It's November, so it must be time for the Fleckney Christmas Tree Festival. Yay! This year the exhibits somewhat less inventive than last and I rather struggled to find a tree I wanted to vote for. Actually we both voted for number 5, which did display some skills rather than just crap stuck in a tree. While we're on the subject, it's a 'CHRISTMAS TREE' Festival, so arranging various random Christmas ephemera - possibly including a small tree, doesn't really cut it. Either submit a tree or GTFO. On the upside, I did win a box of Toffifee in the tombola, so all was not completely lost.
Arenas suck, and that's all there is to it. But some bands can only be seen in Arenas, and since this is Slayer's final tour (and since we hadn't seen them since 1998) we thought we'd risk it...
The journey was horrendous, it took us 2.3/4hrs to get from home to the car park, which meant we missed almost all of Obituary's set (what a great start) arriving to hear the dying strains of one track and the final song 'Slowly We Rot'.... GRRR!
Walking into the Arena from the back it struck us both just how ridiculously big the place is, perhaps because we haven't been to an Arena gig since about 2010 and also because we've gotten used to seeing bands in small intimate settings - it just seemed HUGE!
We ended up down the front but right to the side, which gave us a good sideways view of the stage but put us right in front of the hanging speakers - so a rather abrasive sound. Anthrax were up next and they came on to an intro tape of 'Number of the Beast' and then hit the stage playing 'Cowboys from Hell'... which segued into 'Caught in a Mosh'. One thing about Anthrax is that Joey Belladonna can still sing, but he still looks like a total outcast in that band, overall it was... okay. Maybe Anthrax's music isn't dating as well as some bands of that era, I thought they would play 'Fight Em til You Can't' but instead we got two covers (Got the Time & Antisocial) in a seven song set.
Lamb of God were up next and they were just boring, frankly. A classic case of a band being so focused on being heavy and forgetting to right any decent songs. Not to mention every song seemed to carry the same mid-tempo pace.... we watched a good half an hour and then started the long trek back to the toilets (beat the rush!).
Arena shows suck, but at least Slayer spared no expense with the backdrops and the fire - so much fire, it was like seeing Rammstein all over again! Indeed, if we'd actually been able to see the band this could have been a top three gig of the year, but instead we merely caught glimpses of them when the crowd and the curvature of the Earth allowed it.
Still, from our vantage point near the sound-desk we finally got to enjoy perfect sound and the set-list was excellent (save for a trio of newer songs in the middle which really sapped the energy temporarily). Highlight for me was 'Chemical Warfare', which was sandwiched between the obvious encore standards 'Raining Blood' and 'Angel of Death'.
It was twenty years in the making and Slayer delivered a great show, but almost nothing would tempt me to an arena show again, and certainly not this one.
Another trip to Bicester Village, and we started off visiting the 'Tate' shop, which we've never been in before. I didn't take too much notice of it previously and didn't actually realise it was literally the 'Tate' gallery gift shop transported to Bicester! Some cool things in there but we didn't buy anything. Apart from that it was the usual suspects including Kate Spade, TAG Heuer, Ted Baker... but again we didn't buy anything from any of them.
Highlight of the day was visiting the new Karl Lagerfeld boutique, which had some really cool stuff and was actually more affordable than expected. T-shirts were £49 but resin handbags were about £90 and small leather ones about £120 - which doesn't seem to make much sense but there you are...
We haven't been to Cheshire Oaks since October 2017 and there's certainly been some changes in the meantime. For a start they've added a second layer of parking on one of the car parks and there's lots of building work going around the place - including a new Kate Spade store coming soon.
We didn't get a massive amount of stuff, I got some Timberland boots from 'Daniel' which were £85 but then £72 when they actually went through the till - result! Aside from that it was the Lindt shop and Hotel Chocolate that took the most of our money. I went in the TAG shop a couple of times and they had lots of new stuff, just not much that I wanted to buy and not much that I hadn't tried on before. I mean there was lots of Carrera, but not ones that I would go for, ah well. It was still a good day, pity there was so much time spent doing 50 on the motorway though.
