who know this blog will know what it takes, in those situations, not to start on her but of course, we can’t do that, can we, so she gets the frozen smile instead.  As she walks out the door, I murmur, “Have a good day – die soon.”  I don’t really.

I really want to shake her and say, “Lady, you have absolutely nothing going for you whatever – wherever could you possibly have got that air of superiority from?  And why is your type always built like the proverbial brick …?”

To which she could easily reply, “Anne Robinson’s not,”  which would be a fair riposte.

The foolish wife

This one was more in the way of a conversation today with my colleague, a lady in the “above average” category, who remarked on a woman wearing a pleated skirt in vivid red and mauve, which flew outwards a la Happy Days, as she moved.  She was completely the wrong age, the wrong body shape, the wrong everything.  “Why didn’t her husband,” asked the quietly spoken Sharon, “tell her it looked awful before she came out?”

“Well he couldn’t, could he?” said I.

“Why not?”

“Well, he’s been trained.  If he says it’s awful, then he has to argue for half an hour, she goes sullen for the rest of the day and reminds him of it for days, plus he’ll have to go with her next week and buy another one to replace it.  Better just to say it looks lovely.”

Sharon’s a good sport and grinned at that.  “So, he says it looks good just to save himself money?”

“W-e-e-l-l, yes.  A bit.  That and seeking the quiet life.”

“Is that why you’re not married anymore?”

My turn to laugh.

The idiot

Now, we didn’t have any of these today, so I’ve had to revert to the media once I got home.  Lo and behold, here’s a true idiot:

There are women men just see as idiots, such as Polly Toynbee but they’re not really people one thinks about all that much.  They make up the rich pageant of life and that’s that.

The women men dislike

She’s not particularly unintelligent, she’s not as ugly as sin, she’s not obnoxious, she doesn’t antagonize in any profound way [see next section] but somehow, mean just don’t like her.  Caroline Flint or Carly Fiorina fall into that category and the reaction of men is just to block them whenever possible, to fail to facilitate their upwards march.

No point dwelling on that type.

Low “women”

There is a type though, such as Natasha Giggs, Germaine Greer or Baroness Ashton, who is so obnoxious, a man wants to get out the exterminator spray straight away and give her a burst.  When one of these actually speaks, a human being tends to gag.  Here is an example of that:

The term “woman” can only be very loosely applied to HH.  “Harpy” would seem more appropriate.  Why on earth Labour would have her in the party at all, let alone trashing the front bench, is beyond me.  Then again, I’m just a mere man.

Filed under: Society & human issues