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We’d been to the picturesque Wyken Vineyards in Suffolk before, to mooch around the farmers’ market on a sunny weekend morning in July. But, on Saturday evening we kept a long-talked about date, dressed up in our best togs, and ate at Wyken’s well-regarded restaurant, The Leaping Hare.

I’d not eaten in the cosy 400-year old barn for some while, but am pleased to report that the experience is just as enjoyable as it was on those two previous occasions. It’s little wonder that it was voted the place which serves the best Sunday lunch in East Anglia by readers of The Observer Food Monthly back in March, as the food is very good, and the staff attentive, courteous, and friendly.

The menu has tastes of modern British and European cuisine, using fresh ingredients, sourced locally and seasonally where possible (certain constituents even come from the Wyken estate itself). Indeed, so reportedly good is the place that it is listed in both the Michelin and Good Food Guides, and although the prices are more than we would usually pay, as we were celebrating, we thought the £54 for the two of us was reasonable enough.

Starting with the starters, my broccoli soup was creamy and sprinkled with almonds, while Nik’s spiced aubergine with a mint and yoghurt dressing and pitta, was equally good. Based on memories of my last visit, we both plumped for the same main course, a leek and butternut squash and risotto, which was just as pleasing as I remembered it.

Finally, the desserts of apple crisp with cinnamon ice cream, and blood orange and vodka jelly with vanilla bean ice cream, rounded off both the meal and the Wyken dining experience nicely.

The menu changes daily (no doubt dictated by the availability of local produce on any given day), and with starters costing £4.95 upwards (much the same for desserts), and the mains priced at £12.95, rising to £19.95 for grouse, The Leaping Hare attracts a distinguished, local, and rural clientele. Wine starts at around £14.50 for a bottle of house red or white, and with an extensive list, even the most discerning palette should be happy.

Of course, the seven-acre vineyards at Wyken produce wine themselves. All white varieties, ‘Wyken Bacchus’ is a previous recipient of the English Vineyard Association’s ‘Wine of the Year’ award, while ‘Wyken Moonshine’ caters for the sparkling drinkers.

A new rosé, ‘Wyken Pink’, has recently appeared on The Leaping Hare’s wine list, and the estate’s first ever beer, ‘Good Dog Ale’, has recently been brewed on-site. (We chose the Wyken Pink and can heartily recommend it.)

The country shop is open to browse around in during breaks in the meal (although if like us, the courses follow each other quickly, there will be no time to look around), and the ambience afforded by the high-roofed and beamed barn is both intimate and relaxing, the Suffolk green-painted chairs and small table lamps playing their upmarket country cottage parts well.

The barn also houses a small café, which is open from 10am to 6pm daily, and offers cheaper (though no less fresh or local) treats, while the restaurant itself is open Friday and Saturday evenings only from 7pm. Booking is advisable, though.

The Leaping Hare Restaurant at Wyken Vineyards (01359 250287) can be found at Stanton, Suffolk, 9 miles north east from Bury St Edmunds.

Television isn’t television anymore. The advent and onward march of digital technology and ever-busy lives have meant that we can catch our favourite shows that we used to watch on the box in the corner quite literally, anywhere. Ongoing developments mean that we’ll soon be able to watch television content on our mobiles, in addition to on our portable music and games players, or catching programmes online.

It’s television on the web that I tried for the first time this week. Having missed a few episodes of the US drama Brothers & Sisters, while we away in Cornwall, I decided to give the Channel 4 on-demand TV service 4oD a go. I need to catch up with three programmes in total (even though the season has now ended), but though that for now at least, I’d download one, to see what I thought of the service.

It came well recommended by other members of the family, who had used it to watch other Channel 4 content they had missed. (Just like The Archers, though, you would think it impossible to be able to miss an episode of your favourite shows completely now, what with +1 TV channels, online content, podcasts, and repeats.) And, do you know what? It’s really very good.

4oD’s media library lists all downloaded shows

As with most other services, software (effectively a library and player) have to be downloaded first, and then installed on your computer, and then a registering process has to be completed. Once that’s all done, though, you’re away. You can browse the relevant available content online, and although Channel 4 reportedly offers content available from the last 30 days to download free, be careful, as the show which I wanted to watch cost 99p, even though at the time it had not been broadcast outside of the previous 30 days.

Once you’ve picked your favourite show, all you have to do is download it, and complete a secure payment form (if applicable), which is similar to all other web payment forms. Most programmes are 99p, and in effect you rent them for a month. They can be watched any time in that month before the expiry date, though once you start to watch them; they expire within 48 hours, and disappear from your library.

One of the things I was most impressed with was the download speed. Brothers & Sisters is a 41-minute programme once all the commercials which appear on the television have been taken out, and it only took between 15 minutes and half-an-hour to be obtained from the server, and saved as a playable file on my 4oD library. I’d read many bad reports about BBC’s long-awaited but disappointing iPlayer, so I wasn’t expecting much.

So far, so good. And then you play the programme. The quality really is outstanding. Near-DVD quality pictures and sound, and so much better edited than the broadcast TV version, as there are no annoying sponsor idents and commercials. The 4oD player is similar in style to Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, so the picture can be made larger (larger still to fill the screen), and the show itself can be paused, and stopped if necessary, just as on many ‘live TV’ video and hard-disk recorders.

4oD’s viewing pane is similar to Windows Media Player

The bonus for Channel 4 is obviously that most of its audience own PCs, and so are familiar with the Windows Media Player application, making the use of a similar one child’s play.

I found the whole 4oD experience easy, enjoyable, and I definitely wouldn’t hesitate to use it again, or to add my voice to the other members of my family in singing its praises. The only downside I can see with the service at the moment, is that you have to be using, or sitting in front of your computer to watch its content (and of course, it is limited to Channel 4’s content). To be fair, though, that could also be said of 4oD’s many competitors. Maybe the technology and digital rights management issues have to still develop further.

All in all, though, 4oD is a fuss-free, quick, and (where applicable), a competitively-priced experience. It will certainly still further enhance my television-watching in the 21st century, and can be added to my recordable DVD player (which I use to record and then play the DVD content on a laptop on occasional train journeys to or from work), and live broadcasts as ways of viewing my favourite shows.

So, television isn’t just television anymore. At least, not as we used to know it.

It’s the end of the growing at the flat. As the nights draw in, and the clocks get ready to go back, I’m calling time on the herb and tomato plants that have been silently growing on the kitchen window sill and in the spare bedroom. Providing me with fresh produce, both to cook with and to eat, the smell of the leaves and the look of the fruit is still strong, but the plants’ appearance tell a different story.

Just to recap, I’ve been growing the basil and chives since mid-April, and in mid-June, I harvested them for the first time, putting the whole basil leaves and chopped chives in the freezer, to use in future recipes. There was coriander then, too, but this didn’t last very long after the first cutting, and it died fairly soon afterwards.

Spring was definitely the best time to grow them, and the sunny second-floor kitchen window sill the best place to cultivate them. So, last night, I cut the remaining basil leaves from the browning stems off the four plants left, and once again chopped the chives and whizzed the stems with a hand-held blender, so that they can be added to the earlier frozen harvest.

To be honest, they’ve surprised us at how long they’ve lasted, and how much produce we’ve had off them. But, nothing lasts forever, and they were looking very unwell, with furry lime green moss starting to creep up over the top of the peat pots, which are still visible, even though the pots they are in and filled with compost.

If the herbs were looking unwell, the tomato plants were definitely very, very sick, if not already dying. I came home on Sunday night to find drooping and shrivelling leaves pointing to the floor, the one fruit that was left on the browning branches on the floor (though finally yellow), and leaning arms of branches that had snapped and broken.

Growing tomatoes indoors was always going to be an experiment. And one that next year, I probably won’t repeat. Moved into the warm and sunny spare bedroom in early summer, they spurted greatly at first, but the fruit has been terribly slow in coming. All in all, including the fruit which I found on the carpet yesterday, I’ve had a total of three. Yes, three tomatoes in at least four months. Not good granted, but it has been good fun.

It must be the right time for the tomatoes to be done, though, as we took down the other plants at the house at the weekend, and although they were still very healthy compared to the sorry ad yellow droop-stricken stems I have at the flat, they weren’t in the best of spirits either, and had stopped producing the copious amounts of juicy, sweet fruit that we had enjoyed right up until last week.

So, what to grow next? At the moment, I’ll admit that I’m undecided as to what to grow and when to sow. As we’ve not used that much of the frozen stock of herbs, they should last us all winter until next spring. I might try my hand at window sill chilli peppers, cress, garlic chives (we may even try proper garlic at the house), mint, oregano, and rocket, as the seeds are in the packets in the pantry ready to go.

Of course, now the sun may have started to hibernate, and has exchanged his hat for a rain hood and taken his warmth with him, it may be too cold to grow anything. Maybe I’ll have a break, and continue with the winter efforts in the plot at the house. That’s the thing about growing; it’s a constant and ever-changing cycle - just like nature itself.

Much more excitement from Camp Kylie today. To heighten the anticipation of the release of new long-player ‘X’ in just over a month’s time, in exchange for a few details, a free MP3 ‘medley’ download of album tracks is available here.

Containing tasters from the forthcoming new set of songs, the Kylie marketing machine really seems to be going into overdrive with her return to the spotlight. Either that or the pre-release hype of new single ‘2 Hearts’ hasn’t been quite as expected, so the album snippets have been rushed out to allay fans’ fears that the album will be better.

(As I said a couple of weeks ago, ‘2 Hearts’ is good. Just give it time, as it is a grower, I promise. Another leaked track, ‘Fall For You’ didn’t make the cut, though - the link isn’t an official video.)

Although there have been so many good new pop albums this year (and pleasingly, most of them with an electro twist), this promises to be the best of the lot.

But, will it have the X factor, and swagger into the ‘Best Albums of 2007’ final to be crowned 2007’s champion? Going on this, yes. However, my cheer is only but one, and ‘X’ is up against some hot competition. Ultimately, the fans and critics will be the judges of pop’s most exciting contest of the year.

Roll on 26 November.

Look at what’s in my iTunes window. They’ve finally embraced the digital age down in Ambridge. The long-running daily radio drama has always been a perfect candidate for podcast episodes, as only being around 13 minutes in length, each programme can be caught up on quickly, whenever there is a free gap in the day.

It’s certainly revolutionised my listening this week. Before, the daily tales of David, Ruth, Lynda, and the other folk in Ambridge and the surrounding fictional villages were available on my MP3 player, I had to rely on either setting up a record function on my Freeview receiver (on which a good reception can never be guaranteed); catching it on the BBC’s Radio Player; or just hearing it ‘live’ at 7pm each evening.

Of course, it also gets around the problem of having a full recordable SD card in a digital radio, which resolutely refuses to record anything unless some free space is made on it. Although arguably, when this works, it is just as convenient. So, not only is The Archers podcast itself much more convenient than most other ways of hearing the drama, but it’s also very good quality, with all the trails and snippets from shows which top and tail it on the BBC Radio Player version of the programme taken off.

Listeners can also choose whether they would like to subscribe a daily feed, or just download to their computer as and when they have missed an episode. It can then be popped onto your MP3 player of choice, and you can catch up wherever you are.

I’m surprised it’s taken The Archers production team this long to realise the benefits of the digital age. But then, they are a steadfast and old-fashioned lot down in Borsetshire. And of course, it also begs the question as to if the podcast will attract new and younger listeners. It was certainly slipped quietly onto the The Archers website, with very little fanfare, and can also be found on the BBC Radio 4 podcasts page, alongside other listener favourites such as Broadcasting House, You and Yours, and Front Row.

No matter, though, as it’s finally here. But, whatever next? Will Lynda be taking bookings for the Ambridge Hall B&B over the internet; will Tom sell his Gourmet Grills online; or will David and Ruth’s cows at Brookfield Farm wear MP3 players to further boost their increasing milk yields?