So tonight is the first semi final of Eurovision 2011 and I’ve not written up my traditional top five. There are some great songs this year (and even our own entry by Blue has grown on me), but the five I’ll be cheering for are…

First, Popular by Sweden’s Eric Saade. Try and ignore those dodgy first two lines (and the fact that in his rehearsals the glass in his box has sometimes not been breaking, thus trapping him in the cube). The only trouble is, it might just be a bit too mainstream to be memorable. Still, we like it, and I can’t deny it sounds like Rasputin at the beginning:

Belarus, with I Love Belarus. If we re-wrote our national anthem along these lines we’d all know the lyrics and we’d all sing along. Let’s start a campaign:

Russia’s song reminds me of Lessons in Love by Level 42. Despite that, it ought to do well as it was written by the same guy as Lady Gaga’s Poker Face. Even so, I’d like to see the contest heading somewhere other than Russia so soon after they last hosted it.

Hungary’s What About My Dreams reminds me a lot of a couple of trips to Hungary a few years ago as you see so much of Budapest in the video. The song’s not bad, either. It’ll be interesting to see how well it holds up on stage when there’s no scenery to look at.

And finally Emmy, singing Boom Boom for Armenia. What’s not to like? A stereotypical old-school Eurovision lyric to which we can all sing along, and a song that sounds like two tunes stitched together. If you get it stuck in your head, go back and have another listen to Belarus.

We went for a walk. We found a log tied to a rope tied to a tree. We swung (or did we swang?)

It was royal wedding weekend and we all got an extra day off work to watch the big event, so of course we… well, actually, we went to the cash and carry (although we did watch the highlights in the evening).

We should have been out enjoying the sun, but we’d been eating down our stocks in the outhouse to make room for a C&C run, and Friday morning seemed the best time to do it. The roads were empty and apart from a cluster of people standing around the TVs at the very front of the store, so was much of the shop.

Both times we’ve been there we’ve come away feeling that we’ve been ripped off for years by the regular shops. I know they need to make a profit, and the only reason we’ve been able to join the cash and carry is that I not have my own company, but the price of food there is shockingly low when you compare it to the supermarkets. You just need to have enough room to store it all.

We did join in with the end-of-the-road celebrations on Saturday night. Our neighbours had cooked up a curry feast and set out tables on their drive, with bunting and flags on the front fence. There must have been 20 or so of us sitting about in the dark, long after the sun went down, eating together and drinking our home-made beer. It was one of those events that really made you feel like a part of the road instead of just one house in a row of many, and tentative plans were made at the end of the night, as we headed back home at just before midnight, to do it again in June or July.

That’s the kind of thing I’d miss if we moved.

It’s been a fantastic weekend for weather all round. As I sit here typing this the chickens are spread out in their compound, bathing in the dust, and the tamarisk tree is in full bloom, its branches covered in thick flossy blossom.

I think we almost got too much of the sun yesterday, at the annual pilgrimage to the car show at Stanford Hall. We weren’t showing anything this year, so parked up in the field, across the river from the main house, and sat there in our little fold-up chairs to eat our lunch. Close your eyes and you could have been in the south of France.

It looks like holding out for the next few days. What happens after that, though, remains to be seen. For various reasons I’m hoping for sun for the rest of the month.

My camera wasn’t up to the job. Not entirely surprising, I suppose, but if it had been it still wouldn’t have captured the atmosphere.

Kylie at the O2 – easily the biggest venue in which I’ve seen her – didn’t suffer at all in its transfer to a 20,000 seater arena. Pretty much every one of those seats was taken, with only the two beside me empty as far as I could see.

The support act, whose name I quickly forgot and have yet to recall, wasn’t up to much, but the show itself was spectacular, and far outdid X, which we saw three years ago in Paris (how has the time flown by?).

The bulk of the set list this time around was from Aphrodite, which is a far better album than X, and the concert was better for it. The gimmick, if it should ever need such a thing, was the stage itself.

Set out as an open triangle, those fans who could justify it could bag themselves a seat in the middle of its three arms, and there be guaranteed a drenching from the on-stage fountain (for their £250 they were given a poncho and towel, as well as a programme).

It’s a shame for them, then (although not for us) that most of those parts of the concert that took place on the front corner of the stage were directed away from them and that the water section itself (admittedly impressive with its 20-foot high jets) was just a short section at the very end.

In all, a hugely impressive, hugely ambitious production that was more than pulled off with aplomb.

There are some tweets you just don’t need to read first thing in the morning. What’s going on in East Anglia?

We went to the ballet last week. Thursday.

Well, they said it was ballet, but I’m not sure. Probably more modern dance, with some pirouettes.

It was the Pet Shop Boys’ involvement that drew us there. They wrote the music, based on a Hans Christian Andersen short story that ran to just three pages, and handed it over to Javier De Frutos to choreograph while they toured.

The results were impressive. The music was unarguably Pet Shop Boys, and it must have had an influence on the dance, frequently punctuated by film, scene changes and a slightly wacky gameshow host.

It flew by. Three parts, three intervals and a talk by the composers and choreographer, it ran for more than two and a half hours but felt like less than an hour.

Quite possibly the best ‘ballet’ we’ve yet seen.

A day of taking pictures today, all day. I’d rather have been out in the sun, which was just glorious (too glorious, in fact, as it was very difficult to stop it shining in to my ad-hoc studio).

So, a day of lights and light tents, perspex sheets, foil hoods, a bag of flour and a bottle of Glenmorangie, the latter two items used to prop up the iPads.

The whisky made it through to the end of the day unopened.

If you’d asked me four months ago, before I knew that by now I’d be working for myself, from home, day-in day-out, what my regular freelance week might be like, I’d probably have said quite relaxed.

A day or so pitching for work, another couple of days doing it, and then maybe a couple of days of pottering around, playing with the chickens or heading out for a walk.

It’s not been like that at all. The fact I’ve been so bad at blogging in the last two and a half months is testament to that fact. Most of my working weeks have been six days long apiece. I’ve not yet had time to plant any new crops in the plot. I’ve been on maybe two walks the whole year, and both of them were at weekends.

But I wouldn’t change it.

I got into mags to write, and that’s almost all I’m doing right now. I’m very fortunate to have plenty of work coming in, and while I hunt for the happy medium I’m taking on some great commissions – jobs that give me an opportunity to properly research a subject, which I haven’t had time to do in as much depth as I would have liked for quite some time.

It would still be nice to find time for those walks, or to see the chickens from closer at hand than the study window, but while the weather isn’t so good, perhaps now is the time to make hay, so that when the sun shines it might already be bailed.

Saturday morning, we drove down to Sal’s. A family day out for mum’s birthday. Sal had invited us down, booked somewhere for lunch and then planned a trip out in the afternoon to Hall Place and a nearby garden centre.

Now Hall Place was quite a surprise. It’s an old house, built in the 1500s for a one-time London mayor. A sprawling building of bricks and flint, it’s very well preserved, and set in some lovely grounds on the banks of the River Cray. Ducks, geese, et al, et al, et al.

It was mid-afternoon by the time we arrived, everyone’s shadows lying sleepily across the grass. Sal and Dan threw bread to the ducks with Will as we walked slowly along one side of the river and back down the other, past impressively cut bushes and trees, trimmed to resemble lions, griffins and dragons.

We went back to Sal’s for cake (she’d made it, but it was so neatly done I had assumed she’d bought it, and headed home as the moon came up, the largest it had been for 20 years, they said, but I couldn’t see much of a difference myself.

Sunday, we woke up tired, but staying over at mum’s on Friday night before the journey to Kent meant we’d done none of our jobs, and so it was a day of busy-ness. Food shopping, bike repairs, digging in the garden… I potted three new plants to replace the clematis that we’d pulled out of one border and that had left my wrists and hands numb.

The day was so fine, though, and warm with it, so we headed out for a walk around Bicknacre and East Hanningfield. We’re much more familiar with West Hanningfield, and the reservoir, and to date its eastern equivalent has only ever been somewhere I’ve driven through on my way from Chelmsford to South Woodham Ferrers.

What a missed opportunity that turned out to be. It’s really quite quaint, with a green and a couple of pubs and a nice looking church by the side of the road. The return trek from there back to Bicknacre was a bit of a slog along the road, but the journey out had been a gentle yomp across the (admittedly still a bit muddy) fields.

We drove back by way of Danbury and Sandon, and through the National Trust woodland that borders Danbury’s southern fringes. I didn’t realise how nice they were, which is shameful when you consider I’ve lived around here for close to 30 years.

A repeat visit is called for, I think, when the gorse is in full flower and almost as high as the top of your head. Then, when the sky is a cloudless blue and all about you is yellow and green, will be the time to take pictures for desktop wallpaper, which will see you through the darkest months of winter.

You know when you look forward to reading a book, and when you get to it, it’s a bit… hmmm.

This was one of those.

Whatever the disclaimer might say, Humbridge is too close to Ambridge, the fictional village in which The Archers is set to be a coincidence. Need more proof? Its subtitle is An Everyday Story of Scriptwriting Folk. The Archers was originally billed as ‘an everyday story of country folk’. Anthony Parkin, Humbridge’s author, spent 25 years as the agricultural story editor on The Archers.

All of those factors drew me to it, so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised by what I found.

It’s a nice story (and I use that word with caution, as the absolute pinnacle of uninspired review writing is the word ‘nice’). A really nice story – the kind of thing you’d expect to find on ITV, mid-1980s on a Sunday night.

Man moves to the country and makes a new life for himself. Stuff happens. Not much stuff, but some stuff.

The trouble is, the world has moved on and for the most part we now expect more ‘stuff’ happening in our stories. We watch a lot of 80s TV – we’re currently working our way through the last few DVDs of our Howards’ Way box set, we’re mid-way through Hi De Hi, we’ve just finished The Good Life – so we’re used to seeing stories that reveal themselves a lot more slowly than they do today. It’s nice (that word again) as it lets you relax, soak up the atmosphere and identify with the characters.

The trouble is, there’s a lot of potential that isn’t realised. Two dead blackbirds turn up on the doorstep and there’s talk of either racism or witchcraft, but after that brief mention it’s left alone. Someone dies, but its impact on the flow of the story is minimal. The ending is realistic and utterly believable, but not what I (and, I imagine, most other readers) would have liked for a satisfying tying-off.

Nonetheless, if you look at it as a carefully-observed slice of everyday life it’s excellent. The dialogue is spot on, as you’d expect for someone who has worked on The Archers for so many years and the characters and their motivations are utterly believable.

Humbridge, then. Technically spot on, with a well-plotted story arc, but a few too many unexplored opportunities to have entirely grabbed me.

It’s £8.50 from Amazon.co.uk.