Cook you a steak and do what job?

You know what really grinds my gears? Well, initially it's people who use the phrase "You know what really grinds my gears?" and don't expect me to think of them as Peter Griffin from that moment on. But let's leave that to one side for the time being...

Man-Babies are one things that grind my gears - Now this would be such an easy thing to do the day after International Women's Day... And obviously, that's why I'm doing it. (Did you know, IWD was started back in 1909 by the Socialist Party of America - One wonders if it would be as big a global celebration if it was started by the National Socialist Party of Germany in the late 1930s - But I digress)

Wait, where were we?

Ah yes, Man-Babies.  You know what a man-baby is don't you? It's a man, who acts, out of his own volition, like a whining opinionated baby - Which is pretty much all men (Am I Rite Ladies? High-five! - Wooo! - Don't leave me hanging... OK [Looks at palm of my hand][sees unusually crusty peeling stain][understands completely]) 

Now I don't mean the men who employ the paid services of professional ladies who look after them whilst they toddle around wearing nappies and rattling their... Um... 'rattles' in people's faces and wearing comfortable bootees and happily having their nappies changed and suchlike.  Each to their own I say where sexual perversion's concerned - Especially in society's upper echelons, what-what?

And I don't mean card-carrying misogynists - They're a whole different breed entirely and we've talked about them before.

I mean the ones who genuinely believe that the only important things are things that apply directly to them and other men, who they claim some kind of shaky brotherhood with - like the urgent, Gods-given need for Government-sponsored erectile dysfunction medicine and free at the point of delivery hair replacement therapy, I mean the lightbulb shaped headed ones wearing last season's football shirts who bleated all over social media yesterday "When's International Men's Day?" - The same ones who went oddly quiet when I (and several other people - I'm not claiming any singular Godhood here) replied, "It's the 19th November you massive Twonk, the day before Universal Children's Day. If you're going to cry like a bitch about some perceived slight against your gender, at least have the common decency to get your facts straight."

And don't think I'm some kind of white-knight feminist defender myself either. I'm really not... If you're female and wearing a low-cut top (for whatever reason) I will look at your cleavage and/or boobs - You can check with Mrs Dandy - we can't go anywhere without her tutting, shaking her head and having to repeat herself at least a dozen times. I won't stand in front of you with my coat open shielding you from the ogling stares of other neanderthal men. I'm a firm believer that boobs are great, and if you want to have a proportion of yours on show - You should feel completely free to do so - But you're gonna get looks from the weak willed.

But what really gets me, specifically, every bloody year hasn't really even started yet.  Next week, Facebook & Twitter will be full of it.  On Monday it'll be wall-to-wall schoolboy sniggering for the preamble. On Tuesday it'll be "when I get home tonight from a hard day at the coalface/office/clinic, guess what I'm getting?!?!!?'

You've worked it out right?

March 14th? a month after Valentines Day?

Well, it's another one of those gender specific made-up strictly for profit holidays. Whereas Valentine's Day is a holiday for women, with non-generic petrol station flowers, high cocoa content chocolates, and things wrapped in red and pink reflective paper. Steak and a Blowjob Day (for it is that of which I am speaking) is for men... because men like red meat and getting their dicks wet whilst their eyes roll back into their heads (and if that doesn't happen, someone's doing something wrong).

I don't get why you need to announce it to your 63 Facebook friends (half of which are probably friends with your significant other too who will laugh when she post "Not bloody likely Sunshine, you can spend 30 seconds on Pornhub once the kids have gone to bed like you do every Saturday night instead of playing FIFA.") 

And it's so boringly contrived and binary - I mean, I love chocolate - And Mrs Dandy gets excited by the thought of a decent mouthful of steak (well, she did before she decide to go pescatarian - feel free to insert your own jokes there.) 

But men... (Lower-case used intentionally) Just like there's no specific date for you to tell your partner that you love them or to buy them flowers, as long as you're prepared for every one of her female friends to ask her what you've done. And there's no date when it's more or less right to buy decent chocolate for your partner or even yourself. There's no specific day when you can't buy and cook a nice, thick steak, or go to a nice restaurant and order steak if you you don't 'do' washing up, because you're too manly. And, believe it or not if you have a decent cleanliness routine, it's not out of the realms of possibility that a lady that you personally quite like will, without any kind of struggle or Gaffer Tape being involved, put your love-python in where her shouting at you usually comes out of.

Providing you're both equally up for it that is... And that you've eaten quite a lot of pineapple beforehand.  Enjoy.

Go Dandy, it's your Birthday...

Actually, it's not my Birthday... Not until tomorrow at least... I've already had two cheery 'Happy Birthday's though, from slightly confused work-colleagues - So that was nice.

As I got all Biblical on Wednesday - Let's start with a bit of Psalm 90:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten;
and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,
yet is their strength labor and sorrow;
for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Which sombre dirge, by anyone's reckoning means that, as I'm a child of the sixties, I'm over half way through already.  I'm speeding downhill on the badly maintained pushbike of my own maturity.  The brakes have been cut by my children and I'm going to freewheel through some little villages called Upper Adulthood, Senility and Incontinence On Sea any time now.

Well, at least I've got the longer summers brought on by Global Warming to look forward to.

So, what do I want for my Birthday?  (Apologies if you've already bought me something, it probably won't be anything off this list - But not to worry, I'm notoriously easy to please.)

1. Anything with the word 'Marvel' secreted somewhere about it.  I'm a sucker for fictional spandex - In fact both of Dandy Towers' reading rooms have weighty tomes filled with the work of Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and and Jack Kirby (Amongst others)
2. Someone who wants to rebuild the clutch on a 1984 Honda VF1100 for free.
3. A belt, because I'm losing weight and my trousers keep falling down. 
4. A brown leather overcoat with a surplus of unnecessary brassware and bucklery.
5. A top hat, as above
6. A more powerful, less noisy PC - I mean, honestly the one I've got sounds like an asthmatic Harrier Jump-Jet trying to take off from an airfield made of toffee and the graphics can be a bit like a Janet & John flick-book in a strong wind.
7. An ironic T-Shirt, seriously, anything will do... A bit of 70's nostalgia, something from pretty much any sci-fi film or TV show that there's ever been - I'm easy (Size: XXL)
8. Food - Any kind
9. Alcohol - Any kind
10. Vouchers for cool stuff, even fictitious stuff - Or those acceptable anywhere ones that have a picture of the Queen on, where she's sat next to a random two digit number.
11. An Iron Man suit - One of the modern ones, not from when he looked like a drunk with a bucket on his head - I've got that costume already according to some non-flattering photos.
12. Some Sci-Fi weaponry - I've always fancied a wall covered in weapons from TV, Games and Films, Like in Tommy Lee Jones' apartment in Men In Black - One of each Star Trek phaser, one of each Light-Sabre Hilt (Plus Force-FX glowy blade ones... Maybe upgraded to ones you can actually belt someone repeatedly with) The Spinney-roundy sonic Shotgun from Minority report, (Has to be the coolest cocking mechanism of any firearm ever) An Identity Disc from the new Tron film, a Portal Gun, Deckards gun from Bladerunner, All the weapons from Halo and Half-Life, A pair of Grammaton Cleric pistols from Equilibrium, One of each of every Predator weapon, except maybe the shoulder cannon... Always thought that it looked a bit 'kit-bashed'.  An M41-A from Aliens... Actually no, six M41-As, in a rack, so you could grab one as you ran past. A Morita from Starship Troopers, Dredd's Lawgivers (Comic and both films) The Railgun from 'Eraser' and maybe a ZF-1 from the Fifth Element for comedy value (I think I may have thought about this slightly more than absolutely neccesary). Plus anything else I can get my hands on.
13. Some more large format fantasy art books - You can never have enough pictures of a seven feet tall barbarian hero with an eleven foot long axe stood next to a 48-24-36 woman with flowing red hair wearing only a squirrel and two earwigs whilst an anthropomorphised badger plays a timbral solo in the background.
14. Peace and Quiet (This is the one that I'm least likely to get in fairness)
15. Chocolate - I know that technically it's a kind of food, but it's important enough to have its own entry (f'narr f'narr)
16. Anything odd - If you see something for sale and think 'Who in their right mind would want that?' The answer would be me.

OK, that's me done for this week - I expect thousands of Facebook messages, tweets and emails and suggestive pictures from you guys tomorrow, wishing me a Happy Birthday.

Don't disappoint me, I know where most of you live.

Unpaid Review: The Cardamom Club, Derby

You know how I'm always banging on about something?

Whether it's how the Blog's not very popular, or how I'm not really doing enough to the book with having a day-job and everything?

Well, I was comparing this to lots of other Blogs and I've noticed that a lot of the 'popular' ones review stuff... Companies actually send them stuff to review.  Don't know how that would work out here obviously, as a lot of you know, I'm not particularly 'corporate', I like to call a spade a spade and so-forth.

I figured that the only way I'd see if I could write a review, was to actually write one, and see what happens, see if it parts any velvet ropes, see if I get inundated with offers to test hand lotion or man-sized tissues (But not a the same time, if Mr Cameron has his way)

I'm going to review the restaurant I visited last Thursday, for myself and Mrs Dandy's fifteenth wedding anniversary. (I know right, you don't get fifteen years for Murder nowadays!)

-oOo-

The Cardamom Club

Indian Fine Dining Restaurant - Racecourse Park

Sir Frank Whittle Road - Derby.

First of all, let me just say that the chap who owns this restaurant also owns a company that I used to work for - The company with the haunted offices and the vending machine with the undocumented gamble feature - And some of the people that worked with me there, just happened to be in the restaurant when I visited.

Whether this impacted on the quality of my experience... Well, I couldn't possibly comment.

First impressions? Well, It's a part of the complex that houses the local Days Hotel and I must admit to being worried initially that it might just be the 'Dining Room' for the hotel.  I've spent a significant part of my working life staying in hotels all over the country where you have to go 'next door' for your breakfast and dinner of an evening.  This is not the case here, The Cardamom Club is definitely a restaurant in its own right.

Pulling up in the car-park, I noticed the owner's Bentley parked outside, so I had an idea that the staff would be on their best behaviour - It might be worth me trying again when he's not there, just to get a balanced view and see if things are any different 'when the cat's away'.

As you walk through the main entrance you are hit by the opulence of the surroundings.  From the fountains in the lobby to the gleam from all of the polished surfaces, it was easy to forget that you were on a commercial estate, half a mile from the city centre.

We had arrived purposely early, so that we could sample the hospitality and try some cocktails, which were very, very good.  There was only one fly in  the ointment, last Thursday was one of the hottest days since time began, even when Derby was an active volcano and pterodactyls ruled the sky, it wasn't as hot as it was on 18/07/13.  Unfortunately, it was on this fateful day that the air-conditioning had decided to go on the fritz.  Fair play to the team, there was an air-con engineer on site and he managed to get everything working again within the hour.

The Staff: Everyone who had anything to do with our experience, whether it was simply showing us to our table, taking our order, delivering food and drink, or making sure we were OK were excellent.  We never felt pressured, or neglected, the staff struck a fine balance between availability and unobtrusiveness.

The Food: We shared a platter of mixed Indian starters, with onion bhaji, kofte kebabs, lamb cutlets and fish tikka - This was excellent, it was a huge amount of food for a starter and if I had not been so hungry, this would quite easily have been enough for me.  However, I had purposely been starving myself since March (Well, bikini season is coming up), so I was happy to wait the few minutes that it took for the mains to arrive - And I'm not being sarcastic there, (Which is odd for me) the main courses arrived quite literally, minutes after the starters had been cleared away.

For main, I had the Lamb Saag - One of my favourite flavour combinations, the Memsahib had the Lamb Roganjosh (Coloured to a wonderful red with Rattanjot) and both were superb, probably the best Indian food that I've ever eaten (and I've eaten a LOT of Indian food.) - We both had Naan bread, as is the custom, and my Keema Naan... Well, I don't know if you've had Keema Naan before but it's effectively a Naan (I know, Who'd have thought it?) filled with minced meat, usually mutton, but it really doesn't have to be - And from every Indian takeaway I've ever been to, the filling has been macerated to the point where it looks like the bits of donner meat that even the lower end restaurants would give to the dog... But this was real, minced meat, with real spices, which fell like spicy rain from the Naan when you tore it open - I will probably never see its like again... Which is a real shame, because I've been forever spoiled and cannot eat anything else now.

We finished the meal (or so we thought) with a Dark Chocolate and a Mango and Cardamom Ice-Cream, which was also excellent and then made ready to pay the bill.
But no! - What actually happened was that we were presented with a cake, on a decorated platter, wishing us a happy 15th anniversary and then we had our pictures taken (Which has now been posted on their Facebook page)

Funny Story: The young Asian lady you can see in that picture, dressed in pink was horrified when the side-dish of her (I presume) fish curry was a basket of Whitebait, and that Whitebait were little fish, and that little fish had eyes! - Well, it made me chuckle anyway.

The Bill: OK, now we get to the bad bit, the bit everyone dreads, the moment when you open that little leatherette folder and scan down the receipt to the number with the most digits and start to cry.  I was expecting it to be a fairly big number, and I wasn't disappointed.  What you have to remember is that this isn't an Indian Restaurant... Well, I mean, obviously, it is an Indian Restaurant... But it's a fine dining restaurant.  The average price of a main meal is about £17 (going up to £50 if you fancy the lobster) - So you might not want to go the week before payday when you're looking underneath the sofa cushions for coppers.  But saying that, it was a fair price for what you actually get if you factor in the quality of the food and the impeccable service.  All I'll say is that if you take a 'friend' then you'd do well to not expect a lot of change from £100.  I'd take, maybe twice that if you're trying to get your friend drunk for any reason, not that you should have to... If you've taken a member of the opposite sex for a meal here, their enjoyment and any possible show of appreciation, is virtually guaranteed.

-oOo-

So, that's my first review, hope you enjoyed it.

If you have an item or service that you would like to get reviewed by The Chimping Dandy, feel free to get in touch.  I'm open and honest.  Conversely, if you want to review The Chimping Dandy, you could do that too - People have you know, and they thought I was great!