Oh, that is nice.  A proper, no-messing, fresh-tasting English apple cider.  Recently, it seems to have become fashionable to want to spice up ciders with a variety of fruit flavours, but it is hard to beat the honest-to-goodness original article.

All I ever ask from a pint of cider is that it transports me off into the idyll of the English countryside.  The sun is shining; there is a smell of freshly-mown grass; a small haze of midges swarm distantly, reflecting the golden sunlight but, crucially, not one approaches close enough to bite me; some rural, smock-clothed labourers, of indefinite historical period, are engaged in a variety of romantic manual tasks––hay gathering; apple picking; mangelwurzel gleaning––sufficient to make my indolent, leisurely drinking all the more enjoyable by comparison.

Within sight of the busy six lanes of traffic on the Euston Road, I take another sip and lay back on a downy pillow of clover, feeling the hot rays of the sun begin to make the skin on my nose wrinkle; my eyes squint as I look up directly at the blazing, yellow orb; and I feel the first trickle of sweat appear on my forehead, ready to trace a slow route down to my chin.

You know what I could do with?  Just to complete the perfect picture.  A shade.  A parasol.  An umbrella.  Another pint of Umbrella London Apple Cider.  Just to maintain the illusion.

© Beery Sue

Beery Sue enjoys the places that cider takes her.