Anarchy (dedicated to all & NeoPoet.com)

Ann of Norway Och that's a wee but strong fer the likes o' you me girrl! In Devonshire we sped along the country lanes, one car wide, all the locals went fast along these tunnels, the banks covered in primroses the hedge on top towards the sky, visible only by bending down in the car, the sudden glimpses of the fields only where the great wooden gates stood at intervals. Then we arrived at an ancient farmhouse, mentioned in the Doomsday book. Here we were greeted by the enormous she oak and the equally enormous he oak trees, the two standing like two sculpted statues guarding an Egyptian tomb; then we met the farmer and his wife, they led us into the barn cellar and we stepped over the barrel rungs of stone onto the mud-floored darkness of the vault-shaped room, where there lay rows of gigantic barrels of cider. Some were those that once had had sherry or Brandy in them, now used for the juice of the Devonian apple crushed in the room above and poured down to this floor at the appropriate season. We were handed a glass and tried this one and that one and oh that one too and thinking oh its only cider, BUT wow it wasn't, we had to wait a while before daring to drive back down the Devon lanes home again! So we went into the farmhouse and saw the huge table that had been one of those oaks outside and MUST have been made before the house was built round it, because of its size, a several metre long polished old oak table that filled the length of the whole room, it told of secrets by its very existence, secrets we shall never decipher; ah that was an experience worth a lot to me. But I haven't finished my birthday story to you dear Rosina, the cider was filled up in the two lugged bottles holding a gallon and cost 4 shillings, that was in 1964 or so, and what wine it was for our dinner guests, beautifully natural, not sweet, and wonderfully intoxicating. So skål Rosina to you in Devon ciderrrrr they rrroll the rrrr's therrre too. Love from Ann.