I have been down to look at the road. People in ordinary front wheel drive vehicles are getting through but they are not stopping (please not Mrs Browne) and they are getting some speed up before embarking on the up gradient sections. There is quite a lot of ice to the east of me and then it is pretty clear from the double bend up to the bridge and then reasonable (I am told) from the bridge to Horsted Lane.

I gather Andrea Browne is in a ditch near the Bluebell waiting for a forestry commission van to pull her out.

I still need to get to HH to shop ...

Sue

Light rain on top of a very cold road surface created a sloping ice rink on BurstowBridgeHill Lane this morning - it was fine at 7am but by 9am chaos ensued.....the police eventually taped off the junction to the B2028

Anyone else taken some good snaps?

The heavy snow last night has transformed Highbrook into a scene from a fairy tale! Here are some photographs that attempt to capture this uncommon event.

Thank you for your comments, will just sit back and admire them instead. They are growing where we had two trees so probably the honey variety.

If they're a bit yellower than appears in the picture, they look like honey fungus so could be where old trees were. If that's the case, they are good for neither man nor plant!

I think we have some of those in the garden, not something I recognise nor that I can find a good match with in the books - so a definite avoid!!

As you can see from the two new photos added we have loads of these mushrooms in our garden...what we want to know is what they are and more importantly if we can eat them?!

I don't do anything sophisticated with them but these work well for me...

Parasols - cut into 1" cubes approx. fry not too long in olive oil, chopped garlic and fresh chilli serve on garlic rubbed and olive oil drizzled toast

Beefsteak/Ox tongue - boil in some salt for 5 mins - takes out some of the tannin, cut into strips and fry up again - but can be treated pretty much as you would meat and used in all sorts of things.

Cep/Penny bun - very flexible - great in pasta of course, fried, deep fried - keeps its structure well

Lots of better recipes on the Internet of course

These are fabulous. can we also have the recipes? I hope to better next year as this year I have only had field mushrooms and shaggy ink caps. Last year there were puffballs (good in risotto) as well.

It has been a bumper autumn for mushrooms and other edible fungi - here are some of the tasty samples we have found in the last 2-3 weeks. NB - identifying these may be very useful when "civilisation" as we currently know it ends.......

.....and even some media coverage - that wasn't really my quote!

View article...

Sue, we're up for the games evening by the way.

Great evening. I missed it last year so I was super glad to be there this year. I was delighted a little boy decided to dance for us - I don't recall us having a dancer before.

Obviously we will have to regulate against foreign ringers competing (i.e. come from Liverpool). Otherwise, I will get my friend Mel Gibson to come and do his rendition of Braveheart. But seriously, great evening, great food (and drink , which I cadged from the Brownes and David Foster) and super entertainments and company including on the keyboard. A defining Highbrook evening.

I am contemplating an 'End of the Recession' games evening for November - any takers?

Thank you to all who came and supported this years Harvest supper.

I for one certainly enjoyed it as did all my guests! The plentiful food and small snifter of a very good savignon helped!

A special Thank you from me to all those, you know who you are, who helped setting up and in the kitchen.....the waitresses are all getting far too gorgeous and grown up.... especially John and Steve!

I won't say 'here's to next year' we'll see.......... Nic x

Lovely evening; thank you to everyone who organised it! I haven't been to a Harvest Supper for quite a few years and I'm very glad I came back this year. Special thanks to my friend Rob who came all the way from Liverpool to accompany me, my parents and some of the community singing.

I look forward to defending the title next year!!

For me the highlights of the evening were the tiramisu (yummy, although it was the only pud I sampled so I suspect the others were equally delicious) and Sue's story which took my mind off my "singing" ordeal to follow - and I am still contemplating its message!

Well fed, well “refreshed” and well entertained, by the end of the 2009 Harvest Supper those attending went home after a very enjoyable evening thanks to the many providers, preparers and servers of the shepherd’s pie supper with many varieties and stomach-stretching quantities of perfect puddings.

In the Strictly Highbrook’s Got Talent part of the evening four junior and four senior acts provided a wide range of spectacles from street dancing to story-telling making the judging audiences task very tricky to differentiate between the winners and runners-up. However, by a narrow margin Alexander Broadley took first prize in the junior section with his bold street dance moves and Daisy Downe and Rob Owen carried off the adult section with their rendition of “Misty” on the saxophone and keyboard. Well done to everyone who took part and for entertaining everyone so well.

Of course no Harvest Supper event would be complete without the Raffle which always generates much excitement!

If all that wasn’t enough, Emma Davies then led the community singing with many old favourites like “Why shouldn’t my goose?” and finishing with the traditional Psalm 23 “The Lord’s my shepherd”.

To which all one can say is "Goodness Gracious Me"!!

It is impressive. I counted plus 20 one morning. Is it an economical alternative to grass cutting?

Nice photos.

Should we be 'harvesting' these critters for low carbon meat?

Deer...and Amercans [and Brits too come to that!]

We saw the deer [pictured on the Highbrook site], in the garden of Burstow Cottage as we drove through the village. Our American visitor was as delighted as we were. Shame they eat things they oughtn't to!!!

Many people have commented about the Burstow Wildlife Park deer herd - here are some photos courtesy of Daisy Downe

On Saturday we had a brilliant charity event at Ham Cottage in aid of Help for Heroes. Exhibitors brought an amazing array of wonderful classic, vintage and military vehicles, raising £1,270.18 for the charity! A very BIG thank you goes to all those people who supported the event by bring their vehicles, or to those who just came along and donated so much money, and or bought merchandise. And of course a huge thank you goes to all those people who made it possible; Peter and Andrea Browne for all their endless hard work to make the event such a success, Mitzi and her team for the yummy refreshments, the great New City Jazz Band, John and Sylvia Downe for the loan of their field and all my friends and family for their efforts throughout the day. I know this sounds like an Oscar speech but everyone worked so hard to make the event an amazing success, and to do their bit towards achieving the Help for Heroes £20M target for this year – Thank you!

Thanks for the write-up and photos Daisy - it sounds great! We have already bought our tickets for the next one on May 29th and are hoping the weather will be fine!

£10 for a pasty & chip dinner plus your first pint of proper ale...and if that wasn't enough, throw in a talented jazz band and a very unique location and you've got the Bluebell Railway Jazz & Ale Festival.

So, as two keen music graduates, Rob (who made his Mummers debut as the 'scouse bobby' last christmas) & I decided to attend this event. Despite the non-stop pouring rain, we were in high spirits and were soon tucking into our pasty & chips with a pint of ale!

On the platform opposite the Jazz band played with the rain adding it's own percussive element! The steam train pulled in later in the evening and soon the platform was thriving with people tapping their feet and drinking their pints.

All in all a lovely evening expedition! If you missed this one, make sure you get a ticket for the next Jazz & Ale evening on May 29th!

I really enjoyed the evening - something a bit different.

Thanks for organising it Sue!

The Guesthouse Storytellers’, based in Newhaven, provided Highbrook with its first performance storytelling evening over the recent Easter week-end. The storytellers started by reminding us that until tarmac revolutionised our lives, a winter’s worth of rain on Highbrook’s clay soil regularly rendered the muddy tracks around here impassable for months at a time. Travel was a luxury few could enjoy and even walking to and fro the local market town would have been a major expedition. The themes for the evening’s storytelling was journeying into the imagination where mud was no hindrance and tarmac no help – all you had to do was sit back and listen.

Dramatic as well as amusing stories from Russia, Ireland and central Asia, revealed how similar our world is to the world from which these stories emerged. Which ancient soul in Turkey first told the tale of how a life time of immediate gratification could not deliver lasting happiness? Who first told the story of how clever and creative thinking could protect loved ones from physical challenges they could not face? What is the moral of the Cinderella story and does it change when the lead is taken, not by a young girl, but by an apparent dunderheaded, ‘the fool of the world’?

For thousands of years before tarmac transformed our muddy tracks, stories were used to tell imparting wisdom and learning. Mass production of paper started to kill off the art of oral story telling, helped along on its way by tv and now the www. All that has started to change and in Sussex there has been a huge revival in the art of storytelling. The Easter Sunday event was the first in a series of storytelling events which will be taking place in Highbrook over the coming year. While this event was aimed at an adult audience, or at least those who were prepared to listen for 45 minutes at a time without the option of channel hopping, look out for open air events as well as those aimed specifically at children. We will keep you posted.

Sue Nelson

After many people's efforts this morning and the last few days Highbrooks lanes are looking much tidier.

A large number of the items collected were drinks cans - in fact on the North side of Burstowhill Lane (aka Tin Can Alley) there were 34 cans. The most popular drink on the lane is apparently Stella Artois by some margin followed by 1664 lager and then various other lagers and ciders. I don't think 50p a unit will curb this dumping!

Sandwich packages were also frequent finds but no analysis of the fillings has been made.

3 cheers for the Wombles of Highbrook!