Long-awaited opera night

Despite all the very best intentions it was still a bit of a mad rush to get everything shipshape and finalise the food and all that, ready for the arrival of my opera-watching guests. It wasn't exactly an enormous audience -- just two arrivals, so three total including my hostly self. Still, we did Wagner proud, the production of Tristan und Isolde that we watched turned out to be tremendously good, and the very fact of sharing the experience made it all the more worth while.

We kept to schedule (30-minute break after Act I, 75-minute after Act II, viewing ended at 10.10 pm having begun at 4.00). After that it was time for a few more glasses of wine, some nibblies, and some chat.

I went on strike when the guests left. I'd planned on using Carl's HDMI cable with his DVD player, but had experienced problems with the audio end of things. I spoke to him after the guests had gone, and a couple of things he said prompted me to play around with DVD connections again. This time it all worked (digging down deeply into the DVD player's menus and re-enabling HDMI audio proved to be the most important bit). So, in the euphoria of the moment, all I did was cursory tidy-up, after which I sat down and watched Babette's Feast to finish off the night. It was 1.00 am when I got to bed.