And this especially for James Holloway

[badgersandjam.livejournal.com]

written by songofnewday out of the generosity of his heart and the genius of his comedy.  Again, last CHangeling National.

Colonel Indigo-Jones’s Cyder-o-Matic (The Sui-Cider)

In 1863, ex-Life Guard Officer Martlew Indigo-Jones was invalided out on half pay and decided to return to his father’s orchard and cider making business in rural Gloucestershire

The process for making cider at that point was a fairly slow system of gathering the apples, scratting them into pommage, using a large cider press to squeeze the juice out of the cheese, fermentation, etc. Indigo-Jones had, by then, become used to the rigours of military efficiency and the new processes of automation brought about by the Mitrailluse and later on the Gatling gun. So this process struck him as being far from the most efficient method of production.

After many tireless weeks of design, experimentation, woodwork and odd curly flange shaped things delivered by blacksmiths, he was ready to test his new juice extraction system – The Indigo-Jones Mark 1 Breach Loading Pulp Extraction System

It worked along a simple system. Apples were placed in a large hopper and fed into the launch mechanism through a turning shaft with large grooves at intervals around its circumference, each big enough to fit a standard apple. These would then drop into the breach and roll down under gravity. Below them was a small windmill like device lying flat with spinning arms that would catch each apple spin them up to a considerable velocity and then release them through the output nozzle at a much higher velocity. These would then be propelled across the room into a metal grill backed with muslin cloth. The apples on striking the grill would be instantly reduced to pulp and the resulting pommage caught by the cloth.

The design was simple and ingenious and on the day of the first test run many of the local gentry and not an insignificant number of public hangers-on and lower classes turned up to view the device in action.

It should be noted at this point that the device itself clearly should have worked perfectly. Any blame should really be apportioned to the supplier of apples who had been especially called in (It was early March and the local orchard was bare of any fruit). The apples used, coloquially referred to as stabapples were loaded into the machine. The windmill was spun up, much faster than it had originally been tested at by an over-enthusiastic apple-picker and the hopper lever released.

There are very few clear reports of what happened next. This due to considerable confusion, people being blinded by pulp and the few surviving witnesses having to be placed in a local asylum until there wits hopefully return. It appears that the pips proved slightly more than the mesh, muslin and back wall of the shed could withstand. The outpouring of grapeshot from the device levelled every tree in the orchard to a height of three feet. One apple struck a church bell in the nearby village and over thirty people accidentaly turned out for evensong at half past two.

The colonel himself was, unfortunately, stood by the “business end” of the device at the time, eager to examine the quality of the cheese produced. Nothing was found of him until three weeks later when his order of St George was found embedded in a tree two miles away. It was later given a burial with full military honours.