Felis Catus

Which is not, as some of you may think, the spell Harry Potter uses when he needs a little furry companionship (leave it!) But the Latin name for the common housecat.

I was watching the news this morning before leaving for work and caught the end of a story, (well, I say story...) that the Cats Protection League have produced a guide to cat behaviour.  It seems that some people don't know what certain cat behaviours mean.

They include (and I kid you not)

If your cat is purring - It is contented.
If your cat is walking towards you with its tail up - It is greeting you.
If your cat is wiping its cheek on the furniture - It is scent marking its territory.

You would, in my opinion, be very special (In an 'I ride on a special bus with a five-point harness and specially flavoured windows for me to lick'  way) to not know all that already if you'd ever spent more than five minutes with a cat.

There was one thing that I thought 'Oh, that actually makes sense.' However, and it was:

If your cat lies down, stretches onto it's back and presents its belly to you, it's letting you know that it's so comfortable in your presence, that it feels like you are no longer a threat to it.

It does not mean 'Yay two-legs, tickle my belly.' as anyone who has ever tried this will testify... What you get if you do is the whole 'Did you think that I was a cat? Sorry, I usually describe myself as a furry bag full of razorblades' treatment and your arm looks like something out of Hellraiser.

There are some very odd things about cats which aren't so obvious though, especially to a dog person like myself - Although we do have a cat, called Pop, I have slowly trained her to become more dog-like so that I don't get so easily confused.

Here are a couple things to look out for:

Cats are attracted to people who don't like cats - This is perfectly true, cats will indeed be attracted to people who don't like them, do you know why?  If you watch a cat for any length of time, you'll notice that they do a kind of slow blink every once in a while and then turn away... Go and watch one now, You see, it did it... Unless it was asleep, then I'd have to question why you were watching a sleeping cat for twenty minutes.

Anywho, that slow blink is a gesture of approval, it's the equivalent of John Thomson's Fast Show character 'Louis Balfour, the host of Jazz Club' turning to the camera and saying 'Niiiice!'.  So, picture the scene, you're at someone's house, they've got a cat and you don't like cats, you don't even like to look at cats, you'd never think of even sniffing, licking or playing a melodic harmonica solo to a cat. so you close your eyes and look away.

Cat thinks 'Hey! a new friend, and he likes me enough to have learned my language!'  then it jumps on your lap, nestles down in your nether regions and slowly pumps its claws into any area where hair mysteriously started to grow during puberty.  Because you're polite and don't want to offend anyone, you just sit there like a swan... Unmoving on the outside, but screaming like a lunatic on the inside - That is Swans right?  Actually, thinking about it, I might have swans confused with something else - Not sure what, it'll come to me probably.

The headbutt is another cat thing that has a meaning, it's kind of a question.  Your cat is saying 'Are you mine? you used to smell like me, but you don't anymore.'  The initial 'butt' is the question, if you don't push the cat away, squirt it with one of those plant spray bottles or hit it with a telephone directory, then it will assume that you are its property and re-scent you with its cheek glands.

This is the cat marking you as its property, confirming your status as a chattel, something that the cat wholly owns, but allows to move around within certain boundaries, known only to the cat.

Our cat does this to our dog, often.  Here is a picture of our dog, trying to tear my throat out in a loving and caring manner.

He is not as kind to the cat... There is chasing, and a little light, occasional biting.

But when you get down to it (No, not with the cat you skanky pervs) cats are simple animals with simple drives for everything they do.  If you look into it deeply enough it tends to be because they despise you with all of their black little satanic hearts.  You are just there to service their every whim.

There, I said it cats are evil.  I think Terry Pratchett might have said it best: 'If cats looked like frogs, we'd realise what nasty, cruel little bas*ards they are'

And they are, if a child plays with its food, it means that they're making the word 'Bumholes' with their alphabetti spaghetti, wheras if a cat's playing with its food it means that it's biting the leg off a baby bird and then jabbing it with its claws while it flails spastically about until one of its eyes pops out. (And yes, I have given myself extra points for using the word 'spastically' correctly and in context)

You can, and I have seen this happen to Mrs Dandy, feed a cat a plump, juicy prawn... Which it will proceed to eat, wash itself all over and then hunt you down and kick your ass by jumping from the ceiling fan, grabbing onto your ears with it's front paws and slicing your face open like an over-ripe beef tomato with its hind ones.

There is anecdotal evidence that they smother babies in their cots. According to Japanese sailors, they can bewitch you with their tails (I guess this really depends on how long you've been at sea). It was a commonly held belief that black cats are an incarnation of the Devil, which is a little racist, but I applaud the basic sentiment. and in the 9th Century, King Henry the First of Saxony was so seduced by a cat (History does not record whether he'd ever sailed on a Japanese boat) that he made it illegal to kill cats, a crime which carried a fine of sixty bushels of corn.  If that isn't evidence of witchcraft then I don't know what is.

This is our cat, Pop

She look like a perfectly normal, fuzzy little animal, until you realise... That her eyes don't have any pupils...

I leave you with a bit of ugly Feline doggerel.

There once was two cats of Kilkenny,
And each thought there was one cat too many.
So they quarreled and fought
and they scratched and they bit
Until there was only their nail,
and the tips of their tails
Instead of two cats, there weren't any.

And I think that sums it all up perfectly - Cats? Just say no.

Those pesky Colours

Actually, that sounds a bit racist doesn't it?  Unless your first thought was about washing machines that is, then you have my sympathy.

Well, that's completely not what I'm talking about, I mean actual colours, red, blue, green and yellow, things like that.  (I'm also not talking about Taupe, beige or camel - As, if you're a man, these aren't even real colours).

Something that I've always wondered, often at four o'clock in the morning, when it's raining and the cat's singing along to a particularly interesting bowel movement that she's having,  is - 'What if the colour that I think is red, is the colour that you think is blue?'

Do you know what I mean?

I don't mean 'I wonder if I'm colourblind?' or 'Is that a reddy-blue or a bluey-red?'  I mean, what if we see colours completely differently?

When you're a toddler, you learn the colour of things by example, your caring parents may have bought you one of those books with the cardboard pages that have pictures of cars and trucks and bunnies and chicks, opened it at a random page and gone 'Look at the Blue Car, lookit... Bluuuuueeeee caaaaaaaar... Can you say Bllluuuuuuuuuuuueeeeeeeeee Caaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr?' and after a while, your little sponge of a brain will make a quiet clicking noise and go 'The shape that the large, strange lady with the breath that smells of vodka is pointing at will now be categorised as "CAR" and its predominant colour is described as "BLUE" - File: save.'

From then on, everything that is that colour that can be thought about, touched or put in your mouth is described as Blue.  The same can be said of 'YELLOW CHICKS' or 'RED FISH', you get the idea...

But what if, something in between the camera that we call an eye, and the computer that we call a brain is wired differently?  What if the colour that your parents call 'Blue' is recognised in your head as the colour everyone else calls 'Red'?  How would you ever know?  Your friends would be sunbathing in the Summer under a bright Blue sky, and so would you, but unbeknownst to everyone (even yourself) you're seeing a Red sky... But you've been taught that that colour is actually called Blue.

You see, that's the problem with subjective things... only one person (The Subject themselves.) actually knows how they're experiencing something.

Same thing applies to smell, how do you know that the smell that everyone else smells when they say 'I love the smell of of freshly cut grass!' isn't actually the smell of an elephant with explosive diarrhoea - Not only would you not know, but you would also have been conditioned to believe that it was a nice smell! - Hot buttered toast could have the smell of a tramps gusset, fresh paint could smell like a burning duck (not a roasting duck, but like, what you'd smell if you went down to your local lake with a can of Lynx and a lighter.)

Your nearest and dearest could, to you, smell like a mixture of week old sweat, dried on urine and regurgitated spam vindaloo... Much like the chap who sat next to me on the bus to Nottingham yesterday,  But to you it smells like what we would all describe as expensive cologne and soap (which you've been taught to think are awful smells...)

I mean, I have no idea whether this actually does happen, and neither do any of the world's leading scientists, which by default makes me as least as intelligent as them... More so in fact, as I'll wager my left kidney and half an unused testicle that most of them haven't even thought about it.

Maybe colourblindness is actually your brain rebelling against your conditioning?

This demands further research... I'm going to buy a baby from eBay and give it different, random names for all the colours and smells, just to see if it'll work... Although, I guess that everyone in the world would have to be in on it...

You'd support me wouldn't you people of the Internet?

Internet people?

Hello?

Is this thing on?

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.