'In These Stones Horizons Sing' . Interior view of calligraphy. It’s a couple of hours’ drive, at best, from here to the Millennium Centre in Cardiff, but since that pretty much takes us from door to door, it’s worth the occasional marathon for a good night’s entertainment. Tonight, however, in addition to the journey, we have a marathon opera; five and a half hours of Tristan und Isolde … although that does, thank goodness, include two intervals! I fear, as we take our seats, that it’s also five and half hours of adjusting to the ablutionary habits of the man to my left, suggestive of a rather ‘stuff and nonsense’ approach to fancy shampoo. However, as the show begins and the exchange between Isolde and her maid, Brangaene, goes on at length, I get rather comfortable and enjoy a little power napette which refreshes me nicely for the rest of the performance. The wooden curves of the concourse galleries. I’ve come in the hope of being converted to Wagner, but by t
Christine Stovell, author and freelance writer, on living and writing in West Wales