Up early today for the carefully-worked out shower rota before our expedition to the Eden Project.

The reason for the early start is that we want to go out for breakfast first. We head to Watergate Bay just outside Newquay where Jamie Oliver has just opened a Cornish outpost of his 'Fifteen' restaurant. After some debate, we stop faffing about and all order the full fry up with home made baked beans and various meat locally-produced meat products. Between us, we also test the various smoothies and the Bloody Marys. It's an absolutely excellent breakfast and we walk (some of) it off with a short walk on the beach. Ben and Duncan have somehow managed to find another ball to throw at each other.

We then head off to the Eden Project near St Austell. The site of the biomes in their crater is awe-inspiring when you first approach them. We are taken aback by the heat in the tropical biome (not that we shouldn't have expected it......)but the collection of plants and the information about them in both this and the Warm Temperate Biome is extremely impressive. It's a bit spoiled by the self-regarding homilies on eco-awareness that litter the site, but the shop is excellent.

We go back to the farmhouse for Helen C's excellent chick pea and sweet potato casserole before heading off to Truro for the dress rehearsal.

This doesn't go quite as well as we would have liked. It is extremely difficult to see the conductor and the monitors at the side of the stage aren't in a position to be of much use to most of the chorus. This results in some of the chorus' cues being extremely ragged at key points in the opera. The Wreckers chorus that closes Act 1 - and should be our finest moment - is particularly poor.

We give the bar a miss this evening and get back to Perranporth. More wine and late night conversation. Patrick is anxious not to miss the results of the American mid-terms as they come through......