If you look at the last line of my last post you will see the words “I’m slightly worried that things are going too well.”

That state of affairs lasted for around 12 hours, until the car ground to a halt on the way to work. It started again fairly easily, cut out a few more times and then didn’t miss a beat for the rest of the journey. Annoying, perplexing and, as the interval between incidents is decreasing, worrying.

That was just the beginning.

The cook for the Saturday cafe, who is supposed to be there an hour before me was decidedly not there. |As I turned into the drive I noticed the absence of car, which wasn’t a good sign. The kitchen, when I walked round, was dark and cold and quite clearly not open for business.

Time for a decision. I opened up, consulted my list of numbers and woke up a man who sounded like he had been having a lie-in until some idiot woke him by ringing a wrong number.

Not a good start.

The second attempt was almost equally fruitless – right number but they were already doing something else.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we did get a stand-in, I got the sausage and bacon ready for them and it all went reasonably well for the rest of the day. We did another 55 large and 10 small bottles, plus two demijohns for cider. In just three pressing days we have now produced as much as we did in the whole season last year. Modesty prevents me saying that the new man in charge of pressing is more efficient, harder working and better looking than the one we had last year. However, if you want to draw your own conclusions feel free…

People brought a lot of Bramleys and Lord Derby , taking away gallons of healthy juice and leaving us a lot of apples donated for our own use. So all in all the day turned out to be productive, enjoyable and worthwhile.

Well, it will be as long as we can sell the juice.