‘Kenanga Wholesale City’

“Let’s go,” she said, “To Kenanga Wholesale City.”

The words ‘oh, yes. Let’s do that’ were just about to form in my mind when she added, “To look for baby clothes.”

You cannot imagine the number of exclamation marks that appeared, unbidden, in my head at that precise point.

Oh, well, ours is not to reason why...

It turns out that this Kenanga Wholesale City is a large block of several (17?) floors set in the middle of a district in which, except for a few places like Banks and a couple of Mini-Supermarkets, there exists only wholesale fashion establishments.

We parked on the tenth floor and then waited patiently in the crowd for the lift. Ultimately we arrived at the ‘Ground Floor’ with the intention of working our way up through the floors until we arrived at the car parking level (8) from whence we should get the lift up to our car.

Then one person in our party noticed that there was a ‘Lower Ground Floor’.

Joy of joys. Another floor.

At this point I went to the ‘Old Town White Coffee’ restaurant to have a snack and let them rummage around amongst all the clothes.

(I do NOT recommend this particular restaurant. Other ‘Old Towns’ may be fine but THIS one...)

This massive edifice exists solely for the purpose of selling clothes at low prices. It is, in fact, cheap. The quality is quite good since they supply everyone else in the Country.

It was, as you might expect, packed.

There were several other men looking bored and lots of young ladies in small packs roaming around; some looked excited and others looked appropriately ‘casual’ as befits the teenage psyche.

The fashions sported by these young ladies—and some not quite so young, were remarkable. There is a section of the female community here that likes to wear very short skirts or shorts. They leave the legs naked from the (cropped) pubic hair downwards until you get to heavy shoes, often black, that makes them look like two sink plungers walking around.

Then there is the make-up.

The idea for make-up is that the eyes and lips are slightly darkened to indicate a degree of sexual arousal. This is intended to turn men on and make them attracted to the female sporting this make-up. It mimics the rush of blood to the eyelids and lips during foreplay.

I don’t think these youngsters have quite grasped this concept. ‘Raccoon’ or ‘Panda’ is going overboard; most of them look too much like the ‘Lone Ranger’ to be alluring in any way.

Oh, well, perhaps if I were a teenager I might have a different perspective on it.

At last the ladies in the contingent scrutinising the wares for sale completed their self-imposed task and we headed back to the car.

Then we did battle with the traffic. Everybody else, it seems, was leaving at the same time. The long, steep, circular ramp down from the tenth floor took an eternity to negotiate. Fortunately there was a gang of lads at the exit who were controlling traffic so joining the queue up to the main road was a shade easier than expected.

At this point I heard a voice in the back say, “Well, we shall have to come back tomorrow...”

My funeral will be held at...