MY DAUGHTER

My daughter is 20 today, so congratulations to her. She says that this means that she is no longer a teenager, but I don't think that it quite works like that. In some ways, she stopped being a teenager eight years ago; in others, I suspect she will still be exhibiting teenage behaviour in twenty years' time. Therein speaks a parent.

She has just come home after her second term at Oxford university, where she is reading chemistry. University these days seems to require much more effort than it did in my time; there are many more exams along the way, and if you don't keep on passing them, then you are out (35 years ago, it was actually quite difficult to get thrown out). I suppose this is simply a reflection of the wider world, where everything is more competitive. I am not sure that it is a good thing.

To celebrate her birthday we went to see Lucia di Lammermoor in Odense this evening. It's a ridiculous opera, all mafia clans and religion, weirdly set in Scotland (though they speak Italian). But the music's great, which is the main thing.

Walter Blotscher