Crush of the now: Paddy carpenter

The area I work in used to be cut off from the main room by a wall of ceiling-height windows. But since the HVAC in this place is such a bloody farce, it was almost unendurable here until they had the windows cut down. So now I look out through six feet of space above a ridiculous two feet of glass.

There's another similar room off the main area and they want to cut the glass down there as well. Today they brought by a couple of workers to show them the result they were looking for. One--stocky bloke with a ruff of white hair and a salt-and-pepper moustache--immediately piqued my interest. Then he opened his mouth. He had an intriguing accent that I had trouble making out at first; it sounded like he was hardly moving his jaw--you know, the way some Brits and Irishmen talk. And it turned out he was Irish--so Irish he made reference to Guinness as a work aid and said "Och!"

Unfortunately, they were talking just out of my range of sight, so I sat here on tenterhooks waiting for the moment when they would walk away and I'd catch another glimpse. Now to find excuses to saunter past the other row of windows! Coimhéad, a Pháidí, táim ag teacht chugat!

Special every week

Tonight monshu didn't even feel like heating up the leftovers from yesterday's dinner so he took me out to Massouleh. This week's special was "anarbeej". Anār (انار) I recognise as the word for "pomegranate", but bīj (بيج) said nothing to me, so I asked. The proprietor explained that it was a word used "in the north" and meant something like a stew flavoured with herbs. So we got a serving of that and one of ghormeh sabzi and split them evenly. Thumbs up for the anarbeej: The sauces was reminiscent of fessenjan sauce, but the meatballs were flavourful enough to stand on their own.

We finished off with hot tea and baghlava, and while the Old Man hit the head, I paged through a pictorial volume that the owner's wife had recently brought back from Iran. The men were all pictured wearing black skullcaps much like the ones monshu had recently taken to wearing. I asked your man about these, too, and he explained that they were made of wool. "What are they called?" "There's no name for them." What he meant was that they were so ubiquitous in the region that people there simply called them "hats"; those from elsewhere called them "Tâleshi hats".

Now since Masouleh is in Gilan Province (استان گیلان), I had always assumed the local language was Gilaki. But it turns out it's actually Tâleshi (تالشی) or, to use a name I'm more familiar with, Talysh. If you follow that link, you'll find a fairly decent Wikipedia article on it. It's actually more divergent from Standard Persian than I realised. Not only are most of the inflections rather different, but modifiers generally precede their heads (e.g. ɣochaɣ-a gülla "little bullet" vs. SP golulah-e kuchak) and, like the Kurdish languages spoken nearby, it's also split-ergative.

Getting ready to go, monshu took an inordinate amount of time to put his scarf back on. As we walked back, he was a little stumbly, but I ascribed that to the presence of a shitpile of snow on the streets. It was only when I saw him stumbled walking into the bathroom at home that I realised how tipsy he was. I think it was the Satan's Whiskers that did it. (Note to self: The classic 1920s cocktails are lethal.) In any case, it was a novel experience for me, since his much greater tolerance means that by the time he's more than buzzed, I'm too hammered to even notice.

WotD: frostbite

1. die Erfrierung
2. de bevriezing
3. el congelamiento
4. la congelació
5. la gelure
6. yr ewinrhew
7. an dó seaca
8. 동상 (凍傷)
9. 凍傷 dòngshāng