A lot of tradition and a few gourmet touches mean a Thanksgiving unlikely to be repeated

Last entry I wrote that eight courses, with balance and discretion, can leave you feeling light and energised. At the opposite end of this spectrum we have Thanksgiving, where just a few courses can leave you feeling like you've swallowed lead weights and need a nap immediately. Still, it had to be done.

As I establish the routines of my married life, there are a handful of traditions, some family and some American, I'm passionate about keeping alive. At the top of this list is Thanksgiving. You don't realise just how wonderful this holiday is until you move to a country without it. A day specifically set aside to count your blessings and give thanks for them. A holiday filled with family and friends, but without the pressure of gifts or excessive decoration. A formal start to the Christmas season.

These things have nothing to do with food, and yet the procession of dishes required at the table is as formulaic as the words of a church service.

It's just not Thanksgiving without ...

If you're American born and bred, you'll end this sentence with three or four essential dishes. (In addition to the turkey, of course.) While the basic components are the same, every region and every family has its own culinary traditions, without which the holiday would not be complete. Americans have no problem with variety at Christmas, but don't mess with the Thanksgiving menu!

We had six friends over, and I wanted to produce a classic Midwestern, Ferrara/Wallemann family table. The dishes I grew up with.

Five things strike you immediately when putting together this particular meal instead of our typical dinner party:

1. The predominant elements of the Thanksgiving menu are starch and sugar. Nobody planning a balanced meal would ever whip this up.
2. The number of side dishes is wildly out of proportion with the mains.
3. Traditional Thanksgiving recipes rely heavily on processed food products (Libby's tinned pumpkin, French's fried potatoes, Karo syrup, tinned sweet potato) that are hard to find here, requiring specialist sourcing or timely work-arounds.
4. Turkey is a rare bird here. Forget the loss-leader approach, where you get your free 20-pound Butterball when you spend $200 at Schucks. You can't even find frozen turkeys here outside of Christmas, which forces you to order birds direct from specialist farms. Making this menu far more expensive than the typical dinner party.
5. Thanksgiving is usually a pot luck affair, with everyone bringing a dish. It's actually a hell of a lot of work if you're doing it all yourself. But you can't really ask the Brits to bring anything, because they aren't familiar with the traditional recipes.

I write this last point as a reminder to myself for next year. I've rolled out all the traditional dishes once. Next time, I'll be doing a Thanksgiving-themed dinner party instead, with more balance, fewer sides and a lot less work. But for the inaugural Thanksgiving in the Piers Bencard household, I think we can proclaim a success.

So what featured in this Midwestern feast? Guests nibbled on crab dip and cheese and sausage balls as everyone gathered. The latter is always a big hit, simply mixing Bisquick with cheese and cooked sausage, pressing into bite sized balls and baking. No Bisquick in this country, however, so there's the first of the "convenience" recipes that took extra time.

My first course brought one of the three gourmet twists I incorporated into the meal: peanut soup. Most Midwestern Thanksgivings aren't formal enough to get a first course. You nibble on appetisers in the kitchen until the buffet is laid, then fill your plate in one go. But I thought that might be a step too casual for the Brits (and certainly for my husband), and I like an excuse to get out my massive but rarely-used Portmeirion soup tureen. The soup recipe is from the King's Arms pub in Williamsburg and, I think, really gets at the soul of colonial America.

Next, to the main event. Second gourmet touch: brining the turkey. We normally just slathered the bird with butter and threw it in the oven, or on the Weber. A bird as expensive as most Americans' grocery bill for the entire Thanksgiving meal needed special care and attention. Taking Saveur magazine's regional holiday guide to heart, I chose their Midwestern recipe for cider- and sage-brined turkey. The night before cooking, you boil up cider, sage, salt and sugar into a solution, add more water and plunge the turkey into it overnight. Some chemical magic takes place to make the bird retain moisture and take in the subtle flavour of the sage. I don't know whether it was the brining, or the rare breed, but this was the best turkey to ever grace a Ferrara Thanksgiving table.

Alongside, we were in deeply traditional territory. The family stuffing: an everything-but-the-kitchen sink hybrid of Wallemann and Ferrara recipes, blending stale bread with wild rice, toasted pecans, sausage, apples and herbs for a side dish that's a meal in itself. Sweet potato crisp from the Blue Owl in Kimmswick, Missouri. A dead simple mix of tinned sweet potatoes and cream cheese, topped with chopped apples and cranberries, then an oatmeal, sugar and butter crumble. Made a lot more complicated in a country without the tins, forcing you to roast and prep the potatoes in advance. Which, I have to admit, made for a much better dish that wasn't so cloyingly sweet, though my husband still found it rather pointless. The classic mushroom soup and green bean casserole. (Vile. What a way to ruin both green beans and fried onions, proclaimed the love of my life.) Spinach loaf. Frozen, drained spinach mixed with butter, pine nuts, basil and eggs and banged into a loaf pan to cook, then cut and served in slices. Much to my surprise, Mr. B quite liked this one. Mashed potatoes. Cranberry Sauce. Sheila came up with two cans of the jellied stuff ... another unobtainable, foreign item here ... and I made my usual from scratch with orange and port.

Dessert brought my final gourmet innovation. Ferraras are content with pumpkin pies with a bit of Cool Whip on top. We need nothing else to mess with the purity of this delight. But most Europeans only try pumpkin pie grudgingly (see 29.11.08) and Cool Whip is both unobtainable, and would be considered an abomination by residents of this land of premium dairy products. I thought wider variety on the dessert plate was in order. Though pumpkin was essential, and we made the trip into John Lewis' food halls in London to get the requisite tins of Libby's. The final dish ... which I'm kicking myself I didn't photograph ... was a deep, individual pumpkin tart baked in a mini brioche mould, topped with a scoop of home-made pumpkin ice cream, accompanied by a wedge of chocolate pecan pie. There were few remnants to scrap off plates.

And thus the first Thanksgiving in my marital home passes to memory. What have I to be thankful for since last year? Friends and family, as ever. For a husband who, even though I didn't meet him to my mid 40s, was worth the wait. For a wonderful wedding that went to plan and a honeymoon that was the trip of a lifetime. For a secure job in a frightening economy. For my mother slipping away easily and painlessly with friends around her. For the remarkable medical imaging equipment that found my cancer and, once again, is allowing early treatment that will prevent its spread. Perhaps most important, that last one. Because I have a lot more Thanksgivings stretching ahead to plan.

Bath Priory delivers great spa deal and dinner to make memories

Rarely does 24 hours go by on the Bencard TV without the appearance of a celebrity chef. We love them all, but pay special attention when Michael Caines turns up.

He has all the usual creds ... Michelin stars (two, at Gidleigh Park in Devon), impressive training (a protege of Raymond Blanc), does great takes on the classics and has an engaging, easy-going way with the camera. What makes Caines worthy of special attention is something he rarely talks about, but you can't fail to notice. He's missing his right arm.

He was already a rising culinary star when he lost it in a car accident. You'd think that would be a career-ender for a chef. But he was back in the kitchen in weeks, transferring knife skills to his left hand and learning how to make the most of his prosthesis. And from there to one of the top five chefs in the UK. He's the kind of person who reminds you that "I can't" shouldn't be part of the human vocabulary.

Caines is the executive chef at The Bath Priory, meaning that while he doesn't run this kitchen, he supervises the menus and staff and sent his No. 2, Sam Moody, up from Gidleigh Park to run things. While the place doesn't have a Michelin star yet, it's now the top ranked restaurant in Bath and 45th in the country, according to the latest Sunday Times and Harden's guide. Common sense said we really couldn't afford to sleep at the Priory (a luxury Relais and Chateaux loca

tion), but we decided to make splashing out on dinner there our treat of the weekend.

But first ... the spa

The last thing I expected was a deal. However, online comparison showed the spa here to be far better value for money than the Bath Thermae, and we assumed (rightly) that the small, boutique luxury hotel location would give us a quiet, intimate experience. The half day package, with a one-hour treatment and use of the rest of the facilities, is £75 on weekdays. Including, critically, Friday afternoons. If you want a longer treatment (which we all did), you can just pay the difference.

The spa is small but beautifully appointed and well managed. The comfortably heated pool is perhaps 16 feet wide and 30 long; not large, but big enough for a few laps and lounging. There's a bay on one side with jacuzzi jets, beautifully positioned to look out the French doors onto the formal English gardens. Designers have managed to pull off a fine balance of traditional and modern.

That garden view and the Cotswold stone paving say olde England, the long, thin, brown and black streaked tiles, artwork, grey and black loungers and curving walls with glass insets scream of the latest design. There's a round, free-standing steam room with benches of tiny, sparkling tiles lit by mellow coloured lights. I am normally not a fan ... wet saunas remind me too much of summer in St. Louis ... but here the steam was permeated with eucalyptus, clearing out the nasal passages and bringing a sense of well-being to your whole body. There's a large dry sauna behind this.

The treatment rooms are in a different building, requiring a quick outdoor dash up stairs and across a gravel path. Worth remembering when booking in the depths of winter. I had the Mala Mayi Wrap, one hour and 25 minutes of pure bliss that counts as my best spa treatment ever. Yes, even better than that open-air massage looking out over the Zambezi (See 6.10.09). First, an exfoliating scrub for your whole body. After that, warm, mineral-rich mud gets massaged into your skin. Then you're bundled in the towels that were draped beneath you, secured by the heated pad you've been lying on, now transformed to a warm cocoon. While that mud is doing its good on your skin, the therapist gives you a deep scalp massage and puts super moisturisers on your hair. Then you rinse everything off in a hot, scented shower before returning to the table to have rich moisturisers massaged into all the treated areas. I've had a lot of spa work that feels great at the time, but this one came with lasting benefits of rejuvenated skin.

And now to dinner

You can imagine our state of complete relaxation by the time we left the pool at 5:30 to get dressed and drift upstairs for cocktails. Entering the drawing room, it's immediately obvious what paying three times our B&B rate gets you. There are two elegant rooms to choose from fo

r your lounging, each exquisitely furnished with art and furniture to such consistency this could serve as a Downton Abbey set with little change. The larger drawing room has a sport and military theme, dominated by a wonderful portrait of a whole family painted, life sized, in their motor car, and another dashing chap standing confidently with his polo stick. For the turn of the century, there's a modern, trendy edge here; back in Downton world, this would be the home of the newly-enriched Sir Richard. The other lounge is decorated with portraits of dramatic and romantic women of the time. We had aperitifs in the first, and digestifs in the second, with impeccable service in both.

Settled before the fire with a kir royale in one hand and the menu in the other, we considered our choices. We were aided by a diminutive plate of nibbles featuring polenta cakes with blue cheese and some particularly tasty juniper- flavoured potato crisps, cut into perfect, flat rounds to serve as sandwich top and bottom for steak tartare filling. We could easily have polished off a platter of those!

As with most establishments of this sort, it's "in for a penny, in for a pound". Experience has taught me that going a la carte is never the cheaper option, even though you may think you can reign in expenses this way. The extras and the individual wine prices will always kill you. Especially if your friends have particularly good taste in wine. Far better to go with the tasting menu and the matching wine flight. Take the price tag hit once, gasp with shock, move on and know there won't be any other surprises.

There were three tasting menus on offer. First, the Master Chef menu, three courses that contestants prepared for guests at Gidleigh Park in the finals of Celebrity Masterchef, at £47. The seven course tasting menu was £84, and the seven course signature menu (full of Michael Caines specialities) was £95. Calculating the per-course price, we figured seven courses were a much better deal than three; we felt the bigger menus were the more fiscally responsible path! We were tempted by both, but there were a few dishes we found more intriguing on the regular tasting menu, so went in that direction.

We started with a mushroom velouté topped with roasted peanuts; a surprising but very pleasing combination. The sommelier ... our new best friend ... matched this with an equally surprising Riesling, magnificently dry but with a sweet finish. Next up, duck two ways. Or, as the menu put it, "Salisbury mallard, hazelnut crust, pâté en croûte, soused vegetable."

The fish course was a highlight. Truffle butter poached turbot served with beef cheek, a duxelle of wild mushrooms and a cèpe velouté. Anyone who says they hate fish would be converted into a true believer by this dish which, thanks to the fish's ability to take on the flavours around it, was as meaty as anything to come out of the deep forest. The Californian pinot noir that came with it was light enough to not overwhelm the fish, but had depths to match the meat. Sublime.

The savoury dishes climaxed with local rabbit done four ways (loin, rack, offal, confit leg) with pease pudding, ham hock and mustard jus. I know this sounds heavy as a sledgehammer with flavours that can overpower. But the dish was elegant, subtle, light and beautiful to look at. I, the offal hater, didn't even know it was there until I reviewed the menu afterwards. It was simply a great dish, and one that made us all wonder why we don't eat rabbit more. If for no other reason than to drink big, bold bordeaux like the liquid garnets they poured into our glass with this one.

Hillary and I were unable to decide between cheese and pudding. The truncated-topped pyramid on the cart announced the presence of my favourite cheese on the planet, pouligny-saint-pierre. Meanwhile, the dessert menu promised chocolate fondant. What's a girl to do? The lovely waiting staff, warmed up now by 90 minutes of our charm, suggested we split a single extra plate of cheese, and then loaded it high. Adding four options from the French regions and boutique English producers to join that lovely goat's cheese.

Next, the pre-dessert. Such a fine concept, meant to transition you slowly from the height of your savoury experience to whatever sweet blockbuster is coming. In this case, a light vanilla panna cotta with fig and cinnamon. A fine contrast and appetiser to the chocolate fondant.

Many try with this dish, and few succeed. This one was perfect, if too small. A tube of hot, firm cake, oozing semi-liquid, steaming chocolate, gone in two bites. The diminutive size was compensated for by the exquisite presentation. A paint strip of chocolate, accompanied by two circles of passion fruit coulis with dot of chocolate at each centre, a chocolate cup of the same size and shape as the fondant filled with tonka bean sorbet (tastes like passion fruit). A study in black and orange. Rarely have I wanted so badly to lick my plat in a restaurant, but I reminded myself that ladies do not do such things. (Real ladies, no doubt, wouldn't have the thought, much less revel in multiple desserts.)

Finally, on to coffee and petit fours, which counted as one of the seven courses. I like the honesty of this. With many menus it's an extra, but coffee is usually essential, and can be an expensive add-on. If you're going to make it a formal course, however, then the petit fours better be up to it. Which they were here, with a range of truffles, brownies and tiny pannacottas with a black current caramel crisp. Seeing the extent of the final course, and the chocolate on offer, we could have chosen the cheese over the fondant without feeling deprived. Three full dessert courses was, perhaps, a bit excessive!

You'd think the whole meal would feel excessive, but this is where the magic of the chef's planning shows itself. Despite the heavy flavours, and the hearty and substantial ingredients, everything balanced beautifully. Because each plate was just a few bites perfect bites, all that food left you feeling satisfied, but not stuffed.

Sam Moody may not be as famous as his boss today, but I suspect it's coming. As, one assumes, is the Bath Priory's Michelin star. Wonder if that spa deal will get more expensive when that day arrives?

Bath surprises with fabulous, continental-style shopping

Were it not for breast cancer, dear readers, this week would have brought a series of reports from Barcelona. It was time for the annual Gartner IT Expo, and the usual holiday extension into the weekend afterwards. After years of returning to Cannes the conference organisers had moved to Spain's most trendy city for art and culinary experimentation. The Northwestern girls were excited. But medical leave put an end to both the work trip to Spain, and the fun afterwards.

We still wanted to get our traditional girls' Christmas shopping weekend in, especially since it's now decided that I start chemotherapy on 7 December. Some power shopping, spa relaxation and good food sounded like a fine idea before the medical hijinx. Where to go to find that variety without too much driving? Bath.

The Northwestern girls had been there together years ago, and I've lost count of the visiting Americans I've taken around the sights. It is undoubtably the most beautiful and extensive Georgian town in England. Huge swathes look pretty much the same as they did when Jane Austen lived here, which is why keen eyes will pick out Bath in the background of just about every film set in the 18th century, no matter where its action is supposed to take place. As if Georgian architecture weren't beautiful enough, all of Bath is built of that distinctive, golden Cotswold stone, which gives it a rich yet mellow glow under most lights, and it's built up the slope of a bowl-shaped valley, adding height and drama to the views.

Tourists usually wander about the ancient baths after which the city is named (with plenty to see from the original Roman complex), the abbey, the assembly rooms where the Georgian great and good socialised, Pulteney Bridge and the aristocratic housing developments of the Royal Crescent and the Circus. There are enough architectural highlights, small museums and neighbouring country houses (Dyrham Park being a favourite) to keep a serious culture vulture occupied for a week.

Having done all of this before, our primary objective was the Bath Thermae spa, which opened in 2006 in some of the historic spaces that had been public baths in earlier centuries. Research, however, cooled our enthusiasm. Treatment prices were at least 10% higher than nearby luxury hotels, and did not include the price of admission. You have to pay an hourly fee just to get into the complex. When we discovered they also charged for dressing gowns and shoes ... and found a better package spa deal at a five star hotel nearby ... we decided on a change of plans. I still plan to pop in to the Thermae someday, but only for the main facilities and not for the overpriced treatments. (For more on the spa day we ended up with, see the next entry.)

The real surprise of Bath was the shopping. Based on previous visits, I'd thought of it as a mix of tourist tat, chain stores and dusty old antique shops. No longer. The chains are the more upscale ones, and at least half the shops in the central district seem to be independents. The town is now awash with trendy clothing boutiques, interesting galleries and fun home decor shops. New arcades and alleyways have been developed, and everything feels far more prosperous than it used to. (Our B&B host attributes this to the spa bringing a more affluent type of tourist, and broadband allowing more people with well-paying London jobs to move here.) In a country where shopping is increasingly homogenised, this was a retail experience closer to our outings to Venice or St. Paul de Vence. We will all be going back.

If heading there yourself, explore Milsom, George and Bartlett Street, paying special attention to the latter two. George Street is now a string of independent boutiques and galleries. Check out Prey, which carries quirky stuff like buttons and aprons made from vintage fabric, and silk scarves copied from ancient book frontispieces, screen printed by the same workshop that produces Hermes scarves. They have a great range of cards, jewelry and home decor items. A few minutes' walk east is Via Appia, an Italian boutique filled with exquisitely designed knits and formal wear and some surprisingly reasonable, yet beautifully designed, jewelry. Just next door is Topping and Company, an independent bookshop so redolent of individual taste and good advice (hand written descriptions and recommendations taped to shelves below books) it almost makes you want to give up your Kindle. If bookstores are to survive at all, I'm convinced this is the kind of place that will hang in there.

Turning up Bartlett Street ... a small lane that heads north and is a prime cut-through to get to the Circus and the Royal Crescent ... you'll find more women's boutiques like Mee, Lux and The Loft that all carry boutique brands with interesting cuts and distinctive looks. Not cheap, mind you, but if you want something that's obviously top quality and is unlike what everyone else is wearing, this is a place to wander. The Loft is also a home decor shop with some great rustic furniture and modern accessories.

After a satisfying and successful day of Christmas shopping in ever increasing crowds, we were glad that our B&B was outside the bustling city centre. Bathford is just four miles from central Bath, but could be a village deep in the Gloucester countryside. Except that its architecture is a spill-over from the Georgian jewel. In fact our B&B, Eagle House, was designed by architect John Wood, famous for the Circus and Queen's Square in town. If you want the experience of staying in grand Georgian architecture, but don't want to pay for a grand country house hotel, this is a good option.

Eagle House is a classic small country house of the era, with an imposing classical pediment surmounted by an eagle on the garden face that looks out over gardens and sweeping views. Inside, guests have access to a gracious staircase hall, an octagonal drawing room with towering ceilings and a large dining room used for guests' breakfasts. Several of the bedrooms are large and quite grand, sharing the same view as the drawing room, and there's a large family room with three beds that's perfect for our girls' trips.

Despite the grand architecture this is more standard B&B than luxury experience, certainly one step down from a place like Cotswold favourite Windy Ridge (see 27.7.10). Though, sadly, not that much cheaper. This is still very much a family home, with surroundings being a hotch potch of items (including some shockingly out-of-context works by an artist son) rather than a carefully put together decor. Architectural damage like a glass screen at the top of the stairs and odd interior windows harkens back to the building's days of institutional use from the '50s through the '80s. There's a gorgeous fireplace in the sitting room but it's not lit, and there's no honour bar to draw people into the room or encourage them to linger. Most irritating, there's a charge for a cooked breakfast. At £45 per person per night ... £135 for the room ... we thought this was a bit of cheek.

I had used Eagle House seven years ago for a house party to celebrate my birthday, and it was ideal for booking out for exclusive use. The location, beauty of the house and helpfulness of the owners still puts it on my "must consider" list for Bath. But after this trip I do have to question value for money, and think I may be doing a bit of web surfing to see what else is in the area.

Of course, if money were no object, I'd be sleeping at the Bath Priory. For our adventures there, see the next entry.

The Hunger Games are gripping, frightening ... and make me ponder differences between generations

I have been a voracious reader since childhood. I don't actually remember learning to read, in fact, I just recall retreating to my bedroom as a very small girl, alone, with a stack of books. Classic only child syndrome, I suppose. I graduated quickly from picture-heavy books to the Chronicles of Narnia, the Wind in the Willows, Nancy Drew (the original 1940s books inherited from my aunt, in which Nancy drove a "roadster", wore "smart frocks" and never even kissed Ned Nickerson) and anything about classical mythology I could get my hands on. From there, I remember jumping pretty much straight into grown up fiction.

There was no phenomenon of "young adult literature" in the late '70s when I was in my early teens. Nor do I recall everyone reading the same thing in cult-like fan groups. We all had our own tastes, and, frankly, I don't remember sharing mine with many classmates. About half my reading was fantasy like The Lord of the Rings, the Shannara series and the Dragonriders of Pern books, common enough amongst the boys but a bit rare at my girls' convent school. The other half was detail-rich historical romances by people like Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt. (Pen names for the same writer, it turned out, an amazingly prolific Englishwoman named Eleanor Hibbert.)

Now, of course, young adult literature is one of the hottest categories in publishing, with readership stretching up into the adult world. The phenomenon seems to have established itself with the Harry Potter series and flourished (at least amongst women) with the Twilight books. Next up: The Hunger Games. I'd been hearing about the last for at least a year. With strict instructions to stay immobile for a few weeks after surgery, my friend Hillary had the entire trilogy delivered to my door. Three days later, I'd finished the stack. "Powerful read", "fast paced" and "a gripping page turner" are all much-used cliches on back covers, but they're well applied to these books. But if these are books for teenagers, then they must leave any adult reader with one big impression: How times have changed.

Author Suzanne Collins mixes inspirations from Greek mythology, ancient Rome, modern politics and reality TV in her dystopian vision of the near future. North America has emerged from an horrific war into a ruthless dictatorship, ruled by The Capitol somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Citizens here have a life of plenty and leisure, their primary concerns being fashion and entertainment. Their good life is provided by the labour of the people in the 12 Districts ... what's left of the United States ... now little more than gulags where slave labour produces whatever the Capitol needs. To make sure the Districts remember who's boss, and never forget the failed rebellion that destroyed the 13th District, they are each required to hold a lottery every year at which one girl and one boy between the ages of 12 and 18 are sent off to The Capitol as tributes, just as myths have young Atheneans going to the Minotaur. The 24 tributes are then given stylists and production crews, pampered and trained, then thrown into a 24-7 live broadcast reality show cum gladiatorial games, where there can be only one winner. The rest must die.

We follow our heroine Katniss Everdeen as she participates in the games and, through her natural teenage rebelliousness, becomes the catalyst that starts to unsettle the whole society. It's dark, violent, disturbing and utterly compelling. And it got me thinking: why are the books today's teens read so much more sinister than those I consumed 30 years ago?

On simple question of plot, I think it's because the "darkness" is so much closer to real life. Lord of the Rings baddie Sauron was pure evil, but was never going to make an appearance in the real world. No more than were the dragons, elves and magicians that populated most of the books I read. There were good guys and bad guys, the lines were solidly drawn and good always triumphs. Harry Potter draws a lot from that world, but arch villain Valdemort has gone bad because he was an abused child. Scary and potentially all too real. Valdemort's followers are all for racial genocide of the muggles, again fictionalisation of things readers will have seen on the news. The Twilight Vampires are good guys who've overcome their taste for blood, but we're still dealing with a frightening world of random violence and murder, while our main characters have some nasty emotional demons to deal with. The Hunger Games is scariest of all, because it creates a world that seems just a few steps away from what could really happen if humanity took some wrong turns. It brings a horror of the future that, I suspect, readers encountered when they first read 1984 or Brave New World.

As to the question of why today's teenagers are consuming this stuff rather than the simpler, happier-ending, clearer moral grounds of my youth ... now that's a tougher question. As an adult reader, they're simply great books, but I have no teenagers in my life to give the youth perspective. One assumes that it reflects the tougher, more honest world they've grown up in. One of greater moral ambiguity from the start, more violence, more skepticism. Maybe a purely good heroine, and an entirely evil bad guy, just won't fly with this gang. Or maybe it's the publishing phenomenon of upselling these books to adults in their millions; if the over-20s are going to buy them, they need a harder edge.

If I had a 12-year-old, would I want her reading The Hunger Games? Probably. But I'd want us to read them together. We'd have a hell of a lot to talk about as she worked her way through. And I'd expect a few nightmares. Who knows. Maybe the dark, rich complexity of today's teenage literature will produce a generation with both greater moral certainty, and a better understanding of the motivations and nuances of others. We'll have to wait and see.

Little known Flying Dutchman may be my favourite Wagner opera yet

My first post-surgical foray out of the house, other than for doctor's appointments, was to the opera. I was still floating on pain medications and not good for much more than six hours of continuous activity, but we'd had tickets to Wagner's The Flying Dutchman for ages (Piers' reward for coming to La Traviata last month), and I really didn't want to miss it. Even though the drugs in my system pretty much ensured that this was not going to be the first Wagner opera through which I managed to stay awake from start to finish.

That's not to say this is a long or a boring show. In fact, at three acts in just over two hours hours it's a snippet in Wagnerian terms. The only problem with this running time is that producers need to decide whether to put intervals after each short act, or just run the thing straight through. The ROH went for the latter. And even with a good plot and a nap, the cheap seats up top are not built for that kind of extended incarceration.

The plot deals with grand legend. A captain and his crew have been cursed to sail the seas forever, only coming ashore once every seven years. If, in that brief shore leave, the captain finds true love, he can break the curse. (Yes, you recognise this from the Pirates of the Caribbean films. Wagner's not the only one to get some mileage out of this plot.) In a boring Norwegian town, a young girl named Senta has fallen in love with the legend and dreams of breaking the curse. Things look set for a happy ending when Senta's father, also a ship's captain, brings home a fellow captain he's met at sea. It's the Dutchman, and he and Senta fall in love immediately, making plans to marry. Unfortunately, a local boy with a passion for Senta shows up to plead his case, and his very existence causes the Dutchman to doubt Senta's constancy, and the wisdom of her commitment. So he sails away.

In Wagner's ending, Senta throws herself into the sea after his departing ship. She dies, but this proof of her enduring love breaks the curse. (You didn't expect a cheerful close, did you?) For some reason ... maybe it was too expensive to stage a watery suicide convincingly? ... Senta doesn't die in the current version, she just sinks to the stage cradling a model of the Dutchman's ship, over which she'd been obsessing since before she met him.

I'm not sure it was Wagner's intent, but the main theme in this production seemed to be the dangerous passions of teenage girls. The staging was modern and grim. Senta worked in a grey sweatshop. She would have indulged in any fantasy that would get her out of town; one that involved mythic passions and redemption was irresistible. There is a stage in the lives of most teenage girls when they cling to the tale of Romeo and Juliet and think there'd be nothing better than to die for love. This is just where Senta is when we meet her, and why her foolish love-at-first-sight for the Dutchman is actually so credible.

Though not considered one of Wagner's greatest operas, I quite possibly enjoyed this more than the installments of the Ring Cycle we've seen. Good plot, credible impetus for the love story, and the action moves at a decent pace. A great overture that evokes the stormy majesty of the seas, with equally dramatic music throughout. I wouldn't mind sitting through another interpretation of The Flying Dutchman to see what other companies would do with it.