Nothing much to report about the Christmas Tree Festival, other than it seemed a bit half-hearted all round compared to previous years. I voted for the 'Emperor's New Tree', which turned epic laziness into an art form (there was no tree). On the upside we won a pencil and a small vial of bubbles in the tombola. And later we received a phone call saying we had won first prize in the raffle (see above).
Another trip to Meadowhall in Sheffield, this time with Christmas shopping in mind. On that note we visited Beaverbrooks, I had a £50 voucher if I spent over £200, and we were served by the perkiest shop assistant ever. Rose picked out a necklace and some earrings which came to about £175, so she ended up basically getting another pair of earrings free since adding them on took it over £200 and then the £50 voucher took it back down lower than it was to start with. Can't help but think the voucher didn't really achieve what they wanted it to, but it did make us go to their shop in the first place so I guess it did actually...
I visited TAG Heuer, unfortunately Maxine wasn't in, but Tom showed me the Year of the Rabbit Carrera and the solid gold Porsche Carrera, neither of which I had expected to see.
A very long day out in Nottingham started with a trip to the Mansfield Outlet store. Here we replenished our stock of Molton Brown Blue Maquis and also visited the Lindt shop where we bought some pick and mix to supplement the supermarket available Lindors in our Christmas bowl. While we were there I fished out my 'Loyalty Card' which had two spaces left on it. The guy on the till ticked those two and told us we were now entitled to a pick and mix of any 16 chocolates. We were super surprised by this as we thought the loyalty card would get us a tiny Santa worth 50p or something. An excellent surprise that one!
We then headed into Nottingham where Rose had booked an 'Alice in Wonderland themed VR Escape Room experience at the Meetspace VR place out the back of the shopping centre there. We had a quick wander around the shopping centre first and then headed off to the centre. On arrival we were shown to some sofas and asked to wait - to pass the time I played a very old motorbike video game which was quite amusing.
Eventually we were shown into our room and met our guide 'Bo'. She was very friendly and patient with us as we explained that we had never done any VR before and had very limited experience of escape rooms. The headsets were a bit uncomfortable to start with and the hand controls took some getting used to, thankfully the first part of the game was very simple - just finding some chests on different levels of a building and taking the keys to a padlocked door. We still needed help, as we are plainly mentally retarded.
The next part of the game involved finding hats at the Mad Hatter's Tea Party and using them to set clocks to release the door to the next part of the game. This was the most utterly confusing part, set in a cave with glowing mushrooms and a big glowworm in the middle. The aim (we eventually discovered) was to pick up a mushroom and take it somewhere else to eat it. But I either seemed to drop the mushrooms or (holding them in front of me so that I could see if I had dropped it or not) ate them prematurely.
Eventually, with much help from Bo, we made it to the next part of the game where we had to play croquet... but we ran out of time before we could even get started on that and so that was the end of that. To be fair, Bo even gave us an extra ten minutes cos we were so unspeakably useless, which was kind of her. I really enjoyed it, but it took a bit of getting used to. Rose was feeling a bit nauseous by the end I think, the VR can be a bit like that.
After this we headed off to 'Be At One' for a cocktail. We tried to go to a 'Be At One' in London once, but we couldn't get in... unfortunately it was a bit of a let down. The place was downstairs and looked great with colourful booths etc. It was happy hour so 2 drinks for the price of one. We decided to have two pina coladas, but of course they didn't have the stuff to make those so we had to choose something else. I don't quite remember what it was called, but it was nothing special and it came in a pint glass full of ice. Ten minutes later it was watered down to the point where it wasn't even as good as it started so we decided to forego a second drink. What a shame.
Finally we headed off to the Crowne Plaza hotel where we had booked a table for dinner. We got there about an hour early and after getting changed in the toilets we decided to have a drink in the bar. The bar was surprisingly busy for a Thursday evening, and the bar was clearly understaffed (and some of the staff they did have were being trained). We got our drinks eventually, well, kind of... Rose's wine didn't have any soda in it and I'm not entirely sure I got diet Coke, but whatever.
Eventually we traipsed over to the Swatch restaurant and that was very nice indeed. We both had a lovely burger garnished with bacon, etc and Rose had a kind of Frangipane thing for pudding while I had sticky toffee pudding. The chips could have been a touch hotter, but overall it was really nice and I would definitely go back. We just need to find a cocktail bar that isn't shit!
A slightly delayed trip to The Shires to celebrate my 53rd birthday with the Mums. Scampi was back on the menu so three of us had it, but my Mum opted for chicken kiev. The mains were fantastic but the puddings were slightly disappointing unfortunately: the cheesecake definitely wasn't as nice as the first one we had there, it was definitely lacking the toffee sauce!
I have to say that when I heard Carpenter Brut were playing the 02 Academy in Bristol I was more than a little surprised. After all, I thought the largely instrumental electronic band were rather 'niche' and I fully expected to arrive there to a half empty (at best) venue. Of course this proved to be woefully wide of the mark. The venue was sold out, as was the merch stall by the time we arrived to see the support act song half a song and leave the stage.
I wondered a bit how well Carpenter Brut's music would translate to the live arena and I have to say it was quite good, they certainly put on an impressive show with three large video screens spanning the stage and providing something to look at throughout the proceedings. It's a good job they did have those screens though as the band didn't interact with the audience too much, not even having a mic onstage to speak into.
But, by the end it did start to feel a bit repetitive, I think it would have helped to at least have film of the (guest) singers performing their parts on the vocal tracks to show on the screens and it did feel like a lot of what you were hearing was actually pre-recorded. For example they had a live drummer but his playing was clearly being mixed with the original drum tracks
Overall, it was enjoyable enough, although it would have been lovely if there had been a few less people there. I'm glad we saw them, but I'm not sure I would rush to see them again, especially as I really do prefer the early material, and I certainly wouldn't drive all the way to Bristol to see them again.
On the way home we stopped at a service station and Rose was appalled that I paid nearly three pounds for a bag of Malteser buttons. They were bloody nice though and I was very hungry!
This was the first gig I had gone to on my own since I saw The Birthday Massacre play in Wolverhampton back in 2017. I had been waiting to see Razor (and Whiplash) for 37 years and after the Sodom debacle at this same venue 11 years ago it was never likely to be any other way, besides which I think the days of Rose standing through bands she couldn't care less about is long since past, even if her leg was up to it. And that's fine, I'm quite happy going on my own if that's the case - it's better for both of us really.
This gig was originally supposed to take place in 2020 IIRC but of course the pandemic put paid to that. Prior to that, years ago Whiplash announced a gig at the Islington Academy, but that never happened either - so I was more than a little sceptical that this gig would ever take place, right up until I was actually standing outside the venue looking at the marquee outside...
I caught the last few songs of Scythian, who initially caught my ear with the thrashy sound of one song but quickly lost it again once they devolved into generic Death Metal nonsense. I tried to find a good place to stand around the balcony but eventually decided that I was going to go downstairs into the melee. I stood on the left side against a wall (so I couldn't get knocked over). The guy above me was filming and he put several videos up on YouTube.
First of course we had Whiplash, who were possibly the loosest band I had ever seen. To be honest they fucked up the end of the first song and the second song started badly too... but they got through the set (just about). Things came to a head during 'Walk the Plank' when a stage diver pulled Tony Portaro's guitar lead out of his pedal board, which meant they had to start the song again. After that the diving calmed down a bit, at least until the last three songs (all from 'Power and Pain') which started with 'Stage Dive', which as you can imagine meant it was 'game on' all over again. The guitar lead got pulled out again but a roadie dived onto the stage and pushed it back in again before the band stopped playing.
Despite the problems, I did enjoy the relatively short set, but I must admit I was hoping that Razor would be a bit more on top of things. After all, I'd waited a bloody long time to see them and there is absolutely no guarantee that they'll ever come back.
Thankfully I needn't have worried about them being tight, they were fantastically well rehearsed for a band that hadn't played a gig for 3 years. But I knew there was a 10pm curfew and they were supposed to be on stage at 9pm. As the minutes ticked by the audience got a bit irritated (and rightly so) with the delay, knowing it would cut into the band's setlist.
I myself spent a good portion of the set wondering if they would have to cut songs and as the time ticked by I got more and more concerned that they would drop 'Take This Torch' cos I knew they wouldn't drop 'Evil Invaders', but thankfully as the time approached 9:55 the familiar cymbal outro rang through the venue and for three and half minutes I was genuinely happy as a pig in shit.
It had been a long wait. An extraordinarily long wait to see Razor finally play in the UK (this was their first time here ever) and it was easily my gig of the year, and easily the best gig I've seen in a long time. The venue, even though it was sold out, was way better than I remembered. I had a brilliant view of the stage from three rows back, but of course there was a lot of stage diving and moshing going on so there were times when it was annoying. They also ran out of t-shirts before I got there, the sole shirt available was for 'Custom Killing' which not only has a crap album cover but it was blue not black!
The journey down was annoying too. There was industrial action planned on the Northampton line so I ended up driving to Luton and catching the train from there. They had a nice car park (soon to be app only though.... ffs) but the station was a crappy little place, I can't quite believe all the commuters who must live in London pass through that tiny little shithole every day to be honest.
Also finding the toilets in the cavernous St Pancras was a bloody nightmare, it's like an airport or something and the information boards aren't exactly prominent or large enough. In the end the 25min journey back to Luton took an hour and so it was 1AM by the time I got home. Worth it though!
