All the way to Scunthorpe for an 8.30am start and all for one run before lunch. We have five other runs but they will all be in the afternoon. Doggo kind of makes it all worthwhile with his usual clear round but only just. Suppose it was his first outdoor show of the season, so I’ll let him off, one of us is probably just rusty.
Then it’s time to walk Psycho’s first course. MD is making his debut at a full Kennel Club show and it’s not exactly a nice course to start with, a real toughie. Thankfully though no tyre. I would say that the tyre is, at the moment, our nemesis but MD probably has too many nemeses to mention.
Despite the toughness of the course, his performance is pretty decent, fifteen faults (that’s three errors at five faults each). His second course though is a horror show, we get eliminated but what’s worse is that for the first time ever a judge asks me to leave the ring because he is taking so long to do the weaves. How embarrassing. In five years of competing with Doggo I’ve never been asked to leave the ring but I understood the judge’s point of view. We were holding up proceedings. He wouldn’t do the weaves at all. The only reason that I can think of for this is because there were only six of them and I’ve only been training him on the full twelve.
His final course had a tyre in it, so we were beaten before we started really but guess what, we get asked to leave the ring again and by a different judge. This time I was not happy. Just because I indulged in a spot of ‘illegal training’ by lifting him back onto a missed contact point. We’d only been in the ring ten seconds. That’s never happened before and I’d done that many times with Doggo in past.
Meanwhile Doggo slots in another clear. Then another elimination but not from MD, from Doggo. Gutted. That wasn’t supposed to happen. It was really good course for him too. Evil in fact, just how we like them, the judge was obviously under the influence when she set it. Lots of dogs were getting eliminated which gave us a great chance of a high placing. The start section was horrendous but we negotiated it fine. Then Doggo decided to go for a tunnel that wasn’t even in front of him. Huh! So miffed with him. We are so not speaking.
After all that I need a pint, well several actually. Thankfully L has had an equally traumatic day, so we mop up all the alcohol we can in Nottingham, taking in the Canalhouse and the Newshouse for a bit of variety from our usual haunts.
Showing posts with label Canalhouse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canalhouse. Show all posts
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
Not In The Traditional Style
I wear the boys out on the park and then try and follow Derby’s away game at Sheffield United on the internet, via the text updates. I used to listen to it on the radio on Medium Wave but Radio Derby now use Medium Wave for Burton Albion’s games which I can receive in perfect clarity, should I be interested. Unfortunately our FM reception is very poor and they don’t yet have a DAB channel. I could pay for internet commentary but don’t see why I should, as I don’t really understand why BBC local radio should be banned from broadcasting its own commentary across the internet, as they currently are. It would be different if someone else was broadcasting it, but no one is.
Anyhow Derby nearly win but concede a late equaliser. Although I think we would have been happy with a draw before the game started.
In the evening we get the bus out to Keyworth and meet some friends for a curry at the Cinnamon Indian restaurant there. My friend rarely has a good word to say about any meal he’s eaten in any restaurant, anywhere. However he says he rates this place so L and I, along with two other friends of his, have flocked there to find out why.
It’s not obvious. My starter is good but my main, my favourite Jalfrezi, is one of most anaemic I’ve ever had. Even my friend who recommended the place isn’t impressed on this occasion and complains about the Tarka Daal. They promptly bring him another one which is in a different league altogether. I wonder whether someone nipped out to the neighbouring takeaway when we weren’t looking because it’s so different and so much better. It has taste. The owner explains that the one he’s has just brought us has been done in traditional style... it is what the chef would cook for himself and his family... I’m confused here, I thought we’d come out here to sample the chef’s cooking but instead he’s cooking in the style of someone else. Someone who thinks none of his customers have any taste buds. This doesn’t say much for the good folk of Keyworth. Apparently if we’d asked the chef to put taste into all our meals he would have done. Well NOW you tell us. So now we’ll probably have to go back to sample it all over again, traditional style, but tonight was a wasted meal really.
Even the naan bread wasn’t very good, thin and uninteresting and it certainly didn’t have the face of Christ on it like that university student claimed his did or perhaps I just hadn’t drunk enough bottles of Cobra. That student must have been well trollied. Supposed we've all been there, drunk and hallucinating. Seeing Kate Moss walk into the curry house naked just as you’re dipping your poppadom in the lime pickle. Seeing that fit young lass from your maths class decades ago sitting at the table opposite, she’d always been too aloof to speak to you, but she’s winking at you now. Seeing that lass with the Oboe from the Guillemots tucking into her Madras... personal favouritism creeping in there.
We check out a few local pubs, a fairly uninteresting estate pub that did as decent a pint of Bombardier as you’d get anywhere, it’s just that all pints of Bombardier are on the dull side, and a better more traditional pub that forced me to drink the dreaded banned brewery closing Greene King’s Abbot Ale because all the other options weren’t that exciting. Yes, I’m a traitor.
Back in Nottingham we pop into the Canalhouse’s Beer Festival to see what they have left. The answer to which is very little, they have been more or less drunk dry. So, as it’s a Castle Rock house, I have the old faithful Screech Owl instead. The Canalhouse is an interesting pub, well it's a Canalhouse you know. It has a couple of barges and a canal in the middle of it.
Photo Matthew Black
Anyhow Derby nearly win but concede a late equaliser. Although I think we would have been happy with a draw before the game started.
In the evening we get the bus out to Keyworth and meet some friends for a curry at the Cinnamon Indian restaurant there. My friend rarely has a good word to say about any meal he’s eaten in any restaurant, anywhere. However he says he rates this place so L and I, along with two other friends of his, have flocked there to find out why.
It’s not obvious. My starter is good but my main, my favourite Jalfrezi, is one of most anaemic I’ve ever had. Even my friend who recommended the place isn’t impressed on this occasion and complains about the Tarka Daal. They promptly bring him another one which is in a different league altogether. I wonder whether someone nipped out to the neighbouring takeaway when we weren’t looking because it’s so different and so much better. It has taste. The owner explains that the one he’s has just brought us has been done in traditional style... it is what the chef would cook for himself and his family... I’m confused here, I thought we’d come out here to sample the chef’s cooking but instead he’s cooking in the style of someone else. Someone who thinks none of his customers have any taste buds. This doesn’t say much for the good folk of Keyworth. Apparently if we’d asked the chef to put taste into all our meals he would have done. Well NOW you tell us. So now we’ll probably have to go back to sample it all over again, traditional style, but tonight was a wasted meal really.
Even the naan bread wasn’t very good, thin and uninteresting and it certainly didn’t have the face of Christ on it like that university student claimed his did or perhaps I just hadn’t drunk enough bottles of Cobra. That student must have been well trollied. Supposed we've all been there, drunk and hallucinating. Seeing Kate Moss walk into the curry house naked just as you’re dipping your poppadom in the lime pickle. Seeing that fit young lass from your maths class decades ago sitting at the table opposite, she’d always been too aloof to speak to you, but she’s winking at you now. Seeing that lass with the Oboe from the Guillemots tucking into her Madras... personal favouritism creeping in there.
We check out a few local pubs, a fairly uninteresting estate pub that did as decent a pint of Bombardier as you’d get anywhere, it’s just that all pints of Bombardier are on the dull side, and a better more traditional pub that forced me to drink the dreaded banned brewery closing Greene King’s Abbot Ale because all the other options weren’t that exciting. Yes, I’m a traitor.
Back in Nottingham we pop into the Canalhouse’s Beer Festival to see what they have left. The answer to which is very little, they have been more or less drunk dry. So, as it’s a Castle Rock house, I have the old faithful Screech Owl instead. The Canalhouse is an interesting pub, well it's a Canalhouse you know. It has a couple of barges and a canal in the middle of it.
Photo Matthew Black
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