Anniversary hockey night

After our trip to see the Cardiff Devils on August bank holiday, I noticed there was a game on the night of our wedding anniversary. I bought the last pair of tickets left in the 'home' end and so, for our 27th wedding anniversary, we watched some hockey!

The ice hockey season starts with the Challenge Cup games. The opponents were Manchester Storm. The arena was almost completely full. A fun night beckoned. 

I'd joked with friends that 27 years is the "ice and violence" anniversary. There was a surprising amount of violence in this game. Lots of punch ups resulted in 38 minutes of accumulated penalties in the first period alone. A Storm player got done for "checking to the head". Later a Devils players incurred a 2 minute, 5 minute and 10 minute penalty all for the same incident. The 10 minute was for "instigating" because he started the fight.

The actual hockey in between the scraps wasn't great. Cardiff were the better side but only scored their first two goals when they had an advantage of a power play. Their third goal came after Storm had a late goal disallowed - I think because there was interference with the Devils goalie. With just a couple of minutes to go Storm took their netminder off to give them an advantage in attack but the Devils broke and a player scored from the halfway line into the unguarded goal. 

There was a reminder among the honours banners of how thing were different in ye days of olde. Remember cigarette sponsorship?

So the final score was 3-0. A reasonable win and a happy result for our anniversary.

Silver plus one - celebrating with rock!

This year Cathy and I celebrated our wedding anniversary by seeing one of our favourite bands - Terrorvision - on our actual anniversary itself. It meant taking a trip to Wolverhampton but it was well worth it.

The gig was at KK's Steel Mill. It's a converted industrial building that's now a rock and metal venue and owned by a former member of metal band Judas Priest. It was a decent size, well laid out and the staff working there were absolutely lovely. 

The gig itself felt like a throwback to when we first started going to Terrorvision gigs back in the 90s (and before we were married!) Most of the setlist was from their first two albums - including My House and American TV. They also mixed in songs from their new album, We Are Not Robots, which we had received in the post last week and listened to a few times in preparation for the gig.

We Are Not Robots is Terrorvision's first album in 15 years and for me it feels like they recaptured their sound from 30 years ago. They have returned to what they do best - fast, guitar driven songs with catchy hooks in the choruses. 

As a band they have also literally grown. Three of the original members remain, but there were seven musicians on stage. Millie, who plays a lot of gigs with singer Tony Wright when he plays his own stuff, was on keyboards. They also had a trumpet player and a saxophonist who added some depth on several songs - especially on Pretend Best Friend. 

They did one song for the encore. It will come as no surprise to fans that they signed off with Oblivion. 

The merch guy said they don't know what the plans are yet for Terrorvision gigs next year, which implies their might be another tour. 2025 will mark the 30th anniversary of when Cathy and I first saw them live - at the old Newport Centre - and hopefully we can mark that anniversary by seeing them again.