Returning Home
22 July

I know that I've said it before in various ways but one of the best parts about travelling is the return home.

Unusually, neither Nutkin nor Jemima scorned the attentions of either Ross or myself.

The garden had come on in a few days; the clary sage were a purple glory, both hostas were out, the clematises had spread and flowered further, the honeysuckle had blossomed, the morning glories were living up to their name, poppies had sprung up from nowhere, nasturtiums are thriving, the astilbe is a coral pink wonder, the mallow is flourishing and the buddleja is coming into flower. It was a haven to sit out there and drink tea and read.

I should also pay tribute to the plum tree which is bearing some two dozen rapidly plumping fruits and my little holly bush which I have nurtured from a single leaf discovered among the overgrown borders when I first moved into this house and is now quite sturdy and is putting out side branches. We also have a herd of caterpillars which are chomping their way through the nasturtium leaves in the back garden with a view to producing butterflies at some stage.

Monday and Tuesday passed pleasantly enough and then in the evening I made the journey back to Buxton on my own for a final operatic treat, Bampton Classical Opera's performance of Giovanni Paisiello's The Barber of Seville.

This is one of those operas which you hear a lot about in the history books but which very rarely get an outing. It is famous for having inspired Mozart to produce Le nozze di Figaro and for having given Rossini all sorts of problems when he penned his own take on the story.

In the event, I think that it is probably an OK piece of work worth three stars in its own right . However, I do think that it was badly let down by a trivialising production which produced one of the longest and most bum-numbing evenings at this year's festival despite being the shortest work in duration. Everyone just tried too hard through lack of experience so that it was all too much like an end-of-the-pier carry on show rather than a farce shown through a serious social situation and so I can only give the show two stars.

What was interesting were the similarities and dissimilarities between this work and the later Rossini venture. Almaviva serenades Rosina in both (but Rossini's aria is better), Figaro has an opening, character setting aria in both (but Rossini's aria is better), Basilio has a calumny aria in both (but Rossini's aria is better), there is a singing lesson scene in both (but Rossini's scena is better), there is a storm music interlude in both (but Rossini's interlude is better), there is a big concerted finale at the end of the second act (but Rossini's finale is better). Paisiello introduces to servant characters but these add little to the comic effect. Paisiello's work is short and more compact but Rossini's feels to be the fleeter of the two.

Although I'm not entirely happy with Bampton's presentation of the Paisiello, I'm very grateful for the opportunity of hearing the work and being able to make the comparison's. On the whole though, it is the Rossini to which I shall return and not the Paisiello.

So, in less than a week, I have been to four operas and, moreover, four operas that I had not ever seen before. I encountered one dynamite performance of a masterpiece, one attractive performance of a minor work which I should want to see again some time, one competent performance of a juvenile piece from the pen of a genius and this final work which was a major success in its time but was not given the performance it deserved. Just look at the list!

• George Frideric Handel's Ariodante
• Otto Nicolai's Merry Wives of Windsor
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Ascanio in Alba
• Giovanni Paisiello's The Barber of Seville

Where else but at an imaginative festival like Buxton could one possibly hope to experience such a diversity of lesser known operas?

We bought our copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince from Pritchard's in Crosby earlier in the week and Ross is now approaching two thirds of the way through its 600 and odd pages. He's on a strict code of discipline not to give anything away.

The only two facts that I know are that someone will die and that someone will be named as the half-blood prince. I have guesses.

Aesthetically, the candidates for death are measured by the logic of Harry's trials by suffering.

• Professor Dumbledore - because Harry needs to experience the loss of his greatest mentor
• Ron Weasley - because the best friend often dies
• Molly Weasley - because this would be akin to Harry losing his mother for a second time, having (in Sirius) lost his father a second time in the previous book

Candidates for the half-blood prince are a little more difficult to discern.

• Neville Longbotton - because it's been obvious for a while that there's more to him than meets the eye
• Severus Snape - because this would cause maximum embarrassment to Harry
• Viktor Krum - because this would re-introduce a character from Book 4 whose name was kept before us for no plot reason in Book 5, would re-ignite the Victor, Ron, Hermione love triangle and would bring a little more exoticism into the proceedings

Anyhow I shall have to wait for my beloved to finish reading before I shall find out for myself.

On Wednesday evening, the two of us took some down time to watch Kinsey, a superior bio-pic about the fabled scientist who brought a statistician's eye to issues surrounding human sexuality and, in doing so, challenged all sorts of received wisdom about its nature and its lack of diversity. The film was necessarily low key in its presentation and Liam Neeson was effective in the title rôle. It was good but not great.

We're continuing to smarten up the house bit by bit. Having had the carpet in the front room cleaned recently, we decided to protect it from a little household dirt (we frequently eat off trays in that room whilst watching television) by buying a rug. A trip to B&Q paid dividends and we both think that it looks rather smart.

Ross is continuing with his preparations for the weekend's wedding. He has been commissioned to produce the board containing the seating plan for the wedding breakfast and has laboured long and hard for many weeks on an elegant and sophisticated design. It's not many sisters who can call on the talents of an artist in the family.

Meanwhile, Ross's brother, Sam, has been proving himself to be a teenage drama queen. There's a move for him, me, Ross and Ross's dad to go out for a meal together on Friday night whilst the women in the family are off doing other things. Apparently, the owner of the restaurant we were due to visit knows that Sam is gay (how he knows this is not presently known) and Sam has thrown a hissy fit in case his cover is blown (although that may not be the only thing that has been blown, of course ).

Quite why he thinks that someone is going to call him out in the middle of a crowded restaurant when his family is present I do not know. I blame it all on the hormones. Oh, the Clark parents! To have one son who is gay might be considered unfortunate; to have two is surely more than carelessness.