A few days' rest in a Spanish house on the coast between Alicante and Valencia, belonging to one of our singers, has enabled us to make a little more progress with the Haydn translation, a job which really should have been finished well before now.  Translation is a fascinating but very, very slow business, involving a multitude of advanced crossword solving skills!  Act 1 is complete and is being sent out to the singers, but Acts 2 and 3 are only partially done. So many more hours lie ahead in the company of the score, libretto, rhyming dictionary, thesaurus and other essential tools.  Unfortunately there were no beach-huts on our local patch of utterly lovely Spanish beach, but plenty of fish to eat for inspiration....  The second photograph shows Gilly, post-paella, and niece Rosa, who will be helping back-stage at the production of Pescatrici and whom I am trying to persuade into a walk-on part.