GIG: Amaranthe (Manchester)

No sooner had the words 'We're never going to Manchester for a gig again' left our lips than Amaranthe announced three UK dates including one in Manchester... literally two days after the ABBA Voyage. Brilliant. So there was no way we were going back to London, and Bristol is a pain in the arse too - so back to Manchester we went.

In order to take the potential for stress out of the experience, we decided to leave mid-afternoon and find a pub on the way to eat at and this worked pretty well. We visited the Dun Cow near Ollerton (off Junction 19 of the M6) and had a very nice scampi and chips followed by ice cream (Rose) and sticky toffee pudding and salted caramel ice cream. Because vanilla just isn't sickly enough! Nice pub, pity it's so far away... but would definitely go back if there was another must see gig in Manchester that we needed to go to.

We managed to navigate to the Cecil Street car park pretty smoothly (for a change) although of course the minute we parked it started raining. In fact judging by the amount of water on the roads on the way home it must have rained quite a bit while we were in the venue. 

We got there at just before 8PM; even though we knew that 'officially' Dragonforce were on at 8:00 and Amaranthe were on at 9:45 there was always the possibility of a switcheroo, as this was a co-headliner (Dragonforce headlined the other two UK dates). 

We were under the impression that the (sold out) gig was in the Academy 2 where we had previously seen Tarja and also Delain, but it turned out it was in the main Academy - so pretty impressive that it was sold out! Predictably the venue was rammed and after watching the first three minutes from the back of the venue, we decided that frankly Dragonforce suck massively with their incessant computer game widdling, so we headed to the upstairs bar and were pleasantly surprised to find lots of empty seats. Excellent. 

Dragonforce's six hour set dragged on and on, I mean it was only about 70mins but by Christ it seemed a lot longer, until finally, finally they fucked off. Thank you Jesus! The only good thing about their set was that they had a couple of oversized arcade machines on the stage which they could stand on to play, giving people at the back a great view. Oh and they also had some big dragon heads on stage later too. But that didn't change the fact that their music fucking blows.

A constant stream of people left the room after Dragonforce but we eventually managed to get inside, secretly hoping that at least some of those people wouldn't be coming back. Thankfully, some of them didn't, because the room was definitely less crowded for Amaranthe, though still a healthy crowd. Well, I say 'healthy', perhaps not the best term to use for this bunch of unwashed leprechauns... but still.

Now I'm not going to lie, Amaranthe aren't exactly my favourite band, but they're alright and I like some of their songs (Digital World, Mesmerize, Crystalline...). Nils Molin is probably the best singer in metal these days, I mean he sounds exactly like Ronnie Dio but with more range, and it doesn't get much better than that! 

Unfortunately they also have the Cookie Monster, who rather spoils what could otherwise be good songs with his solo parts. I wish they would just have him sing background vocals where they think it's necessary (or ideally not at all). He doesn't seem to add much to the proceedings other than sounding hilariously OTT in a band with as 'polished' a sound as Amaranthe - I mean sometimes they verge on sounding 'pop', and there he is acting like he's in Cannibal Corpse.

Elize is also a very good singer and very capable in the live setting and it was interesting that the vocalists seem to share the spotlight pretty equally rather than it being focussed on her. Unfortunately that meant the Cookie Monster got far too much time at the front of the stage, but eh... whatever.

The crowd loved them and I must admit I enjoyed them more than I thought I was going to. Rose loved it, which is the main thing. And even though we were a long way back at least we weren't packed in like sardines. 

We had a pretty smooth journey home too, after a wait in the car park - eventually resolved when the barrier was opened (we think the pay machine wasn't working - why put the pay machine on the actual exit barrier?). 

DAY OUT: ABBA Voyage (London)

T'was rather a long (some might say unnecessarily long) day in old London town today, even though we caught the 11:48 to Euston and didn't get into the capital until nearly 1pm. We had an appointment at WF in Avery Row to keep and then we headed off to the Sound Cafe. Unfortunately they had changed the menu and put the prices up, so that was a shame... but anyway, it killed an hour and a half before we headed off to Stratford and (allegedly) the biggest shopping mall in Europe!

It honestly didn't seem that big really, but they did have some cool shops and I got to try on the new TAG Heuer sunglasses, which were interesting. We thought about buying some buns from M&S and then thought about trying to find somewhere to sit down and have a drink, but in the end we settled on Zizzis where we had a couple of Cokes and some fries (which were surprisingly nice actually).

Then it was off to the DLR, our next stop 'Pudding Mill Lane' station which is directly opposite the ABBA Arena. Needless to say there were some 'interesting' looking people heading towards the arena, though the crowd was generally older than anticipated with lots of people in their 60s and 70s in attendance. They told us to get there an hour before the show started at 7:45pm. God knows why, I guess they want you to buy drinks, food and merchandise... which we didn't. Thankfully the time passed relatively quickly and before we knew it it was 7:30pm and we were asked to go to our seats. 

I don't really know what I expected when the show started, but somehow I expected the holograms to be a little larger. I mean, they are supposed to be life-size (albeit they seemed rather taller and thinner than reality) so I guess they were probably about the right size, but because they looked a long way back on the stage they appeared smaller than perhaps they were intended.

The first three songs I did not know. They could be new songs from the recent album I guess, the first one sounded quite good, almost a bit like The Gathering. After that it was largely hits with a few curveballs thrown in for good measure. The ABBAtars (see what they did there) weren't on stage all the time, some songs were performed without them appearing on stage but with videos, which was okay. There was also a couple of songs which were accompanied by animation of some character (who looked a bit like Pob) roaming around a forest - it looked very game like and he was clearly doing some sort of quest, finding an amulet and presenting it to the Abba Gods.... or something. Not quite sure.

The avatars themselves were impressive, although they aren't as yet good enough to convince you that you are seeing 'real people' on stage. Oddly the very close-up footage featured on the video screens (of which there is a lot) looks better than the wider shots - in which Agnetha was giving me serious Princess Fiona vibes. I think Benny and Frida seemed to be rendered better than Bjorn and Agnetha overall.

There was a brilliant transition from video to ABBAtars at one point - when the band were presented wearing these 'TRON' like costumes (think it was during 'Summernight City') and the production cleverly used the video screens which extended out from the sides of the stage and around the sides of the venue.

After the first couple of songs, we suddenly realised there was actually a band on stage performing along with the backing tracks. This must have been a bit annoying for the people standing on the left side of the dancefloor as they would have been impeding their view of the ABBAtars, Still we were encouraged to applaud them as they performed one of the songs unaided - which is kind of pointless, since the whole thing about this was seeing the closest thing we could to ABBA themselves, not a tribute act.

There is definitely a bit of 'Uncanny Valley' going on at times, since the ABBAtars are just good enough to be a bit creepy looking and I couldn't help but think it was a bit of a cop-out using video from the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest to fill out five minutes of the show, but I guess that is important for the history of the band. Poor Agnetha looked an absolute lemon though, I bet she loves being reminded of her terrible blue trousers, hilarious silver boots and the ridiculous bonnet thing on her head.

It was about this time that people started getting out of their seats to dance, even Rose. Unfortunately the old boy in the seat in front of us ended up falling flat on his arse, and in the process somehow managed to splash his pint all over us. You couldn't make it up... 

Anyway, that was about it really. Dancing Queen ended the show... well everyone thought it was the end, but then they did a sort of encore of 'Winner Takes it All' before the real ABBA came out on stage to wave and thank us for coming, except of course it wasn't the real ABBA it was more holograms - but these looked much more realistic as they were made using live footage rather than renders.

Predictably the tube station was rammed but we managed to get on the second train out of there but missed the 10:09 back to Northampton. Instead we got the 10:39 which was packed to the gunnels and we also had to sit opposite the two most boring women in the world who were wanking on and on about the comings and goings of the street they live in, and sharing photos of people they know who are 'transitioning' or who are in 'polyamorous relationships' (oh do fuck off), all in the most irritating voices imaginable.

As I said, it was a very long day. 

DAY OUT: Red Bull Racing Factory Visit

Rose very generously bought me (and her, obviously) tickets for the Red Bull Factory tour for Valentines Day.

After a morning at the MK centre we eventually made our way to the Red Bull factory for our 3pm appointment and after being guided by the gatehouse to park outside the building marked MK-7 we joined the queue of about 40 people waiting to take the same tour. I immediately clocked the massive Heuer 01 Carrera skeleton wallclock hanging on the wall behind reception, temporarily oblivious to the lanyard I was being handed (I still kinda wish I had bought one when I was offered it, but at £850 it seemed way too much at the time).

Having draped ourselves in tour guest passes, we were instructed to go through to the main foyer (containing another Heuer 01 wallclock) and a Red Bull decked out in a 2018 testing livery. The car had Daniel Ricciardo's name on it but for some reason there was a cardboard cut out of Sergio Perez standing next to it - I guess they didn't want the whole tour to be all about Max...

This livery was pretty cool actually and I got a really nice shot of the TAG Heuer logo on the side of the cockpit which I will post later. I hadn't been up close with a Formula 1 car for a little while and it still amazes me how big they are compared to the older cars of the 1980s. They are also a million times better built, I remember visiting the Donington Museum years ago and being horrified at how ramshackle the cars looked with riveted aluminium body panels and wings (though I can't help thinking aluminium wings were quite a good idea since they didn't disintegrate into a thousand tiny pieces of tyre slashing debris at the slightest impact!). 

Once it was established that all the tour guests had arrived we were shown through a door into a corridor lined with epic moments from Red Bull's Formula 1 history, starting with none other than Gerhard Berger who, in the 1980s, became the very first 'Red Bull Athlete'.

This led into a much larger room in which sat an impressive semi circle of Red Bull F1 cars, all of the cars in fact except the RB8, which is apparently the one they usually use for exhibitions (mainly because it has a good old V8 engine in it so it sounds like people still think Formula 1 cars are supposed to sound - that was a direct quote, haha).

We were allowed to mooch around all the cars (as long as we didn't lean on them or take photos of the back ends of the cars) and so the next fifteen minutes were spent tootling around from one car to the next, taking endless photos...

Well actually... the very first thing I did, like literally the first thing I did was to completely ignore the array of Formula 1 cars in front of me completely and pounce on our tour guide and pummel him for information about the Max Verstappen / Red Bull Formula 1 watch that was gifted to the employees at the factory. Poor Guy... he confirmed he had received one, but no he wasn't wearing it and he didn't think anyone at the factory was actually wearing them as they had all been taken home for safe keeping.

Rats! 

Unsurprisingly he couldn't tell me if it had a unique part number or not and he seemed quite perturbed that anyone would care about such a thing. I guess Guy isn't really a watch guy, hey. He did also mention that there was a ladies version, but I think what he meant was that the ladies who didn't want a 43mm Formula 1 were probably offered a standard Aquaracer or something, this would explain why there were 1275 pieces of the watch but there were nearer 1500 employees on site. I definitely don't think he meant there was a 'ladies' version of the celebration watch.

Anyway, I tried my best to get the info... hopefully we'll get it eventually. Guy even asked one of his colleagues (who I noticed was wearing the old 'Red Bull' Heuer 01 skeleton)

So I did what any sane person would do in the situation, and took a wrist shot of my orange dial Formula 1 in front of one of the more recent cars. You may remember Max wore this one for a few races a few years back, but of course he never had it on a bracelet - an upgrade I thoroughly recommend! 

All too soon we were gathered into three groups of about 13 people and despatched in different directions with our respective tour guides. From this point on you were not allowed to take photographs at all, or even have your phone out of your pocket - which is fair enough, after all we were seeing production work for 2024 cars so even if we didn't understand what we were looking at they definitely don't want photographs flying around and being posted for all to see on the internet. 

Over the next 90mins or so we got to see the electronics department, the CNC machines (engineering), the paintshop and the autoclaves where the carbon fibre parts are baked. We also got to see Red Bull's four 3D printers, which were very different to ones I'd seen previously in that whereas you usually expect the printer to deposit material onto the base plate to build up the part required, here the base of the machine was a tank of liquid plastic (£60,000 a time apparently) and the very top layer was 'solidified' by a laser before the base sank down a fraction of a millimetre and the process was repeated.

This meant that the part was actually formed under the surface, so all you could see in the hours and days that the process was running was the laser flicking across the surface. Once completed of course the base plate lifts up to reveal the completed component which is then cleaned up and painted black before being sent to the wind tunnel for testing. Nothing that is 3D printed actually ends up on the car itself, it is only used for making 60% models for the wind tunnel.

The wind tunnel unfortunately is thirty minutes away (at least for the moment, Red Bull are just starting the process of building a new one on site) so we couldn't see that, but we did get to see the Red Bull trophy cabinet, which is just bonkers. This is the original cabinet you can see here, but with the team's ridiculous run of success over the past few years they quickly ran out of space, so they built more cabinets above the doors... 

It was actually a pity that the trophies are displayed like this as I would have loved to have been able to see them all properly, but that's just impossible. My photos really don't convey just how high these cabinets are, but take it from me they must be at least 20 feet up, if not more. They did have the World Constructors and World Drivers Championship trophies on display as well, and thankfully they were much more accessible.

These two are held by the team only for the duration of the year following the championships and have to be returned for presentation at the FIA gala in December. Though I'm guessing Red Bull are pretty sure they'll be back here next year too judging by the first two race results. 

Outside we saw Christian Horner and Adrian Newey's road cars and we were also shown the windows of their offices en-route to a different part of the factory. Speaking of Adrian Newey, I did briefly catch a glimpse of him leaving reception right at the end of the tour, well... more the back of his head than anything, but still! The most successful man in Formula 1. Ever!

The Hungarian GP trophy, broken on the podium by Lando Norris

Along the way we learned some interesting facts, and some myths were busted. For example the one about F1 teams using matt finish paint because it is less draggy. I always thought that one was a bit suspect, and it turns out it is actually cobblers. Red Bull just thought it looked better, so they did it and several other teams followed suit. Of course, maybe they thought that's why Red Bull did it, if so... that's hilarious.

We also learned that the team makes its own wheel nuts and these are only used once. Just think about that for a moment. So let's say it's a two stop race, that means you use twelve wheelnuts on each car, plus however many in practice and qualifying sessions. Well at least the same in the qualifying, maybe more as there's three sessions and you use either one or two sets per session. Plus three practice sessions... so let's take a guess at between 80 and 90 per weekend? Those wheelnuts cost £1000 each.

We also got to see 'Mission Control' where the engineers and technical personnel who can't attend the race (there is a limit of 60 crew per team for every race) sit to watch and contribute to strategic decision making. This looks a lot like NASA's 'Mission Control' and was in fact designed in conjuction with someone who came over from NASA to advise. 

Another building we visited is used to strip down the older cars that are used for exhibition runs, and so we saw several more cars including one in quite an advanced state of disassembly. This room also housed two Aston Martin Valkyries both of which were painted dark blue. One belongs to the designer Adrian Newey and the other to the late Dietrich Mateschitz's son Mark. Unfortunately Mark Mateschitz is apparently quite tall and the car is not really built for his frame, so Adrian was in the process of redesigning the interior to accommodate him.

Finally we got to see the space where the team practice their pitstops, and right there in the centre of the room was Max Verstappen's 2024 race car. This room also features several authentically sized pit garages where the mechanics can practice working on the cars in the limited space available. Also, on the walls above and opposite the garages were two Aquaracer wallclocks. In fact these things were ten a penny in the factory, it seemed like around every corner you would spot one... so cool. And there was a Monaco wallclock on the wall behind the two Valkyries too (and another Heuer 01 wallclcock in the gift shop). 

And then we were walked back to reception where we exchanged our lanyards for goodie bags. Ours contained a Red Bull baseball cap, a Red Bull key ring, a super cool Red Bull branded drinks bottle and a special 'Max Verstappen' can of Red Bull, all contained in a nice Red Bull rucksack kind of thing with string shoulder straps. It really was a great experience, and I am very grateful to Rose for taking us there. If you can afford it I'd definitely recommend it - it's certainly something that will live long in the memory and experiences like this are priceless really.

ESCAPE ROOM: The Raven's Revenge (Northampton)

Our third visit to Horton's Emporium in Northampton and it did not disappoint. We managed to complete the room in just under 38 mins, which is pretty fast by all accounts. This was mainly because I decided to shortcut the order by working out what was written on the wall which led us to the main key. Gina did say that she'd told the owner that they ought to do something to prevent this happening but even so it was very rare that anyone actually figured it out. Actually it was possible that I might have done it in the first ten minutes, but I thought I better try and find the other keys first. It wasn't until we got stuck that I decided to have a go. 

MEAL OUT: The Langton Arms (Church Langton)

 

Our yearly visit to The Langton Arms, once again for Sally's birthday. No scampi on the menu this time so we all had sausage and mash, which was lovely but I burned my tongue on my sausage (not pleasant!). I had sticky toffee pudding for dessert while the the others had orange and passionfruit torte with coconut sorbet. Rose had serious pudding envy, I did not.