Our First Carol Concert for 2015

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Normally, our first Carol Concert in December is the Salvation Army event in town at The Citadel. Their event is next week, but it was ‘pipped at the post’ by this rather impressive celebration (that we only found out about earlier this year, courtesy of Valerie). David was good enough to chauffeur us there and back, and on arriving at the nearest car-park, it seemed that the whole of Kettering had also turned out too – In my 20 years living here, I have never seen the car-park so full!

Entering the Church, it certainly seemed to explain the bursting car-park! Seeing one packed without an empty pew these days, is a fairly rare beast, so it was good to see so may people supporting this annual affair. ‘Cosy’ therefore, turned out to be a pretty good description of the seating arrangements with the maximum number squeezed into each pew!. We saw Andrew and Jack – and Thomas found us amongst the congregation during the interval for a quick natter.

It was a packed programme: featuring The Virtuosi GUS Band (more famous that we initially thought! and featuring Thomas Fountain on cornet, who played at our Wedding), led by Adam Cooke; Belcanto Female VoiceChoir (featuring Valerie!) and The Hawthorn School Choir (starring a whole truck-load of sprogs, who sang as if their life depended on it!).


There was also a couple of opportunities for us in the audience to test their lungs with O Come All Ye Faithful and Once in Royal David City, and it looked (and sounded) like everyone was enjoying the opportunity.

They even managed to squeeze in a raffle that seemed to have more winning tickets than there were people! The only thing that looked like it might threaten the evening’s success was a couple of blips in the mains power that plunged us into darkness for a few seconds – we learned later that Kettering had experienced a minor power-cut.

All-in-all, it was a really enjoyable Concert, with a wide variety of music and I think we might do it all again next year.