Today I was a pirate

Maybe it's a going back to work thing but it's been far from the most exciting day. Lots of big household shopping and lots of (but nowhere near enough) tidying. I had hoped that it would involve more gardening and maybe even some of the months-overdue cycling. But the rain said no to that.

Still, after weeks of answering Ellen's endlessly repeated, "are you a pirate?" question with, "no, no, no, I be a Wurzel" in my best West Country accent, today I decided to be a pirate, which involves a slightly gruffer West Country accent, not being a coider drinker and the full repertoire of famous pirate sayings. This includes, for reasons I can't explain, also doing the parrot.

In spite of shunning my Wurzel identity, I did also get round to bottling the cider that has been fermenting and long past stopped fermenting since last October. It's not proper cider, not in the sense of having been made with cider apples. Just the apples that grow in the garden, which are a combination of eating and cooking varieties (although which ones I don't know). It's incredibly dry, especially if you do a taste test with that strange fizzy orange Magners stuff. And it's flat. This time I've experimented and bottled it with a wee bit of sugar. If the bottles don't explode it might have a pleasant wee bit of fizz to it and might be a bit sweeter.

I'll leave it for a few weeks and then do a quality control test - drink a bottle and see if it (a) makes me sick or (b) makes me rush to toilet. If it passes, the rest (about 40 litres) will steadily disappear until it's time to make some more.

I should add that in spite of the photo making it look cloudy, it is actually crystal clear. It does, however, look like bottled piss.