Forget Prozac, buy yourself some tickets to the London revival of Singin' in the Rain

I discovered the prescription to instant happiness in spring of 1984.

It wasn't drugs, alcohol or conspicuous consumption. Thankfully, it was a lot cheaper than all of those. It was simply watching a musical.

I was suffering from some crushing romantic blow at university ... now long forgotten ... when my pledge daughter, Kathy Tilden, offered the answer. (Pledge daughters being pre-initiates in a sorority who choose you as their older mentor in the house, and who usually become especially dear friends for life.) It was a Saturday night and we were both without plans. We claimed the sitting room and its big TV, ordered a pizza, and Kathy slipped her copy of Singin' in the Rain into the VCR.

I had, of course, seen clips of the best bits. Like most little girls in the '70s I'd devoured the That's Entertainment film franchise, which included the iconic title number with Gene Kelly stomping in puddles, Donald O'Connor's romp through Make 'em Laugh, and the trio (adding Debbie Reynolds) dancing around the world and over a couch, in Good Morning. The complete film turned out to be two hours of pure happiness, and in all the years since, I've known that if I wanted a jolt of joy, I only needed to watch it again.

Imagine my anticipation, and speed to box office, when the Chichester Festival's highly acclaimed production transferred to the West End's Palace Theatre. Last night was the big outing, shared with London Northwestern sisters, Hillary and Lisa.

Don't assume, just because I'm a rabid fan of the film, that I'd be an automatic advocate of the stage show. I went in with critical expectations, and a deep fear they'd muck with perfection. Nope. I had a smile on my face from the first strains of the overture to the curtain call and, despite the cramped legroom of our discounted front-row balcony seats, could have taken a short break and watched the whole thing again, immediately.

They've done a great job copying the film onto the stage. Clever adaptation gets around the challenges of the too-complicated-for-stage scenes like the flashbacks during Don Lockwood's opening "dignity" speech, Don's spring over a moving trolley car and into plucky heroine Kathy Seldon's convertible, or the lavish montage of early movie musicals. A screen built into the stage offers us views of the films we're watching our characters make, and is instrumental in the final scene. The book is, for the most part, a line-for-line pick up of the film.

The casting is excellent, given the challenge of meeting the original. Adam Cooper as Don Lockwood was a risk, given that he didn't come from a musical theatre background. A former Royal Ballet principal, he is as strong as you'd expect on the dancing and shares Kelly's long, lean, dark good looks. Surprisingly, he can sing, too; a pleasant if not memorable West End tenor. His acting lacks Kelly's charisma and the chemistry between Cooper and his Kathy Seldon couldn't match the original. Cooper's Don Lockwood was a bit too smug, never evoking the fundamently-nice-guy-with-insecurities that Kelly brought to the part. (The Kelly-Reynolds charisma is a testament to great acting, BTW; evidently the 40-year-old, ruthlessly professional Kelly scared the hell out of the 19-year-old Reynolds and once criticised her so severely she retreated beneath a piano for a good cry.)

Scarlett Strallen doesn't quite nail Reynolds' magnificently innocent, chipper and strong American girl, seeming a bit too old and mature. But her singing and acting are fantastic enough for you to fall for her charms quickly. Daniel Crossley's Cosmo Brown is probably closest to the original, providing solid laughs throughout, mixed with dynamic singing and dance.

Accents can often be the toughest challenge when iconic American musicals come to the London stage. This British cast did a nice job, slipping only occasionally. And if Katherine Kingsley's Lena Lamont went a bit too far into cartoon caricature Bronx-speak, it works with the role.

There are a couple of extra songs, presumably to round up the running time of what was quite a short film. The first has Don professing his attraction to Kathy on first meeting, a bit of song and dance to replace the chase/trolley/car scene that didn't translate to stage. The second was a whole added scene that has us watching Lena go through a bit of self doubt as she wonders why people don't rate her. I could have done without this. We don't need character depth; the show works better without giving us empathy for our villainess.

A great improvement to the film, however, was the Broadway Melody sequence. This 12-minute insert to the original film, where the boys imagine a modern dance number for the film they're making, allowed Kelly showed off more sophisticated dance move with Cyd Charisse. (At the time, Reynolds had no dance experience.) It's a gorgeous number, standing admirably on its own as a mini-musical, but it stopped the film's plot trajectory cold. The director wisely keeps it in the stage show to make the most of the music and dance potential, but trims it down.

Another brilliant addition is the whole cast joining a final reprise of Singin' in the Rain as those water jets come back on, dumping more of the 12,000 litres a night of water onto the stage. A good quantity getting splashed into the first few rows. Every musical must end with a big dance number, of course. This one achieves its intent, sending the occupants of those 1,200 sold out seats tap dancing and singing (badly) down Charing Cross road as they spill out of the theatre.

Sixty years after its film debut, Singin' in the Rain is still injecting pure joy into all those who see it. Perhaps, rather than all their other schemes, the government should just send everyone in Britain to see this. The ensuing bolt of optimism might bump us right out of recession.

How high is your TQ? A critical question, if we're to be neighbours

It was a momentous day. We started house hunting.

Well, not houses, really. Villages. We've been window shopping houses online for ages, but as we all know, it's about location, location, location. We're about to sink our roots (and our life savings), for the next 20 or 30 years. We need to take this seriously. So we climbed in the car, put the top down (it was a spectacular, warm and sunny day), and started meandering through likely areas while developing our shopping list for the perfect village.

Our starting point is simple. No more than 15-20 minutes (five to ten miles) from commuter-friendly Basingstoke train station, but in a rural, village setting. When contemplating Basingstoke's modern offices, big ring road and the American-style mall that dominates the town centre, you'd think this a tough mission. But one of the glories of the area is that town fades to country so quickly. There's a solid handful of proper villages around the outskirts that fit our criteria.

And what, you ask, are those? Let's start with the basics. A good village should have a generous margin of farm fields and woodland around it, ideally cut through with well-marked paths for picturesque dog walking. We'll have to do our research to make sure that none of the thousands of new homes planned for Basingstoke in the next few years cut into the village greenbelt. We award bonus points if a local farm offers views of cows, pigs and sheep from the road; double points if they run a shop that lets us buy the meat when it comes time for the picturesque animals to fulfil their destiny. Deduct points if the farmyard smells overpower the village air. (Although some are perfectly acceptable. It is the country, after all.)

We need a good pub, ideally in the centre of the village but at the minimum within walking distance. It should be filled with locals, allow dogs and be a charming place to grab a pint. Ideally, it's a respectable gastropub, has some exposed beams and working fires, a chatty landlord and an attractive garden, and bans children. (OK, we know the last isn't a viable option, but we can dream.) Points off if any male patrons sport large tattoos, skinhead haircuts

or earrings. Big bonuses for men in tweed accompanied by sporting dogs, especially if carrying any bird or rabbit they've

just shot.

The local church should be Georgian at the youngest, and hopefully have some medieval elements. We're hoping for some high church gravitas, a good choir and a charming, intellectually robust vicar like our own Father David (of St. Mary's Bourne Street, who married us). We would hate a happy-clappy evangelical type and modern lack of ceremony, but in this secular age we'll be content with anything that still performs services, occasionally rings its bells and has an active community.

A village shop would be great, but is unlikely without getting into places big enough to lose their charm. All this should be scattered around a village green which, this being Hampshire, is probably a smallish patch enlivened by a dock pond. The ducks, of course, should have a cute little house perched upon a tiny islet in the pond's centre. Quite possibly paid for by some disgraced MP's fiddled expense account.

Architectural variety is critical. It's not about one house. The whole village needs to look good. That means a variety of styles, from that (hopefully) ancient church to Georgian houses to some half timbering and a smattering of Victoriana. By my third village I'd created the Thatch Quotient, or TQ. This is the proportion of charming, thatched cottages to the rest of the houses in the village. Thatched roofs, once the humble material of peasants and yeoman farmers, are now both trendy and expensive. They also look great. So any village with a high TQ heads to the top of the list.

Modern architecture isn't banned. In fact, we wouldn't mind the conveniences of new construction in a Jane Austen-style setting. As long as the design is sensitive, fits into its surroundings and has a decent garden. The maintenance costs on my current 200-year-old cottage have sold me on that!

Too many semi-detached houses, especially of the boxy and cheap variety, are a bad sign. Terraces (row houses in American) are a red flag. Unless they're gingerbread-cute, originally built by the local lord of the manor to house his estate staff, or Tudor alms houses, which both add historic and architectural bonus points.

And speaking of the lord of the manor, the perfect village has his house ... if not him. Ideally there's a grand pile sitting near the church behind some stately walls and an impressive gate, gracing the horizon with a cluster of towers or an interesting roof line. Not a rambling stately home, but something that might go for £5 million or so in Country Life, and that's now home to some captain of industry or retired rock star. Although Piers is hoping for retired organised crime boss, thinking that would do wonders for the village's security. Whatever his profession, he and his lady should be genial, involved in village affairs and regulars at the local.

Beneath all the old world charm, there are some important modern factors to consider. Decent mobile phone reception. High speed broadband ... if not available now, on the planned roll out in the next couple years. We'll check with our friend on the county police force about crime statistics. Local schools mean little to us, but we'll consider them for resale value.

And that's the fruit of our first day's exploration. Can any village meet these lofty standards? You'd be surprised.

Old Basing has managed to retain a village feel while being surrounded by the new town that took its name. Medium TQ but a lovely church, a good architectural mix and is just 3.5 miles to the station. Mapledurwell has sky-high TQ, a magnificent local gastropub and feels like it's deep in the countryside, despite being just half a mile off the A30. Dummer, just a stone's throw from our current place, also has high TQ plus excellent pub and impressive manor house (Victorian-era Jacobean revival, I'd guess.) North Waltham's TQ is medium, but gets a boost from its village shop and working farm and shop on its outskirts, though the pub is a bit of a hike.

Looks like these four are at the top of our shopping list. And if you think our village requirements are picky ... wait until you see the criteria for the house.

First Newlyn's course yields fabulous squid recipe, shared below

I don't remember the online dating profile asking about food, but it must have. Because our shared delight in cooking, restaurants, great ingredients and MasterChef (and just about any other cooking show on TV) has to rank near the top of that 98% of things we shared. Certainly, from our own kitchen to humble pubs to those Michelin-starred forays to describing the best in this blog, it's a major part of the life we now share.

Thus it was no surprise to our friends when Newlyn's Farm Shop showed up on our wedding gift registry. This fabulous place, just 15 minutes up the motorway from our house, has the best butcher in the area. Not just great meat and game, but helpful butchers who will cut whatever you need, advise you on its cooking, and throw in free bones for the dog. There are local cheeses, home made terrines and pâtés, specialist flours (a boon for our bread machine), a tempting array of gourmet goodies and produce worthy of a photo shoot. See www.newlyns-farmshop.co.uk

To add to the joy, there's a cooking school. A school which earned a big chunk of our wedding vouchers as Piers and I signed up for two classes together: "Fabulous Fish" yesterday, and "Butcher it, Cook it, Carve it" on the 24th.

Cooking schools are big business in the UK, and they're not cheap. Full day courses on the high end are often in the £250 range, so £130 for Newlyn's 5-hour Saturday classes is reasonable ...

as these things go. Still, it's a big expenditure, and you want some pow for your pound.

I'm delighted to say we got it. Head chef Hannah runs all the courses. She has a great personality and a broad base of expertise, answering any question you come up with and diving in to demonstrate anything needed. Two assistants whisk away dishes as you dirty them and all of your ingredients are set out in advance, leaving you to concentrate on the prep and the cooking. We got detailed instruction on filleting both round and flat fish, and got to practice on the latter. (I massacred my sole, but at least now I have the knowledge to practice.)

Like most cooking classes, this one featured sitting down with your classmates to eat what you'd prepared. Unlike others, you also prepped two more meals to take home with you, making this particularly good value for money. Hannah demonstrated two dishes and we prepared four. In addition to that valuable filleting instruction, we learned how to clean and score a squid (top tip: hold knife almost flat against the fish and cut at the slightest of angles), made our own aioli and tartar sauce, discovered the perfect shape to cut paper for en papillote cooking (a heart), learned how to got tips on crisping skin and spent a lot of time talking about how not to over cook fish.

The best recipe of the day, by far, was the chermoula (a north African spice mix) squid with tomato salsa. This was one of the take-away dishes. We took it to a dinner party after class, to much acclaim. Here's the recipe. It serves two as a main course, four as a starter.

For the chermoula:

2 cloves crushed garlic

1 juiced lemon

1 bunch flat leaved parsley

1 bunch coriander

sea salt, to season

1 tsp cumin powder

1 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp tumeric powder

2 tbs olive oil

Ingredients for the salsa:

2 tomatoes, de-seeded and chopped into a small dice

1 clove crushed garlic

3 tbs lemon olive oil

1 tbs white wine vinegar

1 tsp sugar

salt & pepper

1 large, 2 medium or 4 small squid

To prepare:

1. Make the chermoula by whizzing all the ingredients together in a food processor, leave to one side.

2. Make the tomato salsa by mixing all the ingredients and seasoning well, adding sugar if needed.

3. Leave at room temperature

4. Prepare the squid by laying the body flat, scoring and cutting into strips. Use or discard the tentacles as you wish. Then rub the marinade into the flesh. Leave to marinade for at least half an hour, but no longer than two.

5. Heat oil in pan until very hot, then add squid and fry for just ONE minute.

6. Serve with salsa

England wins the battle of the banks. By a mile.

Way back in 1995, when I first moved to England, I knew there'd be tradeoffs.

Gain work/life balance, sacrifice cheap cost of living. Increase personal safety, decrease living space. Potential weekend hops to the cultural capitals of the Western world, but forget modern conveniences. This was a country, after all, that couldn't figure out basics like water pressure or tumble driers. I accepted that I was stepping back decades on the technology front.

Imagine my shock this week as I discovered that America is practically in the Dark Ages in comparison to Europe when it comes to the banking system. In the years I've been on this side of the Atlantic, we've jumped ahead while the USA doesn't seem to have changed much at all.

This discovery came as a consequence of renovations on Mom's house in St. Louis. Almost 14 months after her death, and we're finally putting the finishing touches on the work needed to make the place sellable. It's been a painful process. Unlike England, where there's generally less housing stock than shoppers, and people quite like buying a fixer-upper, St. Louisans evidently won't consider a place unless its interior is like a new build. Even in a gracious, old neighbourhood. Thus the need to put more than $35,000 of work into what I thought was a nice house if I expected to sell it. I said it was painful.

This is the month in which most of the cash is going out. Aside from the pain of watching our life savings disappear, I thought this would be easy. Transfer cash from our British account to my American one, get on line, pay people.

By the time I got the fourth refusal to share bank details or accept electronic transfers, I started to suspect things worked differently over there. People were asking for cheques. Or, since they are Americans, checks. PAPER? I don't think I've written a cheque off my British account for at least a year. I should explain for my American readers ... pretty much everyone banks online here, and all but the most archaic of businesses put their banking details on their invoices.

Most of these American firms were terrified to give me any details, claiming security issues or problems in the past. But bank security is excellent here. I've never known anyone to have their accounts hacked into; these details allow you to pay in to an account, but you need far more to get anything out. No deal. All these guys wanted paper checks in hand. And, of course, they won't start work without one.

I suppose, had I thought about this, I shouldn't have been surprised. I remember my mother dragging her heels about using a debit card to get cash, then learning her reticence was because all banks but your own charge for the withdrawal in the States. (All our bank machines are free.) Use of debit cards in general seemed to take much longer in the States. And, of course, there's America's oddly insecure habit of still using swipe and signature for credit cards, but rarely checking the signature. Allowing any thug to steal your wallet and go on an unfettered spree in the hours 'til you can call in the robbery and the bank can block the number. Here. we've had chip and pin for years. All cards require your personal, secret code for use. So unless you're stupid enough to write down pin numbers, a lost card is a useless card.

One of my builders was finally enlightened enough me bank details. Delighted, I set him up in my American account and ordered an electronic transfer. Which the bank web site promptly told me would take place in six days. SIX DAYS???? Transfers here rarely take more than 24 hours, and often go through in one or two. To add to my amazement, the builder reported getting payment six days later ... not as cash transferred directly into his account, but in the form of a paper check from a third party bank. Huh?

It was at this point that I gave up the idea of modernity and dug out Mom's old check book. From now on I'll write checks, put them in an envelope, whack a pound and ten pence worth of postage on it and walk it to the mailbox. Whilst listening to Seal and Hootie and the Blowfish on the iPod. Just to complete that mid-'90s mood.

Giovanni's good, but Figaro's better, as ROH celebrates Mozart and da Ponte

I've decided that opera goers fall into three main categories: aficionados, dilettantes and stranieri.

Piers and I sit in the dilettante middle ground. We enjoy opera and attend four to eight performances a year, but are no experts. Our favourites are limited. Mozart for both, Wagner for him, Verdi and Puccini for me. With limited discretionary income, we buy tickets for what we know we already like, and what we either haven't seen yet on stage, or haven't seen in ages.

The stranieri are either first-time opera goers or people who only make it once in a multiple of years. They are often people dragged along by friends and partners or, at someplace as expensive as the Royal Opera House, guests on corporate hospitality. Maybe not opera fans, but up for a posh evening. Also amongst the stranieri are those whose incomes can't stretch to the expensive tickets very often, or who don't have anyone to go with and don't like going solo. (Me, not so long ago.)

Then there are the regulars. The aficionados go a lot, may have season tickets, and have probably seen most of the classics many times. With so much exposure, they're the ones who can differentiate between one production and another, and get picky about the quality of the singers. They're the ones, I now realise, for whom most opera reviews are written.

I grasped this after coming home from Don Giovanni two weeks ago and looking up the professional reviews. Those said the set was tired, the acting competent and the voices a bit underwhelming with the exception of Mathew Polanzani's Ottavio and Hilda Gerzmava's Anna. If you'd seen many Giovannis, I suppose that makes sense. But I'd only gone to one production before this, an understandably humble attempt at Opera Theater St. Louis, so the spectacle of one of the history's finest operas on one of the world's best stages with world-class voices was, to this dilettante, good fun from start to finish.

Gerard Finley was a Giovanni with serious sex appeal. He looked the part, with flowing long hair and buff body. Giovanni is a fascinating character, leaving a trail of wounded women behind him, but doing it without remorse. One of the funniest bits of the opera is when he explains to his servant how him being constant to just one girl would be unfair to the rest of womankind. In Finley's performance, you sense he really believes it. He delivers enough of the charming rogue that he both repels and appeals to you; exactly what the women involved with him were feeling.

I agree with the reviewers that Ottavio was particularly strong. As the fiance of Donna Anna, whose attempted rape ... followed by the murder of her defending father ... by Giovanni kicks off the whole plot, poor Ottavio spends most of the opera trailing around after the strong willed, revenge-seeking Anna. He has some lovely arias, however, and here they were sung with such exquisite passion that he became a model of poignant, unrequited lover rather than the wimpish also-ran to Giovanni.

Of course the climax of Don Giovanni offers some of the most dramatic staging opportunities in opera. Simply put, the ghost of Donna Anna's father shows up for dinner and drags Giovanni to hell. With a big budget production it's a chance to impress. I remember a televised version from the Met in New York when I was a kid where the entire proscenium arch was filled with doors that opened to reveal devils. In this production, the dining table sprouts some impressive pyrotechnics as the ghost towers above Giovanni as they disappear below the stage. It's a scene that takes your breath away, and leaves you checking for the fire exits.

Giovanni's hellfire paled, however, in comparison to the production of The Marriage of Figaro we saw two weeks later. Most operas have a handful of tunes you know, and a lot of linking music you don't. Figaro is like a greatest hits performance. From the moment its remarkable overture begins, it's rare to have many minutes go by without another famous piece of music. This production throws you right into the action, with that energetic overture becoming the soundtrack to the servants of the great house scurrying about preparing for the big, and crazy, day to come.

The sets (towering, light-filled rooms of a grand stately home, transformed at times into Figaro's closet-cum-bedroom or a moonlit forest), combine with costume and acting for an immersive, almost film-like experience. Indeed, you can buy an earlier version of this production on video from the ROH. The plot is complicated and, without the benefit of Mozart's music, could have easily fallen into tedious farce. In an aristocratic estate in Spain, senior servant Figaro is to marry lady-in-waiting Susanna, but their employer Count Almaviva is scheming to get Susanna for himself while pretending to support the wedding. Meanwhile there's a girl-crazy page boy (a "breeches role" always played by a woman), who's pining after the countess, who's pining after her unfaithful husband. Add numerous credulity-challenging side plots that threaten the wedding, mix heartfelt serious bits with honest comedy, complete with some of the most remarkable interweaving of multiple voices you've ever heard, and all this madness transforms into one of the greatest achievements of western civilisation.

Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak was perfect in the female lead, so strong in both voice and character the opera could just as easily been named the Marriage of Susanna. She was matched by Italian bass-baritone Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, whose magnificently resonant voice matched swarthy good looks and a comic turn that brought out all the delight in the clever trickster that is Figaro.

A night of pure delight and, unusually, of upbeat joy. In Figaro, Mozart delivers not just magnificent music, but that rarest of all things in opera: a happy ending. Maybe that's one of the reasons we love it so much. If there's one opera I'm willing to see again and again until I reach aficianado status, this is it.

Condemned to French cuisine, I turn out a worthy Valentine's Day meal

We have thus far used Valentine's Day as an excuse to get away, our first year together to a nearby country house hotel called Wokefield Park (see 15.2.10), and last year to Venice (19-25.2.11). We had planned to go to Rome for our first post-marital Valentine's, for the conjunction of Italian culture (makes me happy) and the England v Italy rugby match (his joy), but chemotherapy got in the way. As, frankly, does Valentine's Day on a Tuesday.

Though we both love a good restaurant, neither of us was keen to go out on this night, when the forced conviviality seems to spark the worst in the catering trade. Looking at those old blog entries, I was reminded that two of our worst meals together took place in restaurants, on Valentine's Day. Clearly, time to stay in but do something special in the kitchen.

Since I work from home, cooking duties defaulted to me. (Piers becoming sommelier, sous chef in the evening and sender of a fine spray of red roses.) In an attempt to get more use out of our large but dusty cookbook collection, I told Piers to pick one book, and I'd do a

whole menu out of it. Unfortunately his tastes and my safe cooking territories do not align. He went straight past the well-thumbed stuff ... The Silver Spoon (Italian), The Beautiful Mexico Cookbook, Cooking in Spain and The Sugar Reef Caribbean Cookbook to pull out Raymond Blanc's Cooking for Friends. Damn. French. Fiddly. Heavy. Sauces. But I set the challenge, so I could hardly complain. And I did need to get out of my comfort zone.

Some observations about Blanc's book. First, it's an odd mix of light, spring- and summer-friendly starters and meaty, wintery mains. It was a challenge to get a starter and main that worked well on the palate and into my schedule. Second, even with good local farm shops some basic ingredients were tough to find. Third, even though this book was supposedly written for dinner parties and notes all the stuff you can do in advance, French cuisine is complicated cuisine. Every recipe has sauces, garnishes, multiple steps. I picked what I thought were three easy recipes and I was still scrambling all day and got my first course on the table 40 minutes later than planned.

I started with an asparagus mousse, tempting because you could prepare it in advance and pull it out of the fridge to cook just before dinner. The finished dish has potential, but I was

n't thrilled with it on first attempt. The flavours were delicate, but almost too much so. If I did this again I'd toy with doubling the amount of asparagus. It did make a very pretty plate, with the green disc of mousse surrounded by asparagus tips. The labour-intensive chervil jus seemed pointless, but my own addition of two discs of breaded, baked goat's cheese (a recipe from elsewhere in the book) seemed to complete things, its sharp flavour bringing some punch to the mousse.

On to fillets of beef with a marrow, horseradish and mustard crust. Once you get the marrow, it's a simple preparation, and absolutely delicious. (And a big favourite with the dog. The butcher gave me an entire shin bone from which to get the marrow.) But this being French cuisine, the recipe had two garnishes ... caramelised baby onions and a fricassee of wild mushrooms ... plus another multiple-ingredient, multiple-step sauce. So much for simple. The saffron potatoes I put on the side were super, though probably not worth the cost of the ingredients once the last of my hoard of cheap Tunisian saffron runs out and I actually have to pay market price for the stuff again.

While I can fine tune the dish (reduce the sauce more, skip the potatoes because those garnishes are actually vegetable sides), my Francophile, carnivorous husband was most pleased. To kick things up a notch, when sent to the wine cellar (aka the garage) to get something good, he came back with the bottle of 2004 Smith Haut Lafitte he'd given me the first time he came to my house for dinner. We'd been saving it for something special. And it was. Rich, fruity, dark and smooth ... if I'd needed an explanation of why the good stuff gets better with age, here it was. A web search shows this particular wine is no longer available in the UK, but Americans can get it for around $50 a bottle. Believe me, that's a value for money.

Time for the chocolate and walnut tart. It looked lovely. As a French dessert should. I broke the rules and injected a side of whipped cream with orange marmalade folded in on the side, found nowhere in Blanc's b

ook. Oddly, though every savoury dish had a sauce with it the poor tart recipe had the slice being served naked. It just didn't seem right. Piers and I split on this one. I thought it was a great addition, he opined too many flavours on the plate. I thought the tart itself was average. Even though I used top quality chocolate, it just didn't seem chocolatey enough. It didn't have the gooey, chocoholic satisfying richness of the much more humble devil's food cake, or the even more plebeian brownie.

But that's being picky. On the whole, it was a resounding success. Had I fed this to Mr. B on the night he brought the Smith Haut Lafitte, instead of the Italian food I served up, he might have proposed months earlier.

Speed is critical to the opera experience, and offers simple business lessons

Someone should do a productivity study on the bar staff at the Royal Opera House. In a country not known for its service, the team there is a model of genial efficiency.

Of course, this should be no surprise. The logistics there are challenging. Most performances are sold out. I suspect the vast majority of ticket holders arrive no more than 20 minutes in advance. For the average show, there will be one interval of perhaps 30 minutes. Meaning the staff, scattered across a variety of bars and restaurants on several levels, has no more than an hour to take care of more than 2,000 people, though the reality is that most of the crowd is going to want a drink or snack in their hands within the same 10-minute window. Given the margin on food and drink, and the general affluence of this audience, I have no doubt there's a marketing plan somewhere in that building that's all about getting all those guests to consume as much as possible in that tiny window.

That's a scenario which, in most bars and restaurants in the UK, would leave half the potential business un-done, as irritated punters wait in long queues to be served. Not here. I can't remember waiting more than a few minutes, ever, and last night was a real exemplar of the power of efficiency.

We'd finished dinner in Covent Garden and had 10 minutes to get to our seats. At 7 minutes and counting, we were cutting through the Amphitheatre Bar. "Can I get you anything at the interval?" a cheery waiter called, wine list already in hand. I didn't know that we had time, I worried. All we had to do was tell him what we wanted and settle up later. Add 30 seconds to choose a bottle of wine, a request over my shoulder for "something chocolate" to go with it, and we continued on our path, with the waiter pointing to the table he'd have ready for us.

With magical efficiency, we emerged an hour later to find our name neatly printed on a reserved card on a table, our bottle of picpoul and two gorgeous chocolate brownies waiting. (A surprisingly good combination.) Of course, the cost of this little interval treat was about the same as our whole pre-theatre dinner. But for ROH management, that must be the point. This is entirely discretionary spend, which we made ... or might have skipped ... based completely upon convenience and the approach of that waiter. Many businesses could take note.

Including Chez Gerard across the piazza. It's one of the closest restaurants to the ROH, has a solid fixed price menu and a marvelous atmosphere, tucked into a Victorian-style glass house on top of the north market building. (Its open air balcony is one of the best spots in London to while away a sunny afternoon with wine and people watching.)

We had a perfectly satisfactory though not exceptional meal; steak frites for both of us, preceded by goat's cheese croustade for me and a terrine for him. We had an ample 90 minutes to eat. The starters would have been pre-prepared and taken five minutes to plate up. The mains, especially given my husband's predilection for meat so rare it's simply been scared by a candle at 10 paces, could have taken no more than 10 minutes. We should have had ample time. An enterprising waiter might have even made time to push dessert on us. Saving us from those pricey yet wonderful brownies in the opera house. Yet at 40 minutes before curtain up we had to ask after our absent main courses, then had to push for the bill and pay while we were still eating, dashing off with little time to spare.

Some excuse about the waiter not putting in the mains order until we'd finished our starters. Silly, and avoidable. Surely, it's a safe assumption that anyone eating in this restaurant this early is a pre-theatre diner, and in a hurry? The experience wasn't enough to strike them off my list ... the place is just too convenient ... but it did set up an interesting contrast between average and exemplary.

And what of the opera? Don Giovanni. Wonderful. But I'm going to make you wait for more. It's the Mozart/DaPonte series at the ROH, and we've booked two of the three. (Skipping Cosi Fan Tutti, since we just saw that at Longborough last summer.) We see The Marriage of Figaro in two weeks. Expect a combined review then.