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.