Secrets and Mysteries

The Black Hand was a secret organisation within the Serbian army in the very early 20th century. They were Serbian ultra-nationalists, committed to the creation of an ethnically-based 'Greater Serbia', at the time the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires were collapsing and the Balkans was a broiling mess of plots, betrayals and shifting alliances. They would probably have been a forgotten footnote in history - they were eventually repudiated by the Serbian authorities and their leaders were executed - but they are credited with having promoted and sponsored the plot to assasinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914; the pebble that started the avalanche of 20 million

Once or twice a year, I have a black hand - on apple-pressing days. Usually, it is even worse than this, but today was chilly so I wore rubber gloves some of the time - especially for the wash-up, which is what I think is the prime cause. This hand has been washed, scrubbed and bathed but, as usual, none of these things touch it, I just have to wait a few days for it to wear away

I hope there is a biochemist, an epidermal physiologist or a food technologist reading this who can explain this mystery to me - it intrigues me every time. My hypothesis is that it has something to do with a reaction between the metal pillar-cum-screw in the centre of the press and the malic acid in the apples. In a perfect world the pillar would be stainless steel but, on our budget, I think it is relatively low-grade steel or iron

This year, the juice is even more acidic, because I added a little vitamin C to the pulp in the press, to limit the oxidation of the juice. My guess is that some iron compound has resulted from the reaction, which has then bound to, or been absorbed by, the surface layers of my skin, but I'd like someone to give me chapter and verse

We put the apples through an electric 'scratter', which reduces them to pulp. We then transfer the pulp to a coarse bag in the press. When it is full, we close the bag, put a wooden disk and wooden blocks on top, then wind down a large screw with a long lever handle, to compress it as tightly as possible. Each pressing yields 8-9 litres of juice and we did three - that looks like a lot of juice in a barrel on the kitchen worktop. It will settle for a day or two before we rack it off into bottles and pasteurise it. My hand will be pink again before we open the first bottle