As subtle as a gust of wind in a cloud

A curious thought struck me on the bus home the other day.

I was first led to think about this when I was looking at a Monty's restaurant. When you read what I write you'll wonder why...if you're still interested how I got from Monty's to this topic, I've written an explanation below.

Anyway..

Men have often felt thoroughly exasperated by the lack of obviousness demonstrated by the female gender when it comes to expressing emotional interest. Rather than come right out and tell the apple of their eye they're interested in pursuing their relationship further from the boundaries of friendship, they drop coy hints here and there, dropping tell tale comments and being as subtle as physically possible, not realising that their message isn't quite getting through to the male and simply entangling his already huge mass of confusion in regard to this woman ('does she actually like me? Or is she just being friendly? Am I going to be slapped if I make a move? She touched my arm. What does that mean?? Oooh she smiled...but then she smiled at him...)And today I think I've worked out why. During history (and I'm thinking mainly of the Victorian era...and generally any decade in which fans, strict clothing guidelines and society rules were followed), men and women communicated either via colleagues or through the simplest gestures over the dinning table, during the entertainment in the evening etc. I remember watching a program in which a group of five men and five women 'went back in time' to pick up a possible future spouse, but through the means of Victorian flirting. This meant men had to pick their mannerisms and words carefully so as not to offend the women and the woman looking after them and, what's most interesting, the women had to learn very specific movements to show their love interest....their interest...in love.I found it fascinating that the women had to learn how to move their fans in a certain way or place their hands on their lap in a particular movement to send across the correct message. Any other means of communication was considered inappropriate. The slightly tilt of a fan could send across a terribly incorrect message to the wrong man.
This is why I believe most women don't come straight out and tell their love interest that they are in fact interested. I believe that due to the centuries of being taught to be discreet and send signals across a room to an admirer has moved down through the years, despite the need to be discreet becoming more and more unnecessary. Which is why many women become extremely frustrated when their interest doesn't seem to quite catch on to the 'glance across the room and smile' image or when the wrong man catches the wrong signal. Which makes life extremely tough for both genders considering women seem to have developed an amazing talent for mixing the signals 'I like you as a friend' with 'I REALLY like you'.

I could of course be completely and utterly wrong about the whole thing, and talking through a dazzled view of things. But it's something interesting to think about.
Subtle flirting has been passed down through centuries...it's not our fault ....

Anyway, my explanation for the connection of Monty's restaurant to the above topic.
On the bus, I passed a Monty's and thought isn't it peculiar how there are two Monty's so close together in Ealing. I then had an image of two Indian men discussing the situation of having two Monty's based so close. To enable this, my brain went into automatic 'translation' mode and tried to assist me in imagining the whole conversation in their native language. Not knowing how to speak the language, my mind then pulled me back to my experiences of watching Indian films with my parents as a child and remembering how they sounded, which then led to me wondering, does the dialect still sound the way I heard it back then or did it change the same way the English language then (my subconscious automatically announcing that of course it changed)....which led me to wonder how the English language has changed so much, which would lead body language to change too? Which reminded me of the Victorian program I mentioned above......and...so forth.

My mind works in some very strange ways....it can sometimes be extremely entertaining.