MIDNIGHT MASS: St Nicholas Church (Fleckney)

It's fair to say that we really didn't know what we were letting ourselves in for when we trundled up to the village church at 11:30pm on Christmas Eve. I was expecting a light service, for the mainstream 'once a year' visitor, possibly the church decorated with christmas trees and lights, possibly an orange with a candle stuck in it.
I wasn't expecting something akin to horror film cultishness, bible held aloft, responses, and the bells...oh the bells! After five minutes it was pretty clear that I didn't belong here, and I genuinely wanted to leave, in fact if we'd have been nearer the door I think I might have made a run for it. But no, we sat it out until the bitter end.

CAROLS ON THE GREEN (Fleckney)

Unlike some other years, this years Carols on the Green took place during an unseasonably warm spell. Everything else was as normal though, with the poor public address system as useless as ever (this year the wind buffeting the microphone made for an unending accompanying background rumble), the silver band forgetting to play the last verse of one of the carols, and the muppets who can't work out when they are supposed to start singing, all making this the special experience that it undoubtedly is.

MEAL OUT: The Quorndon Fox (Quorn)

Part of the same chain as The Grange, this is set in a very nice building, but the food was indifferent. I had a pie which was pretty bland (although the chips were nice), but Rose's steak was cold and chewy. The brownie's were nothing to get excited about really, thankfully we had a great laugh with Lee and Su anyway.

GIG: Kreator (Birmingham)

My sixth time seeing Kreator (Rose's fifth), and supported by the newly fronted Arch Enemy. The larger room at the Birmingham Institute was a great venue and Kreator utilised it perfectly with a huge screen and a confetti cannon. Arch Enemy were good, but a bit lacking in energy, whereas Kreator went off, and so did the crowd with a huge pit and people losing their shit all over the place.

The set list was biased towards the newer albums, but we did get Endless Pain, Tormentor, Flag of Hate, Pleasure to Kill, Phobia, People of the Lie and the intro to Awakening of the Gods, plus 'The Number of the Beast'! Now I wasn't expecting that.

MEAL OUT: Foxton Locks Inn (Foxton)

Sunday afternoon is never really a great time to be going out for lunch, and so it proved with the slowest service on the planet. EVER. That said, when the food did finally arrive it was actually rather nice. Even the bright orange cheese that was splattered all over my burger was quite nice and the orange mousse pudding was very good.

This was our pre-Christmas family meal and in attendance were my Mum and Dad, Sally, Elaine and Derek. And us, of course. My Dad was chuffed that seven of us cost less than £100, you certainly wouldn't feed seven people at the Grey Goose for £100.

GIG: Combichrist (Bristol)

Rich and I made the long trip to Bristol for our first sight of Combichrist. Some very odd people in attendance, not least the very scary, very tall and not very convincing transvestite! Support band was William Control, who is okay, but only seems to have one song that he plays over and over again. Combichrist gave us a good selection of songs, opening with We Love You, they also played (Get Your) Body Beat, Maggots at the Party, Electroheadz, Love is a Razorblade and This is my Rifle and encored with 'What the Fuck is Wrong With You'. Pretty much came over like a Metal band live, high energy and solid, but not quite as good as Aesthetic Perfection somehow.

GIG: At The Gates (Birmingham)

Having last seen At the Gates in 1996 at Rock City touring their classic 'Slaughter of the Soul' album, expectations were high. And boy did the venue (Oobleck) make it hard to enjoy this show. Morbus Chron were okay, but the fact that it was difficult to see even them, with plenty of people next door in the bar, was enough to set alarm bells ringing.

Tryptikon were on next and immediately the scale of the problem became fully apparent, too many people and not enough room. Tom's crew didn't exactly give the crowd an easy ride, playing about five songs in 45 minutes, just two of which were Celtic Frost classics (The Usurper and Circle of the Tyrants).

At The Gates took the stage to a room packed to the gills and they sounded great, we just couldn't hardly see much of them at all. At least not until we left the venue and walked around the water feature in the courtyard, then we could see the band fine, through the open doors - the open doors which meant the venue, though packed to the rafters, was freezing cold!