Picture a muddy field full of over-the-hill Brits sat in fold-up lawn-chairs in the rain. Some huddle around plastic tables piled high with half-empty bottles of wine. Others nurse a plastic cup of Pims or a can of something consoling. All are turned towards a large stage at the far end of the field. They drove here to the Broadlands country estate (site of Charles and Diana's honeymoon, no less) two hours ago, before the rain set in, and ate picnics under an ever-darkening sky, followed by strawberries and cream and suchlike. From behind, they are a sea of multicolored umbrellas, some small, covering heads and knees, some huge, tenting huddled couples. Every now and then there's another pop, and a cork goes flying sideways over umbrellaed heads. It bounces off a bright green one and falls to the sodden grass.

Ray whats-his-name, last year's X-Factor runner-up, has just finished four swing numbers and a crowd of persistant drenched teenaged girls are waiting not-so-patiently for G4 to grace the stage. This is their last ever concert, the crowd have been informed five times in an attempt to muster excitement from the seated portion of the field. After G4, a quadruplet of operatics, the headliner will be Russell Watson. Weak cheer.

The rain is getting worse.

But, as the orchestra bursts into Strauss's Blue Danube, hundreds of dripping umbrellas bob up and down in time. An English summer waltz.

And I just can't stop laughing.

Sitting in my cube at Southern Living in Birmingham, Alabama, I had called my Dad to ask him whether we had any "family plans" for the summer that I should mark down on my calendar. I was booking a visa interview and didn't want to miss anything important.

Yes," he said. "We're all going to a concert on the 28th."

"We are?" I said, rather surprised, racking my brain for a concert we might all go to together. We'd been as a family to the local Music In The Air show a few times (Picture dancing planes. Big, powerful, bomb-equipped dancing planes.) Perhaps this was the plan. "What kind of concert?" I asked.

A Russell Watson and G4 concert," he said, matter-of-factly.

No one was around to see the expression on my face.

Now this was not just a Russell Watson and G4 concert, it was a "classical extravaganza" held outside at Broadlands, a local estate (and, apparently, the estate that Charles and Diana visited on their honeymoon). Oh how delightfully English. My one consolation: that my brother Dave was being roped into this evening of musical fun with me. Dave is a Bloc Party and Foo Fighters fan. He has Prodigy on his iPod.

Dave and I never saw the famed Russell Watson. We wisely came in separate cars, anticipating the weather and thinking that, if we put in an effort, we'd be forgiven for escaping if the July weather was too much to handle. Unfortunately, the two-car-plan meant that I had to watch enviously as Dave cracked open yet another can of Scrumpy Jack. As I sat in a puddle on a camping chair, Dave's North Face raincoat zipped to my chin, rain pelting my hood and the umbrella I was balancing on my knees in a desperate attempt to keep my trousers dry, even the rousing English chorus of "Jerusalem" couldn't warm the patriotic coccles of my heart. It seemed to be raining underneath my umbrella.

As a 20 minute interval was annouced after G4 took an emotional departure, we gathered up our chairs and the remains of the family picnic and squelched through the mud to the car. Wiper-blades and heating on, we turned on some good tunes and navigated the country roads back home, laughing at the absurdity of it all.