Nudity, Rubens and Corporate Wiles.

Today saw one of those occasions when getting out of bed becomes an exercise in mind over matter.

In my case it is often more likely that the mind doesn’t matter.

However, needs must.

We had a meeting.

Meetings are deplorable things. People sit around and talk to other people about things that other people only have the vaguest notion of understanding; many words are spoken, little is said; the whole things culminates in puzzlement, usually on my part, because I have no really clear idea of what happened or what I am supposed to do.

Following the meeting there are several days in private chat with others who were at the meeting trying to discover if there are any actions to be taken as a result of decisions made by other people in areas of expertise where they, invariably, are inexpert.

It was with some relief that I discover that this particular meeting was more of a ‘briefing’. Somebody, in this case a charming little lady speaking excellent English, told everyone there in clear and simple terms (ideal for me!) what to do, how to do it and when to do it. The whole thing was carried out efficiently and with great composure; it lasted just an hour. Precisely. Almost, it could be said, to the second.

It was carried out in a local centre of learning. A highly respected, and respectable, institute of higher education.

I was impressed.

Afterwards I decided that I was hungry, my inner man required immediate replenishment.

There is an excuse... sorry—reason, for this. One has a mild form of diabetes. Not eating for a while brings on a sugar deficiency that causes trembling and much weakness.

It is necessary to eat little and often. Well, OK, perhaps not quite so little. My inner man is quite a large chap as denoted by the size of the ‘outer man’!

In the next block from where the briefing was held there is a refectory. There does seem to be a number of places on the campus where it is possible to obtain sustenance but the refectory beckoned.

A large juicy chicken drumstick in a slightly spicy batter, some long beans, white rice and a fried egg—nicely runny plus a large cup of tea for RM7.50 (£1.52 or US$2.37) seemed a fair purchase.

It was. Delicious. The chicken was suitably juicy and tasted like chicken should. Unlike other fried chicken products from local franchises that taste like... well... pieces of carpet*. The lovely runny egg ran into the rice invitingly and stuck to the pieces of long beans.

So good.

However.

(A ‘however’ is like a posh ‘but’. There is, as you may have noticed, invariably a ‘but’.)

When I looked up from my repast there was a realisation that I had rarely seen such nakedness since visiting a London strip show in 1962.

Is there no dress code for Universities now?

Well, of course, it is warm here. It is, as a matter of known fact, on the high side of warm on oft occasion so there is a recognition that skimpy clothing might be the order of the day.

On the beach.

But in a University refectory?

Quite distracting for a respectable elderly gentleman such as I!

How times change. Fifty years ago during my youthful hey-day, my female colleagues would dress, albeit in a milder climate, in a more chaste fashion. If it was suggested that they may like to show more ‘skin’ they would be shocked—horrified, perhaps. Well, most of them.

These girls, because most of them were late teens and very early twenties, showed no coyness in their displays at all; it seemed to be all perfectly normal.

And so fashions shift.

Rubens’ young ladies reclining gracefully in their nudity were, no doubt, sexy in their day and are still considered so by a few but the majority would now regard them as being ‘chubby’, perhaps.

A friend of mine just posted some fashion photographs of leg wear. The legs were inordinately thin—almost to the point of emaciation.

Presumably that is now the new ‘sexy’.

Not for me. I lean more towards the Rubens ideal.

'Saturn' - Rubens

We change. Tastes change. Perhaps they are changed for us. Perhaps it is the media and advertising that decides what we should, and should not like or enjoy.

We are toys, guinea pigs, for the corporations who pour money into achieving ways of inducing us into our purchases; they make us see things, feel things, their way.

They get together and discuss how best they can induce us to part with our hard-earned cash.

They have meetings.

I dislike meetings. Have I ever told you that I try to avoid meetings?

*I should like to point out that the expression used here is only a premise it is not something that has been achieved by practical experimentation. At no stage, even in extremis of hunger, have I ever tasted carpet!