A BEAUTIFUL POTATO!

A woman of my age, but we'll assert that she is twelve years younger, walked me home tonight. She and myself are both older than Char, who's birthday it was today. Which neither of us found out about until after twelve o'clock, because she is an insomniac, and I had a nap till quarter past, when I went out for a last smoke at the neighboring public house with a pipe loaded up with Old Gowrie.

Yes, tonight was the normal evening for drinkies with the bookseller, but he's in Upstate New York for several days, squiring his mother around and visiting all the cousins.
However I did smoke "the pipe for watching rats in Spofford Alley".
I always do so Tuesday evening. It gets used twice a week.

Char is Persian, and very intelligent, but he does have a German tendency to oversimplify complex subjects. Which means that convincing him that English is NOT descended from ancient Indo-Iranian (almost the same as modern Farsi in his mind, except the Arabic rape of Iran changed things) is an uphill battle. He is not sure how Dutch (one of my native tongues) fits into his grand scheme of things, and he believes that Shakespeare wrote "Old English". Older than which is Crypto-Persian. Or Medish.

I mentioned Beowulf as an example of 'Old' English.
He may be in for quite a surprise.


Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.

Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas.

Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad, weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning.

And so forth.

It's a bit unintelligible.


Imagine a language that sounds like a drunkard upchucking a soda water siphon. And no, Dutch does NOT sound like that, at all. We are not even close to 'spear-armed Danes'. Something different.
And much, much better.

[Aeþelingas: Atheling. In Modern Dutch that would be 'Edeling', a well-born person. In Anglo-Saxon it meant someone of noble descent, eligible for kingship. And being the king in that day and age meant that you lived in better more high quality mud and grime, with less cold drafts that turned your arthritis deadly. You might die in your early fifties, instead of late thirties. Although the amount of salt pork and pickled deer meat you could afford with your stale bread and warm beer probably gave you high blood pressure, and constipated you even more than the peons. Scurvy, of course, was a constant. If you didn't die of the measles in your teens, because vaccination had not been invented yet. ]


While in discussion with the allegedly twelve-year younger woman and her dog I mentioned the flock of pigeons I had seen earlier, struggling to eat a jin deui (煎堆). Which is delicious, but if you have no teeth, and a beak instead, problematic. It consists of glutinous rice dough deep fried and covered with sesame seeds, a sweet paste inside.
Each pigeon would peck at it, and because it is so tacky and almost rubbery, accidentally fling it upwards when trying to withdraw. It took half an hour more or less for a hundred plus hungry birds to devour it. And during that time it was more air-borne than many of the diners.

The twelve year difference is because she has the same animal.
She was born in the year of the pig.
That's why.


When heading back to our respective abodes -- slowly, because her dog has very short legs -- we talked about engraving, print colourization, and lithography. Concerning which both of us know a fair amount. What I did not mention was the lovely young couple I had seen on the bus, Cantonese American and probably high schoolers. And that was actually something that made a wondrous impression on me today. The male person was shy and scholarly, though well built. The female person had a face which immediately drew my gaze (too often averted, because I am not a skeevy pervert), and had a very impressive cleavage. Which I did not notice until she stood right in front of me. A surprising thing considering that while sleek to the edge of plump, she was slim, not fat. Creamy fruit.

But in all honesty, what I noticed first was the beautiful face and hands.

No, I don't think they were passionately in love. More like a calm rational and extremely intense mutual like. And comfortable with proximity and physical affection. Hand holding, and occasional nose rubbies.


"I'm not tired, I am so out of shape!"


"If you're out of shape, what about me? I am a potato!"


My dear, you are a lovely tuber. And the two of you are darling. And yes, you do have a tum-tum, which is why it's a good thing you are wearing a black tee-shirt, but heavens. Just heavens.

They spoke in well-constructed complete sentences, and were adorable.

Attractive intelligent lovable teenagers.

Yummy. Like jin deui.




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