Virtual Opera
22 August

I've been trying to get some downtime to get my head in order.

Ross and I went over to the East cost to see his parents. We also took his grandad out for the day. For someone who is living with a diagnosis of inoperable bowel cancer, he is remarkably chipper about life. We went to Burton Agnes and had a look round the house and gardens before descending on the tea room.

From there it was but a hop, skip and a jump to Pickering where I encountered on of the great discoveries of the year. Ever since watching Andrew Graham-Dixon's A History of British Art on BBC4 over a decade ago, I have been fascinated by our lost artistic heritage of the Middle Ages. I have been lucky enough to be able to see medieval art in situ in churches in Brussels and Nürnberg as well as seeing an array of intact Medieval alterpieces in Budapest. This sort of work is rare in this country after our cultural purges of the 16th and 17 centuries.

So, I was really quite stunned and surprised to see Medieval artwork of this quality in a church in Pickering.

I could have spent the rest of the day there but we headed off for some very superior fish and chips and then home.

On top of all that, there was a bit of a scare with Ross who had a massive asthma attack one Sunday morning and ended up being admitted into Aintree Hospital for observation for a couple of days. All seems right now and he's back at home with strict instructions for inhaler use.

It is so grey, damp, chill and miserable out there as we come to the end of August that I am sorely tempted to get my winter woollies out of the cupboard.

With the poor weather this summer, I've been cooking an awful lot of winter-style meals - casseroles and roasts and the like.

I wanted to branch out a little and so, having discovered Radio 4's Cook the Perfect micro-website, I've now had a go at spinach tortillas, chorizo risotto and coq au vin. The last was quite fun. I've never flambéed meat with brandy before.

One bonus of the inclemency of the weather, however, has been the regular small crops of breakfast raspberries in the back garden each morning after the overnight night. However, I do wonder how many caterpillars I ate when I was a child. Lols.

The other thing that I've been investigating has been opera on the Web. Glyndebourne has, for example, made all of this year's Festival available through live transmission and subsequent on demand catch-up. I found myself dipping into things rather than sitting through them.

For example, the bits of The Cunning Little Vixen that I saw made me want to see the whole thing in the theatre but despite excellent conducting from Vladimir Jurowski and an excellent all round ensemble cast featuring Sergei Leiferkus, Lucy Crowe and Emma Bell, I didn't find the time to settle and watch it before the limited on demand time expired.

The same was sort of true of Le nozze di Figaro. I loved Michael Grandage's production of Billy Budd a couple of years ago. This I just couldn't get into and so let it be.

I should probably have made more of an effort with Jonathan Kent's production of Purcell's The Fairy Queen but, again, I didn't have the staying power.

I did, however, stay with the Ravel double bill. L’heure espagnole was great fun.

L’enfant et les sortilèges was a delight. I could have watched them both again.

The Wagner Festival at Bayreuth telecasts most of its productions. Kind souls often make these available over the Web at a later date. I was unexpectedly taken with what I saw of Stefan Herheim's production of Parsifal. It took a redemptive journey through German history since the mid-nineteenth century and reflected Bayreuth's responses to that narrative. Surprisingly, it did work and it looked quite restrained and noble as well.

However, despite blazing conducting from Andris Nelsons, I could not stomach the latest production of Lohengrin replete with laboratory rats.

No. No. No. No. No.

I don't care what the intellectual rationale is.

No. No. No. No. No.