The Quick Pink Pup Jumped Over The Lazy Wolfienom

The Leeds Meet was back on form this weekend I feel after a rather lackluster one last month. I'm sure part of this was down to mindset but having the urban City Beach in Millennium Square undoubtedly helped. They really helped the fursuits come alive, offering two for one deals on the bumper cars and generally being receptive to our zaniness. Some furs went on the whirring ride but that was too extreme for this puppy while I wanted to go on the bouncy thing or the water zorbing but despite my best efforts to grab attention (not hard in a bright pink dog suit), they wouldn't let me go on. I think they were just for kids.

The bumper cars, like last year, were great fun and this time I got to ride them on my own rather than being chaperoned. I've only ever been on the bumper cars twice in my life - both in suit - and it was great fun crashing into people and stallking them with my quick ways. The same was true with hook a duck, where the lady and her kids were most receptive to the puppy. I got to win a teddy bear and, with a dart throwing game later, I got a minion for Wolfie which I could upgrade to a better minion for more throws. I scored 37 and 19 with my six darts (two sets of three), which was about what I would expect with darts out of suit. Indeed, like with bowling, the suit doesn't really hinder my performance, probably because that performance would be piss poor anyway.

The City Beach was great fun and we whiled two hours there easily, entertaining the kids and going mad on the concessions. With all that excitement I needed to sit down on the deck chair on the beach itself, before painting Oracle's face pink and tipping sand on his head. Tee hee hee I am naughty.

Tungro and Washu were staying at ours over the weekend and it was great seeing them again. They are a large part as to how I found my love of the fandom again - I had been struggling for the last few months - it's amazing what people with empathy can do. It was great chatting with them although they couldn't stay long, arriving late on Friday and having to leave Sunday lunchtime. Still it was good catching up and next time we are going to meet up outside of a meet so we can do something else with them. That should be October and I'm already looking forward to it..

Once they had gone, we had a little time to kill so we went to Wolfie's parents to get some wood before going into Leeds to try some new bars. We delayed going into Leeds as we didn't want to spend money nor get to drunk, although we ended up doing the latter anyway. There are new places opening up every month at the moment and we discovered a delicious new restaurant called Bird and Beast after initially wanting to go to Lab by the Arena, which we discovered wasn't open yet. Bird and Beast is a chicken rotisserie place but we arrived five minutes from closing, so they apologized as they had no birds left. They did have some Sunday roast though - succulent beef and pork with salty crispy crackling. As they were cleaning out the beer lines, they had already poured their final pints, necessitating another apology but they did give us a free beer to compensate as we could only get what we were given. Anyway, the food itself was the most scrumptious I've had in a long time - it really was first rate and there was so much of it. The meat was tender, the cracklinb divne and the vegetables actually tasted like vegetables and not watery mush. The cauliflower cheese was also another hit, with a subtle yet slightly tangy sauce. If this was their roast, I have peroxyms of joy thinking about what their main event would be. Afterwards we also chatted to the owner and our waitress, who told us more about the restaurant which opened in May and their plans to open another in Manchester and to build a bar on the Leeds site. I wish them well. Just go is all I'll say.

After this, we went to BrewDog to book a tasting session, where we tried the disappointing saison brewed with Stone and Magic Rock. We chatted to the staff a bit and noted the quietness of the bar. Then Bundobar, a new craft beer and Indian food tapas bar that opened five weeks ago. They had sold street food at the International Beer Festival last September so it was good to see they have a shop now. The range of beer was strong and as the line was finished we got more free beer (as we had done in BrewDog actually) so we got to try a greater range, including a nice floral Mickeller. The benefits of going out on a Sunday I guess. The barman here was friendly too although as we were the only ones in the bar, we felt we needed to leave even though the barkeep kept insisting there was no rush. Our final port of call was Tapped Brew Co, opposite which they are opening a new pub called The Griffin on the site of a former pub of the same name which opened in 1843. This may be more grizzled and real ale like - it promises the be interesting. We went to Tapped Brew as it was on our way home and it was the only place that was open. We noted the fermentation tanks were male being used to brew beer rather than just being there for an ornamental purpose while we sank a nice pint before heading home after a great evening.