To put a stop to this, our fortnightly gardener Alan has advised stringing up unwanted CDs in the vegetable garden Apparently the birds don’t like the way they flash. The problem is that we don’t have any unwanted CDs, so instead we have to decide which are our least wanted. Jane is all for using Definitely Maybe by Oasis and The Essential Tony Bennett, while I am gunning for Come With Us by the Chemical Brothers and A Jazzy Christmas in Dixie. Whatever, it makes you wonder how folk kept their cabbages safe in the days of vinyl.. Diners with baseball paraphernalia and photographs of James Dean on the walls, and with menus boasting dishes such as the Yankee Doodle Dandy (two eggs sunnyside up, bacon, hash browns and maple syrup, if you were wondering), need waitresses who cheerfully ask what kind of day you’re having, not curtly whether you’ve finished with the ketchup.A pigeon-free OasisThe winter cabbages we have planted are being munched to smithereens, we think by pigeons. The OK Diner is a classic prefabricated American diner which has been plonked beside a roundabout on the A49, eliciting a splenetic letter to the Hereford Times by our local Victor Meldrew, who raged that it was not in harmony with the surroundings. For the record, the OK Diner is next to a large Total garage and opposite some unsightly auction sheds.

And roadside caffs look peculiar in black-and-white timber.Anyway, I took my two sons there the other day and they greatly enjoyed their cheeseburgers with fries, washed down with excellent milkshakes, and accompanied by Bill Haley and the Comets. However, in fairness to Victor Meldrew, I should add that the service was definitely not in harmony with the surroundings. We talked for a few minutes and then I returned to my press colleagues. “Any exciting news from home?” asked one, rubbing factor 15 into her shoulders “As a matter of fact, yes,” I said. “Really,” she said, “has Tony Blair resigned?” “No,” I said, “but a trendy new cafe has opened in Leominster.”I tried to explain the significance of this news I am very fond of Leominster but trendy it isn’t. The food’s nicely polished, too.This, together with the newly opened OK Diner, means our mug of macchiato (£1.15 at The Flying Dutchman, “you what?” everywhere else in town) really does run over.

However, the new cafe, The Flying Dutchman, where I duly lunched soon after I got back, is all polished wood and recessed lighting, and would not look out of place in, say, Clerkenwell. She had some exciting news which quite diminished any sense of resentment she might have felt that I was sipping rum punch and watching pelicans diving while she was doing the ironing and watching Coronation Street. So fascinated was I by the outsize pumpkins, in fact, that I made a note of the website where you can learn more about them. Thankfully, my wife Jane was with me at the time: had she not been, I wouldn’t have wanted her finding a scrap of paper in my trouser pocket bearing the hastily scribbled words “bigpumpkins “.Coffee breakthroughA couple of weeks ago I went on a short press trip to Antigua and on arrival phoned Jane to see whether all was well at home. After a while I even began to understand why the man with the pencil moustache looked so lovingly at his 1961 Villiers mk15 series 3.

I think, incidentally, that it was a lawnmower, although I would hate to offend him. Perhaps it was a chainsaw.Our favourite place was the harvest tent. We passed a pleasant five minutes talking to a couple on the Herb Society stall, who were not called Basil and Rosemary, alas, but did happen to mention in a marvellously casual way that horse chestnut extracts are excellent for treating varicose veins. And we bonded with a jolly woman from the Swindon Fuchsia and Pelargonium Society.But the most fun we had was with the giant vegetables. We laughed like drains at a carrot that looked like uncannily like John Hurt in The Elephant Man, and at leeks the size of cricket bats, and pumpkins the size of small cars. There was an extraordinary array of stalls, and it was humbling, actually, to see the enthusiasm with which people set about their hobbies.I especially admired the dedication of the folk on the Vintage Horticultural and Garden Machinery Club (Eastern District) stall, some of whom had dressed up in period clothing to match their vintage horticultural and garden machinery. We have even exhibited at one or two of them, and not without success, I might add.