Eightsome

Yesterday afternoon, 13 of us convened for tea on Edmund's boat, with live music and the nostalgic hiss of a steam train in the background. Caroline had slaved over a hot stove all Friday, confecting - aided by the internet - a castle cake for William's eighth birthday. It arrived intact, retaining the desired wow factor despite one of its towers looking distinctly Pisan from the journey in a hot car.

Pieces of eight continued this afternoon with Glyndebourne's much talked about Octavian delighting us in the live relay of Der Rosenkavalier: more than eight times simpler to watch it at home than struggle into dinner jackets and drive all the way to East Sussex. And then there's the cost of tickets...

Sunday afternoon at Glyndebourne

I happened to notice in the local paper that Cheltenham's Cineworld was screening a recording from last year of the Glyndebourne L'Elisir d'Amore this afternoon. What a joy it was! I have never seen the opera before, though it's familiar enough through one of my favourite recordings, made by DGG in 1990. (James Levine conducting, Pavarotti, past his best, but Kathleen Battle in brilliant form, and a gemlike cameo from Dawn Upshaw.) The Glyndebourne cast's acting and singing uniformly sparkled, and again the Giannetta - in her tiny part - caught the eye and ear: Eliana Pretorian, a name to follow.

As my neighbour said to me, leaving the cinema: "Great not to have to drive all that way back home from East Sussex!" I might have replied, "Yes, and to be paying £9 rather than £190 for a ticket."

Can and contents

Some of what we experienced in London last weekend made me wonder about contemporary culture. Would we really throng to the vast and sumptuous Saatchi Gallery, for instance, to see those enormous American abstract works of art (they seemed utterly baffling and indeed hideous to me), were it not free to enter and a mere stone's throw from Sloane Square station?

Ditto, the Telling Tales show at the V. & A. This again has a sumptuous setting (as the V. & A. is looking splendid these days). The pieces of furniture etc. on display are - we are told - known as Design Art: "they retain their role as functional objects, even if their usability is often subordinated to their symbolic or decorative value," in the words of the handout. So, we see two large blobs of red urethane on the floor with the title "The Lovers' rug," the urethane representing the average quantity of blood in two people. Cosy?

I was pleased to be able to get to the Serpentine Gallery for the first time: what a great space, and how lovely to be able to look out from it over Kensington Gardens! I admired too this Summer's temporary pavilion outside, by Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA. But the exhibition? Jeff Koons has been working on a Popeye series over the past seven years: we are therefore treated to an array of huge, lurid cartoons, and brightly-coloured sculpture - something for instance looking like a rubber ring, crushed between a pile of plastic chairs, but which is in fact made of aluminium. Entertaining, and skillful work, but life-enhancing?

Certainly not in the way the BP Portrait exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery was. As usual, it was fun to criticise the judges' choice of prizewinners, but here there was plenty to admire and be grateful for. Interestingly, very few were self-portraits this year.

In the evening, we went again to the Tête à Tête Opera Festival at the Riverside. Here, the surroundings are none too luxurious for contemporary opera; but was this opera? I enjoyed it last year, for its novelty and nerve; but this year it was just tiresome. Four pieces over the two nights, and none worth repeating, was my view. Even a rather charming piece by Glyndebourne Youth Opera, "Who am I?"

Onegin and much champagne

Sadly, this was one I took last year! On Thursday at Glyndebourne, it was a cold and rather damp evening for Eugene Onegin. But not on stage: what a production! And an unforgettable Letter Scene. Thanks to our most generous hosts, we cannot believe our good fortune in catching it.

Nonetheless. I reported last week 's Science Festival reflection that we have not yet had our Pearl Harbour moment when it comes to climate change: in the Guardian, also on Thursday, Mark Lynas writes: "If current [climate] policy continues to fail... then 50% to 80% of all species on earth could be driven to extinction... and much of the planet's surface left uninhabitable to humans."

So, what becomes of Glyndebourne? Are they fiddling whilst Rome burns? The usual magnificent programme book proclaims carbon-neutrality. In his Foreword, Executive Chairman Gus Christie mentions "our on-going aspirations to reduce our CO2 emissions". If an application to put a wind turbine on nearby Mill Plain is granted, it will reduce operational carbon emissions by around 70%, he writes - but 74% of Glyndebourne's carbon footprint is down to audience travel.

So, will we fix it by all piling into the train? What about the food miles, and all that champagne? "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Sir Toby Belch's rhetorical jibe becomes a real question when (as Lynas says) "no politically plausible scenario we could envisage will now keep the world below the danger threshold of two degrees."

lastminute.come

Sir Joshua Reynolds' statue in the Royal Academy courtyard currently sports a floral sash, we noticed on Thursday (when going into the Summer Exhibition). It was a hard job, in getting a photograph, to avoid Sir Anthony Caro's huge "Promenade, 1996 - steel, painted grey/green": this to me was quite the most unattractive piece in the Exhibition, Tracey Emin's room notwithstanding.

Our friend Elise had rung on Tuesday to see if we might be able to help her out of a hole. Friends from Italy were at this late hour unable to come with them to Glyndebourne on Thursday. "And of course you will stay the night." (O the joys of retirement, I thought once more.) She then rang us again the following morning: "Could you by any chance be our flexible friends for the OAE concert tonight too?" And we knew from past experience that one doesn't pass up an opportunity to hear Andreas Scholl!

So it was that we returned home yesterday after two culture-packed days in the South-East...