No, it's... Oh forget it!

I had a day off yesterday, trying to use up my outstanding leave before the end of the year and all that.  Being the kind and altruistic person that I am, I offered to take my dear old Father into town so that he could start 'sorting out his affairs'

The particular affair in question yesterday was a bank account, in his name, that was money that he's been putting aside for the Mini-Dandy.  He wanted it transferred into myself and Mrs. Dandy's names, so that we could administer it when he was no longer around.  So we had to go to the bank with him and sign some forms.

Upon entering the bank, he spied the (not particularly lengthy) queue and obviously thought 'Bugger that for a lark, that woman over there at that desk, surrounded by stacks of paperwork doesn't look like she's doing anything.  I'll bet she can help.'  So he wandered over and asked the poor lady whether she was free?  She looked at him, the piles of paperwork and sighed, 'Yeah, sure, why not...' And indicated that he should take a seat.

He explained the situation to her and then looked at her expectantly.

Bank Lady: 'Erm, no,  I'm afraid we can't do that.  you'd have to close the account and re-open it in joint names.'
My Dad: 'But I was told that I could just fill in some forms and...'
BL: 'Yes, it will just mean filling in...'
MD: 'But you said I had to close the account.'
BL: 'Technically, you would, but we wouldn't actually give you the money and then you'd have to give it back to us, it'd all happen in here.' She tapped the monitor.
MD: 'I don't want to close my account, why do I need to close the account?'
BL: 'You're only allowed two names on each account sir.'
MD: 'Well, that doesn't seem right...' It was at this point that he reached across the desk, grabbed the monitor, turned it towards himself and started to say thinks like, 'I'm sure it should be in one of these menus somewhere.'

Now, I'm not sure about your local branch, but it seems that this one doesn't take kindly to their customers trying to access their banking systems, so the atmosphere went decidedly frosty from then on.

BL: 'If you would like us just to put an additional name on the account, we could do that without closing it, if that would be easier.'
MD: 'Would it be?'
BL: 'Would it be what?'
MD: 'Easier?'
BL: 'Well it's just a case of filling in this form.'
MD: 'But you said closing the account and re-opening it was just filling in a form, so I fail to see how this is easier exactly?'

A vein in the side of her head started to twitch, so I stepped in and said, 'Why not just add Mrs Dandy to the account, that'll make things easier won't it? Also, try to keep your fingers away from the nice lady's computer, I don't want to spend the rest of the week in a jail cell.'

He looked at me, then looked at the nice bank lady, resplendent in the early stages of a nervous breakdown and asked 'Can we do that? It would make things a lot easier I think.'

If you've never seen anyone trying to take their own life with a stapler, drop me a line, I'll send you the video.

We decided after that, that we should probably get some food.  Now, like food-courts all over the world, there were many different kinds of food on display.  Although i tend to go for either the curry or the chinese food.  I asked my dear, dear Father what he wanted, he had a look around the different vendors and replied, 'I don't know, what have they got?'
Me: 'There's Subway, fish and chips, pasta, baked potato, KFC, Greek, Burger King, curry, chinese food or a noodle bar.'
MD: 'What's a noodle bar?'
Me: 'It's a bar... where they sell noodles...'
MD: 'So, foreign muck then?'
Me: 'I suppose so, yes.'

I should probably explain, despite my Father flying all over the world with the RAF, he still maintains that there are only two types of food:  Things that he eats every day, and foreign muck, if you were to draw a Venn Diagram of his dietary habits, it would be two circles, about a foot apart.

MD: 'So, what are you having?'
Me: 'I'm having the Chicken Saag.' And I pointed towards the curry stall
MD: 'Is that stuff spicy?'
Me: 'Are you asking me if the curry spicy?'
MD: 'Yes, is the curry spicy?'
Me: 'Yes, traditionally, curry is spicy... You wouldn't like it.'
MD: 'Do they do anything that's not spicy?'
Me: 'Not really, no... They do rice I suppose, that's not hugely spicy.'
MD: 'No, I'll just go and get myself a burger.'

So, I got curry with the wife (and her Mother, who paid, so it was, like, all gravy and shizzle.) and then went and sat down.  My Father was there, eating fish and chips.

Me: 'I thought you wanted a burger.'
MD: 'I felt like a quarter-pounder with cheese and bacon.'
Me: 'And?'
MD: 'It's a Burger King.'

I thought, for like, a microsecond about doing the whole Vincent Vega 'Royale with cheese' shtick, but I decided against it.

Me: 'Oh, right... They just call them Bacon Double Cheeseburgers there I think.'

He looked dejectedly at his fish and chips.

MD: 'Really? Oh...'
Me: 'Still, that fish looks nice!'
MD: 'It's OK.'

We sat and ate our meals in silence for a while, then he piped up again and pointed at my curry.

MD: 'So, that's spicy then?'
Me: 'My curry? Yeah, fairly spicy.'
MD: 'Why is it green?'
Me: 'It's a Chicken Saag, Saag is the name for a curry made with leaves... This is spinach.'

He made that 'Rather you than me' eyebrow raising thing and drank his coffee, then lifted up the box that his fish and chips came in.

MD: You can take this for your dog, I'm full.'
Me: 'OK, thanks.' - I had no intention af carrying fish scraps around for the rest of the day.
MD: 'You get a side-salad with your curry then?' and pointed at a small polystyrene tray of wilted lettuce.
Me: 'I guess, can't say that I've ever eaten it though.'
MD: 'It'd make a good sandwich.'
Me: 'What?'
MD: 'The salad, it'd make a good sandwich, with some ham or something.'
Me: 'Did you want my salad to take home?'
MD: 'Well, a sandwich is another meal, and you got the salad for free. You don't want to waste it.'  He turned to Mrs Dandy. 'Do you have anything I could put it in to take home?'
My Wife: 'Erm, no, not really.'
MD: 'Oh... Such a waste.' And he actually tutted.

So, a morning's shopping was completely re-arranged in its bags, a small paper bag was found and the side-salad was dumped reverentially into it.

We finished the food and I went to clear the table.  When I picked up the box of fish leftovers, it seemed very heavy - I opened it up and found that it was full of chips, and there was a single bite out of the fish.

Yeah... Leaving a tray of wilted lettuce is a real waste Dad... There are starving kids in Biafra dude!

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!