Present Tense

Below is a piece of crossover fiction inspired by my recent trip to Blackpool.  It is set in the same universe as my Edward Teach stories and alludes to some of the upcoming book's plotlines, however - The antagonist is from THIS piece of Flash Fiction, you might wish to read it first.

-oOo-

I flew in from the south-east, down the lush valley between the Liverpool Free Trade Area and the ruins contained by the, in parts still radioactive, Greater Manchester wastelands.   I had originally intended to circle out over the Irish Sea and come in low over the water, but there had been some recent reports that the Welsh Separatists had managed to get hold of some ex-defense force artillery and were taking pot-shots at anything flying low enough not to leave a contrail.  I felt that keeping the crate in one piece made more sense than having a control surface obliterated by a misguided 'Son of Glyndwr' and spiraling into the briny deep with my aft section aflame.

Whilst I'm on the subject, I'm glad that I'm less than fifteen miles from the Aeroport, as I've a nasty feeling that last night's dinner is about to make an explosive re-appearance.  Fox Cheek Vindaloo has a wonderful effect on that palate, but loses something during its trip through one's lower intestine.  I decided to contact local traffic control to see if I could secure a berth near the Gentlemens' Conveniences.

'George Joseph Smith International Aeroport, this is the private flyer Gustavo, requesting clearance to land.'

'Roger Gustavo,' Replies the obviously electronic voice of the traffic control construct, 'please continue on your current heading and land in section Red Seventeen.'

'Acknowledged Control, are there comfort facilities near that particular area? There is a possibility of an impending gastric emergency.'

'Gustavo, do you wish to report a medical emergency?'

'Negative Control, just a minor digestive discomfort... Gustavo Out.'

I lock the navigational system onto the docking beam and proceed to land in the indicated bay.  Even as the landing legs were rebounding, I leap out of the cockpit and open the starboard stowage locker.  I pick out a rather fetching stovepipe hat with matching gecko-skin gloves, and make my way into the terminal building.  Once my urgent business has been taken care of and my composure has been restored, I show my documentation to the security team, and ask to be directed to the Hackney Rank.

The three mile ride into town is fairly uneventful, I am continually unnerved by the robotic horse that pulls my carriage giving me a potted history of the resort - It is not so much that it is, for all intents and purposes a talking silver horse, mainly it is that the damnable thing is looking at me over its shoulder all the time, rather than keeping its glowing blue eyes on the road.

We pass the first of the town's three piers, the silent hulks of the anti-Spider defense cannons still positioned down it's length.  skeins of bright bunting are stretched between them in a jarring juxtaposition.

'Why the decoration?' I ask the horse.

'If you had only come last week Sir, it was the twentieth anniversary of the last Spider attack, a suicide squadron had targeted the Tower and the men of the town shot down every single one.  At low tides you can still see some of the wreckage if you know where to look.'

Ah, the famous Tower, it had been the main landmark of the town for several hundred years, it had seen service as a circus, a ballroom, a radar station and had finally ended up being used as an airship mooring mast.  I crane my neck to look up as I pass it and see that a passenger liner was currently docked, its silver skin glinting brightly in the setting sun.

Moments later the Hackney pulled up at the Metropole Hotel, I disembark, pat the equine construct absently on the head and find my way to the reception desk.

'Reservation in the name of Anderson?' I announce, somewhat questioningly to the young girl behind the desk.

'Yes sir, do you have any luggage?'

Gods damn it! In my rush to leave the aeroport, I had forgotten to pick up my cases.  I am however unwilling to announce this to the general public, so I answer with braggadocio, 'No, not currently.  I would consider it a great kindness if you would ask your concierge to contact the finest local Gentleman's Costumiers and ask them to supply a brown leather dinner jacket and a selection of day-wear suitable for tomorrow's prevailing weather conditions.'

She injects my hand with the digital keys to my suite and I enter the lift.  In some strange quirk of fate, or more likely via some over-zealous research by a bored hotel employee, the music being played over the under-sized speakers is one of my great, great-grandfather's most popular tunes.  He was a local man himself and had enjoyed some small fame with a progressive musical group named after an eighteenth century agriculturalist.

The lift deposits me directly across the corridor from my room, I exit, cross the deep pile carpet and clench my hand against the sculpted mahogany of the door handle.  There is a brief sensation of heat as the key is read and the door clicks open.

I enter the room, the only source of illumination is from a shaft of sunlight streaming through the apparently amateurishly drawn curtains, picking out an ornately detailed silver bottle on the side table.  I pick it up and read the words 'Henri IV Dudognon Heritage' engraved around a golden badge on the side.

The sudden voice surprised me to the point where I almost dropped the bottle.

'Those are real diamonds, set in platinum.'

I turn, still cradling the bottle in my suddenly sweating palms.

'Who?' I ask.  The man stands, he is dressed in a vaguely military style, his impeccably pressed jacket so clean that it almost glows in the half-light.  He smiles, apologetically.

'Ah yes, how remiss of me, my name is Horner, I contacted you via The Great Cloud? You told me your story about the loss of the airship Simon Bolivar.'

'Of course, Mr Horner, I should have known.' I reply graciously, 'Thank you for the invitation I must say that I wasn't expecting this kind of payment.' I lift the bottle, the sun reflects from the thousands of brilliantly cut diamonds and momentarily the room is festooned with a plethora of small, dancing points of light.

He laughs emptily, 'Payment? Goodness me no, your story was interesting, and will definitely be published, but it wasn't worthy of that particular vintage.  No, that was merely a distraction.'

'Dis...?' I don't even feel the blade as it completely severs my neck, I only know that a sword is even involved because I can now see it in his left hand, pointing at the floor in the sabre rest position, it has blood dripping from it, my blood.

'I'm sorry old chap, but I can't risk you telling your story to anyone else, we value exclusivity at the G.A.A. you see.'

He takes a step forward, places his index finger on the bridge of my nose and applies the tiniest amount of pressure.  My head separates from my shoulders with a quiet sucking sound and I have the briefest view of my own back before the floor and oblivion hit me simultaneously.

Horner removes a small notebook from his inside pocket, and crosses off the name 'Anderson'. He then takes out a personal communicator and connects to The Great Cloud.  He dials in a number and when the party accepts the call he coughs politely.

'Mr Josiah, Yes? It's Horner of the G.A.A. I've received your story... I must say, it's rather good. I'd like to arrange payment.'

It's all a game until someone gets hurt.

I'm presuming that you guys know what on-line gaming is?

I don't mean the ones where you have a little farm and you visit your friends and help them plough and stuff, or those where you swap sweets around to make cubes of jelly disappear.

Although they are certainly games, and are, of course, online, they're not what I'm talking about.  I mean things like Call Of Duty or FIFA and their ilk, games where you actively play with or against other people.

I used to be pretty much addicted to a little game called Modern Warfare (or more correctly, Modern Warfare 2) Which simulated armed skirmishes in realistic locations such as Russian Airports, The wreckage of a crashed plane, muddy fields etc. - You could log on to the server, select a couple of shiny weapons and run around shooting other real people, from all over the world, in their smug faces, with high calibre rounds, from great distances, without ever being seen.

At least that's what used to happen to me... A lot - I haven't got the lizard-like reactions that I used to have back in the day, many years of beer, bacon, and cheese toasty abuse have put paid to all that tomfoolery I'm afraid.  I mean, I'd be there, crouching behind a rock, popping my head up occasionally to take a pot-shot at a passing Terrorist / Russian / Afghan /American Special Forces soldier and get stabbed in the back by a fourteen year old boy called Buck from Oklahoma, who proceeded to tell me, via voice-chat, how killing me was a direct result of him roughly buggering my 'Mom' the previous evening (The life-choices Buck had made up to this point had obviously led him down the dark and winding road to necrophilia, as my Mother had died when he was some four years old)

I got bored with this after a while, as you would and took a break from Online Gaming, until recently, when I re-discovered World of Warcraft.

Yes, I know... Let's get all the geek, nerd, loser stuff out of the way now shall we? - Yes, there are Elves and Goblins, Yes you can cast spells, Yes, most of the female characters wouldn't get a broken nose if they fell over forwards and Yes, most of the people who play it are the kind of people who carry a flask of weak lemon drink around with them wherever they go.  But I enjoy it, it helps to pass the time when I've run out of stuff that's been Sky+'d.

OK, I'm not going to go through the game, it's too big, there's too much to it - And it's all out there on the Internet in morbid detail.  But essentially you make a fantasy character, their race, sex, profession and physical appearance are all up to you.  Then you do 'stuff' - People send you on missions, you can fight against other real people, you could save up your in-game money and buy a hideously powerful hammer and use it to explode bunny rabbits should the mood take you. All human (and a lot of non-human) life is here.

Improbably, when you kill enemies, including animals like wolves and wild boars etc.  They mostly drop some 'loot'. Now loot could be meat (which generally makes sense I guess), money (Makes sense for the more humanoid enemies, but not so much for the bears and soforth) or weapons and armour (Don't even get me started on why a pig would drop a pair of chainmail boots or an 8' long poleaxe.)

And if you want the best 'loot' then obviously, you have to visit the most dangerous places. In simple WoW (See, World of Warcraft - There are acronyms and everything!) the most dangerous places that you can easily get into are 'Dungeons'.  These are underground (usually) areas filled with tougher than normal enemies and one or more 'Bosses' who are an order of magnitude tougher again - So tough in fact that you have absolutely no chance of killing them... On your own.

You need a team of five people, so you take four friends (If you do not have four friends - And let's face it, if you did, you wouldn't be playing WoW, the server will appoint you four team-mates) and you work together to eradicate every living thing that you find.  So far, so geeky...

But it's not that simple, the team is split into three, there's a 'Tank' Whose job is to soak up damage and keep the bad guys occupied, a 'Healer' to keep the Tank alive whilst he's being waled on and three 'DPSers' (DeePeeEssers) who kill the bad guys whilst they're concentrating on the Tank - Everyone has a job, it's just like living in modern day Britain... *cough*

Last night, I was with a group in a little place that I like to call Blackrock Depths - When I met the British cousin of my old friend Buck, from Modern Warfare (Please note... I don't know if he was any distant relation, in fact I don't even know whether the original guy's name was Buck - They were just both gits.)

He was the Healer, and he liked to do everything at 100MPH, we rushed from room to room, killing stuff left right and centre, he was constantly telling us to 'Pull more mobs' (Attack more bad guys at the same time) as he was 'IMBA' (Which is short for Imbalanced - Meaning he was overly powerful, to the point of it being unfair) - So obviously, just after he said that, we all died.

Then we all died again.

Then the Tank left the group because he was sick of dying over and over again - I pointed out to our healer, that if he could have just kept the Tank alive, maybe he wouldn't have left.

He opened up with telling me that I should 'Learn to play', and that I was a 'Know nothing Noob'.  I explained, rather calmly I thought, 'That there was the possibility that I had a little more experience, both of life and WoW than he did,' and asked how old he was.

He was 16

I told him that I was 45, he then went off on a tirade about how sad it was that a 45 year old man was still living with his parents in their basement.

I then explained that I lived in a very nice 3-storey house with my wife and children thank you very much, and asked if he'd noticed that a new Tank had joined our group and because he was so busy being abusive and not healing, that he'd died and left and that it was probably all his fault.

Then he got all shouty, and told me how I was being immature because I'd implied that I had more experience than him, just because I was nearly 30 years older.

I suggested in return that he had the reasoning power of a septic mallard.

Because we had no Tank, I took it upon myself to start to kill bad guys myself... He either refused or was unable to heal me and I died, then his friend also died as the enemies that had been attacking me, turned on her.   He was so apoplectic with teen angst and bile that he'd not been able to save her, that he quit the group himself.

His friend came up to me later and apologised unreservedly for his behaviour, saying that he was exactly the same in real-life... A shouty, spoiled brat who acted like a dick all day every day.

And they say these on-line games are about escapism and being your ideal version of yourself.

Hope not... In-game I'm a seven foot tall green dude, with a white mohawk, tusks in my lower jaw and an armoured loincloth...

Actually, now I come to mention it.

So good to be Viviparous

The Doctor looked out of the mirrored window at the assembled news teams, collected on the street outside like flies on a rotting corpse, and shook his head.

‘What do they hope to achieve?’ He mused aloud, ‘How many scenes of a redbrick frontage will their viewers stomach before rising up against the state-sponsored propaganda machine in rebellion?’

He was a veteran, he had served in the military for several years, and had been recruited into the Royal Household many years ago.  It was an honour to serve and his senior position filled him with pride.  He had overseen the past half dozen Royal births and was something of an ‘old hand’ at the delicate procedure.

The private suite was entirely populated by the vetted and the security cleared, even if they weren't exactly ‘his kind of people’ they could be trusted.  Nothing that they heard or saw would go any further than these four walls – Especially after what happened last time, a tragic incident, but a lesson in security.  Every outsider was checked and double checked.  Every protocol for every eventuality was drummed into them, consequences were explained, and ominous threats were made towards their extended family.

There was a quiet knock from behind him and a young nurse sheepishly poked her head around the door.

‘It’s time Sir. She’s ready.’

He turned and nodded curtly, took one last look down at growing, baying, throng and moved sinuously into the orange light of the stiflingly hot delivery room.  She lay there on the bed, her gown gathered lazily around her waist. 

‘Are you ready My Lady?’ He regarded her distended stomach, ‘He looks like he’s going to be a big boy, do you require any pain relief?’

She looked up at him with her huge eyes, her mouth gaped slightly and her tongue darted out, wetting her upper lip.

‘Yes…’ She panted, ‘and water.’

He turned to the nurse and barked, ‘Fifty CCs of medetomidine hydrochloride, administered here, to the base of the throat, then fetch the scoop.’ 

Passing the gravid Duchess a bulb of water, which she immediately squeezed into her mouth and swallowed hungrily, he ran his hand across her expansive, dry forehead and into her ear, checking that her pulse was steady.  He looked at each member of the team one by one and nodded.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, we are about to bring the newest member of the Royal brood into this cold, harsh world.  If all goes well, pray to Dazbog, and thank him for the blistering basking sun that he has given us this day… If all does not, pray for yourselves.’

He held his breath and delicately inserted the birthing scoop between the scales of her cloacal opening, applying just enough gentle pressure with the serrated edge to rupture the skin of the amniotic sac.  Once the wash of hot fluid had drained from the table and onto the floor, he reached into the cavity and lifted out the baby.  His scales glistened like stars in the glow of the heat-lamps and his pronounced brow ridge pulsed with life.

‘He is beautiful my lady, eight toes, six fingers, two opposable digits and...’ He turned the baby around, ‘...a perfect tail.  What will you call him?’

The Duchess thought for a while and then answered, ‘I will name him after his Uncle, he will be called “Zod” amongst the true people.’

The doctor raised the new-born above his head, his pronounced snout almost touching the infra-red bulbs on the ceiling.

‘Mighty Dazbog! Lord who watched over us on our long flight to this world. I call upon you to look now to your newest worshiper Zod, third in line to the throne of our soon to be Empire, conqueror of lands, despoiler of forests, maker of deserts and the heater of this dirt-world.’ He looked down at the mother, panting on the bed, ‘What would you have the apes call Him?’

‘I don’t know, his Father can decide that, it is of no great importance.’ She yawned sleepily as both sets of eyelids closed over her scarlet eyes, 'Perhaps Arthur?'

Overhead, the bright sun had been replaced by a roiling cloud, and in the distance, there was a faint peal of thunder.

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!

And not a Yorkie in sight

Another couple of short, non-me based stories today.

When ah were but a slip o' a lad I went t'college for t'learn all abaht compewtuhs an' th' like.

(Sorry, can't keep that up, it's hurting my brain)

I had this lecturer, can't remember his name for the life of me, he was great... Funny, knowledgeable, mad as a hat full of colossal squids at an all you can eat Japanese restaurant and a martyr to borderline dissociative identity disorder.  He'd come to be a Computer Science teacher after a long time as an HGV driver in the late 70's and he told a couple of stories once that came to me this morning after seeing a 42 tonne truck driver trying to back a container truck down a farm track.

-oOo-

He'd been working for this particular company for a few months, when they sent him on a trip to the sea-side on a nice summers day to deliver some... ah... some... Well, I suppose it doesn't really matter what it was, but he did his drop and thought that he'd park up and have a bit of a snooze in his cab.  So, he found one of those carparks that you sometimes see that have extended parking spaces for coaches and suchlike, got a nice spot where he could open his windows to hear the sea and dropped off. (I mean go to sleep, it wasn't right on the cliff edge or anything)

He woke up some hours later, looked at the clock, realised that he was late, yelled some expletives, started the truck up and started out of the Carpark.  The first thing that he had to was do a sharp left turn to get out of the parking space... And that's where the noise started, it continued when he straightened up, it was an odd kind of a grinding / dragging noise.  He stopped and looked in his mirrors thinking that he'd hit a litter bin or something, but couldn't see anything. So he pulled forwards about ten yards and the noise not only started again, but the trailer started to bounce up and down.

Then he thought that maybe the trailer brakes had jammed on and the wheels weren't turning, so he got out of the cab, and that's when he saw it - there was a car, underneath the lorry, in between the cab and the trailer wheels.  It was a convertible MGB with the top down, it must have been parked next to him as he was asleep, then as the cab swung around it'd gone between the wheels and he'd dragged it along.

Only thing was, the old chap it belonged to had seen him do it, well, he couldn't really miss him doing it, as he, and his wife, were sat in it eating their sandwiches at the time.

He moved companies shortly afterwards.

-oOo-

Another day, another company, this time he was up in the Dales (Think proper Last of the Summer Wine country) and he was completely lost.  Remember that this was before GPS Systems and mobile phones and all he had was the 1965 AA Book of the Road and a hand-written list of instructions taped to the dashboard.

He did a heroic job of trying to find the place he was supposed to be delivering to, but ended up in this little village where there was every likelihood that he was going to get roughly sodomised and then eaten.  It was hilly, very hilly and the signage was confusing, the roads hadn't been built with 8' wide, 60' long trucks in mind and he'd started to panic a bit.

Eventually he pulled over and asked this pregnant woman for directions.  Unfortunately, the combination of driving a right hand drive truck on the left, where the height of the cab means that you're 10' up in the air meant that she couldn't really hear what he was saying.  Saying turned to shouting, shouting and growing panic turned to yelling, and the yelling brought on the crying from the young lady.  He immediately regretted what he'd done, climbed down out of the cab, stuck two fingers up to the queue of traffic behind him and apologised deeply to the person whose only crime was to try to be a good Samaritan.

Let's look at that list of actions again shall we?  Just to see if anything obvious is missing:

Hilly village, Pull over, ask directions, shout, yell, regret, get out of truck, abuse other drivers, console pregnant women.

No, that all seems... Ah, wait a minute... Did you spot it?

Not a single mention of a handbrake.

The truck started to roll and gathered speed quite quickly really, by all accounts, and went off straight down the hill in the middle of the road. people were screaming, children were pointing, our hero was sprinting after it, dogs lay with cats and a mighty voice from above declared 'AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO'S NOTICED THAT THERE'S A T-JUNCTION AT THE BOTTOM OF THE BLOODY HILL?' And God was right, there was a T-Junction, and on the other side of the T-Junction were more houses and shops.

Luckily, the truck had started to weave about a little by this point and clipped a Talbot Sunbeam, which wasn't big enough to stop it, but was just right to divert it enough to get it around the corner so that it could grind along the row of shops and houses, ripping off signs and smashing windows until it ground to a halt outside the local Police station.

It was shortly after that that he left driving for ever, got himself a degree, and became a teacher.

Safer for everyone I think.

What? All of my clothes?

Professional strippers feature fairly heavily in the backstory of The Chimping Dandy, I mean... The still burgeoning time-bending powers of my super-villain alter-ego were initially  forced into being in a strip-club in Birmingham.  I was even one myself once, briefly...

But in general, there are two kinds of people where strippers are concerned, those who REALLY like them, usually people who drink cheap lager and wear three-seasons old football shirts, and people who can take them or leave them.  Me? Believe it or not, I'm firmly in the second camp - I mean, I like naked ladies as much as the next big, hairy, chock full o' testosterone, bloke - But I can't see the point if you're not allowed to... erm... You know... How should I put it?.. Have a go on them (OK, some some ladies who class themselves as strippers will let you 'have a go' for a medium to large financial consideration, or so I've heard, but they are the exception rather than the rule.)

I know that sounds mercilessly objectifying and terribly misogynistic, but while those ladies are happy to portray themselves as commodities for (as I understand it) large sums of money, as exotic dancers, I'm happy to watch them without knowing their personal motivation and / or lifestory.

Right, before this turns into a discussion of the human trafficking of sex workers from Eastern Europe, let's drag it back on track... Strippers are nice people with attractive bodies who make money by showing them to people.

I knew this guy, many, many, years ago, who had his own business and would often entertain clients in pole-dancing clubs (For those who are unaware of the difference, the young ladies in the pole-dancing clubs tend to keep their underpants on - There are all sorts of health and safety issues otherwise - I'm not going to explain this, you should be able to work it out for yourself. Especially if you have prior experience of ladies front-bottoms) - He used these places so regularly that he became 'known' to the girls and they would say hello and give him a peck on the cheek if they saw him in the street.  This was only fair as he was probably single handedly putting all of their children through private school (Yes Katie Hopkins, Ex-Apprentice Harridan and Wholesale Bigot, a fair proportion of strippers send their children to private school because they make more money than you and I put together).

Anywho, he took me a couple of times, there was free beer and naked ladies, as you'd expect and whilst I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the lewd and lascivious behaviour of some of the professional ladies there, it was far more entertaining when they weren't 'performing' and would just sit down next to you and chat... It took a little while to get over the novely of talking to a pretty lady wearing just a sparkly thong about how they used to get bullied at school for having one ear slightly higher than the other - And I also admit that I sometimes had to work fairly hard to maintain eye contact, but I'm a bloke and to an extent, we're hard wired to be attracted to stuff like that, sorry ladies - But it's true - Ongoing continuation of the species and all that.

Then I told another friend of mine about this chap and he said

'I've never been to one of those places you know.'

Now, I was genuinely shocked, I'd assumed that it was sort of a right of passage for young men, everyone had done it, like kissing a girl then running away when you're eight years old, or tipping a cow over when it's asleep or thinking you look cool and then only realising some years later when you look at photos that you in fact looked like a complete cock.

So we went to a local strip-club that provided both kinds of entertainment.  There was a pole in the middle of the dance-floor where a rota of young ladies performed every fifteen minutes or so and there was also a... not sure what the correct group noun is... A flirtation perhaps? of honest to goodness, will take it all off in three minutes or less and position themselves two inches from your nose, strippers.

I believe our American cousins use a phrase 'Like a kid in a candy store' that aptly describes my friend's first reaction as he stepped through the door.  His eyes were like dinner-plates, as the popular simile goes, as he realised that even fully clothed strippers didn't wear a huge number of garments.  We had a pint, and sat, and watched a couple of poledancers whilst he tried to get a hold of himself (No... Stop making your own jokes up please, I'll do the humour thank you very much).  All was well until an attractive, naturally pneumatic, auburn haired lady approaced my friend (We'll call him Albert, but that was not his name) and spake thusly:

Lady: Would you like a dance?

Albert: Erm? [Looks at me in panic]

Dandy: [I shrug] Do you? She seems very nice.

Lady: Come and have a dance, it'll make you feel better, help you relax.

Albert: I... uh...

Dandy: It's his first time

Lady: Really? - Oh! - Well in that case I'll take special care of you. [She holds his hand]

Albert: [In a daze, stands up] Well, I'll have a go, but I'm not a very good dancer.

Now the young lady in question, because she was a consummate professional, just smiled and led him into the 'private' area - I however dissolved into that type of raucous laughter normally reserved for Hyenas drawn by Disney animators.  In fact, I think I may have even given myself hiccups.

They emerged five or so minutes later, her with a broad grin, him with a dazed expression and an air of unfulfilled tumescence.  They sat and chatted for about three quarters of an hour - It seems that they'd gone to the same school as each other (her starting some years after he'd left, obviously, otherwise it would have been weird)

Small world innit?

-oOo-

THERE FOLLOWS A DANDY SAFETY NOTICE ON BEHALF OF THE 'KEEPING HOLD OF YOUR GENTLEMAN PLUMS' PARTY.

If you should ever feel the need to ask your wife if you are allowed to go to a strip / pole dancing club - Do not bother, her answer will be no... Even if she says 'Yes', she means 'No', it is a trap of Admiral Ackbar proportions.

-oOo-

Some while ago, whilst the current Mrs Dandy was still the prospective Mrs Dandy, we had arranged to go and see (IIRC) a Bon Jovi tribute band called Blaze of Glory at a medium sized venue in her home-town.  We went seperately as I was still an unknown quantity to her dear Father and wasn't allowed to just pull up at her house on a large motorcycle and whisk her away to parts unknown. (He loves me now of course, I'm like the free IT support guy that he never had)

So, we met there, in the club.  She had arrived early with her mates, and I had rode there.  I parked the trike right outside, OK'd it in a doorman to doorman stylee with the frankly gigantic Afro-Caribbean bouncer who was really rocking the Crombie coat / Dreadlocks combo and went inside.  It was heaving, there were wall to wall people and it was virtually impossible to find my 'date' - So I thought the best thing to do was get a beer, and circle the room like a leather clad vulture until one of us spotted the other.

Yeah, the leather, maybe we should take a second there to explain... I was wearing a black leather bike jacket and leather jeans, combat boots, a tight, white cotton t-shirt and wrap-around shades - I was also a few stone lighter than I am now, my chest was bigger than my waist, and could still, just about, pick up a 3500 V8 Rover engine on my own (Yes, I've let myself go, yes, I'm suitably ashamed)

It only took five minutes for someone to grab my backside and shout, over the noise of the DJ,

'You're Late! where have you been?'

I turned, and looked down.  It wasn't who I'd expected, it was someone's Mother, I'm not sure whose, but she was certainly someone's.  I looked confused and took a sip of my beer.

'We're over here.'

She grabbed me by the wrist and started to drag me across the room, shoulder barging people out of the way like a miniature Norwegian Ice-Breaker, until we got to the bar - I'd assumed that she was one of my soon-to-be-wife's work friends.

'Have you got your music?'

'I'm sorry? I don't know what you mean...'

'Your music? a CD? that you dance to?'

'Dance? I.. erm?'

Now, the next two things happened almost simultaneously, My now-wife had seen me being dragged away and had followed, she was now standing directly behind me, and the other woman asked...

'You are the stripper, aren't you?'

It seems that replying 'That depends on whether you've already paid or not.' was not the reply that the Mrs Dandy in waiting was expecting... And resulted in the first of many 'Paddington' style hard stares.

We made our excuses and left.

-oOo-

So fair readers, I hope that our swift foray into the world of paid clothes taker-offerers has expanded your horizons a little, and always remember...

You CAN keep your hat on.

Edge-Lit 2 and Shameless Plugging

Well, that was a bit of a weekend chaps wasn't it?  Highest temperatures ever recorded on any planet in the known universe ever (Including that really hot day that we had on Mercury in August 1976 - Phew! what a scorcher - as I believe I said to Bremzag the Unclean, First grade Chinwok of the Mercurial Royal Family, at the time.)

So what did you do?  I'll bet it involved being outside, possibly burning some meat, whilst wearing inappropriate clothing... Whether the meat you were burning was your own, or came from an ultimately more bovine or porcine source is neither here nor there and essentially is between you and your Priest / Shaman / Robotic Richard Dawkins impersonator...

I spent a number of hours on Saturday in one of those modern, glass eco-friendly hippy buildings that people are so fond of building nowadays.  You know the ones, they never look finished and they've all got passive air-conditioning - In as much as when it's hot, they open a window and when it's cold, they offer to sell you genuine foraged alpaca wool ponchos and all the money made gets put towards a charity concerned with re-homing the fifth generation offspring of itinerant Turkish pit-ponies.

I was at the Edge-Lit 2 Convention(?) in Derby - (Please note, the question mark there isn't meant to imply that I wasn't exactly sure where I was - I knew where I was... At first, but I wasn't sure if convention was the right word - Never been to one you see.  I'd always thought the word convention implied CosPlay.  There was sadly no CosPlay, not that I noticed at least).

I got there nice and early, as it was also to be the day that I, your kilt-wearing hero, was to finally meet the Internationally accepted God of Flash Fiction, James Josiah and Neil Sehmbhy the Supremo Author of the upcoming The Corporation, Jinx and Sunder Wars books.  Now, because of the unusual way that the Internet works, I've know these guys really well for ages, but I've never actually met either of them in the flesh as it were.  They're both thoroughly nice chaps though, you should go and follow them now... Go, do it now.

So, we went in, with a fair amount of trepidation if I'm honest, none of us knowing really what to expect, and registered.  We were given a 'goodie bag' of frankly excellent books (Which more than covered the price of entry), a sheet of A4 paper with some words on it and a name-badge for us to fill in ourselves - I considered filling it in humorously, but as there was only the one pen, and a queue of sweaty Sci-Fi/Horror types behind me, I just wrote my real name and the name of this blog.  I noticed that some people wrote their life stories on theirs, reams of added paper disappearing into the distance making them look like the personification of 'Snake' on an early Nokia phone - Seriously, there was this one guy with a particularly long trail, during some confusion about which room he needed to be in for a particular Author panel, he crossed the streams, created a Moebius and immediately flipped into another dimension - His memorial service was lovely, we nicked some tulips from the traffic island outside, I cried.

We attended a couple of Writers' Panels, one on 'World-Building', which was where published authors talked about how they went about creating the background for where their books are set, the stage on which their characters perform.  It was really good, not just in that it gave me a couple of great ideas for how to improve the 'Edward Teach' Stories, but it showed me that no two authors do anything in the same way - Everyone pretty much just makes it up as they go along - It really filled me with confidence.

The next was on 'The future of Fantasy' and was quite interesting in a 'blue-sky thinking' / 'I'm just pulling this out of my rectum' kind of way.  But the number one, double diamond, glittering ruby, shaped like a cherry on the top of a birthday cake made of pureed Angelina Jolie and solid gold hundreds and thousands thing about this was the questions from the audience section.  OK, so a couple of people made salient points with real, erudite questions about the possible future of a widely unknowable medium, and the panel did their best to answer them.  But the guy who asked the last question was an absolute gem, I assume he was writing a book, he was very keen... Very, very keen... and very excitable... Very, very excitable.  I only picked up about one in every three words because he was talking so quickly, but there was something about people having brands or tattoos on their backs that specified who they were, I think, and rather than ask a question, he sort of gave us all a warp 7 synopsis of the book, it was a joy to see five professional authors sat there with their mouths open whilst they were bombarded by a wall of... erm... well... I'm not exactly sure what it was a wall of, but the three of us spent the afternoon trying to fill in the blanks, our ideas got more and more outlandish after every pint.

You see, for us, this is where it all went a bit pear shaped.  We went to the pub at lunchtime, nice place, The Brewery Tap (or Royal Standard if you're old like me.) just down the road - Does nice beer and snacks... And we looked at the running order to see when we needed to be back, it turned out that we had almost two hours to kill, so we had a few pints and wandered back to the venue in plenty of time - Only to find that the sheet of A4 paper that we'd all been given when we'd walked in was a list of changes... And pretty much everything that we'd planned on doing / seeing was now either full or all on at the same time... So we did the only noble thing we could - We had a go on the raffle, had a chat to a new local publisher who may have been looking for fresh talent *cough* and then went back to the pub for a couple of hours.

Then I woke up on the floor at home, with my kilt up around my waist, with no real recollection of how I got there or what the burning sensation was.

All in all, a great day - I would definitely recommend Edge-Lit 3 in 2014 (should there be one, which I hope there is)

-oOo-

Ages and ages and ages ago, I mentioned that there may be some Chimping Dandy merchandise in the works... Well, I have struck a deal with New, up and coming merchandising company Hash Togs to provide things, clothing, phone backs, mugs and other stuff no doubt that bear the Seedy the Pangolin logo - Here is a T-Shirt that I have - You can buy one for yourself for a measly tenner:

This is on the Back

This is on the front

They've very kindly supplied me with a phone back for my iPhone too, but as I have fingers like sausages, I couldn't get it off to take a photo of it, I will need to let the MiniDandy to explore it with her arachnid-style digits later on.  They deliver really quickly, the proprietor is not not completely mental and they will quite happily do whatever your little heart desires on whatever your little heart desires (within reason - They won't print a haddock on a live pig, but only because they can't get it through the presses without it making a helluva noise.

And yes, they paid me to say that, but in fairness I would have said it anyway. (So I win that transaction - Mwahahaahahhahahaha!)

For any questions, quotes etc. please get in touch with these guys, not me, because my stock answer will be huh?

They're on Facebook here - Hash Togs on Facebook
Or you can eMail them Here - Hash Togs eMail