Opera shocker

 Yesterday EGU seemed more comfortable with the technology or perhaps there were simply fewer remote / recorded talks. Some interesting stuff on microplastic movement on soil surfaces due to rainfall - in simulations most of the microplastic was washed away in less than 5 minutes, also an interesting talk on how biodegradable microplastics add a C source to soils and boost microbial activity.  Final highlight for me was a talk on meta-analyses. A survey of c. 31 meta-analyses on soil carbon concluded that only one had been done properly!

There was another opera tonight - The Puritans. As ever it was all about thwarted love, this time set during the English civil war. But what a shocker (SPOILER ALERT).  Standard stuff in Act one, with the hero and heroine (previously promised in marriage to someone else) falling in love but being on opposite sides of the war. The hero saves a prisoner but has to flee (the jilted lover lets them escape) and the heroine thinks shes been jilted and goes mad. Act 2 was generally arias and mad stuff. But then in Act 3 there's a final battle after which the star crossed lovers are reunited, the heroine regains her sanity and the hero (on the losing side) is pardoned by parliament so they can get married rather than have the hero being executed. Cue much rejoicing but then, in the final minute of the opera, the jilted ex-lover who was inevitably on the other side to the hero in the war stabs him to death and the heroine goes mad. Then the curtain drops. No happy ending after all.