As usual for this time of the year, the weather along the Sussex coast has been a mixture of very warm and very cold. Currently a brilliant but cold day - 10C - today. There's always one really cold snap in April, just before spring starts in earnest. I recall my first day of being a guide at the windmill ("Jill") on Clayton Hill in 2007 - deep snow - and that was the first weekend in April!

My long-departed farm worker friend, Jack Hooker, who'd spent all his life working in the countryside in Kent and Sussex, remarked to me: "Watch the blackthorn, because blackthorn flowers like cold weather and, as long as they're out, the cold weather stays with us."

That was forty years ago - and his advice is still good today. The blackthorn's been out for about 2-3 weeks down here and, with a bit of luck, will be gone in about a weeks's time. I say "luck" - wrong word, really, because the masses of blackthorn we get round our village make great photos!