As a youngster in the early fifties, I was part of a labour force employed to carry out the conversion works on a row of country cottages near the Fowey river in East Cornwall.
The new owners - a recently retired engineer from the Middle Eastern oil-fields and his Spanish wife (who were also accommodating their son and his French fiancee) - insisted they lived on site; tolerating building-site conditions rather than renting other accommodation. Slightly eccentric I thought, but saving a little money at the same time.
The typically lovely Cornish summer weather allowed them to spend most of their daylight hours outside - picnicking in the almost waist-high grass in the quite extensive garden, which was in fact a cider-apple orchard.
Because of the very warm working conditions, the client suggested we help ourselves to the plentiful rough cider left in the press by the previous owners.
(Those who have sampled the real old country 'scrumpy' will be aware of the potency of this brew and will understand why our clients were in a state of near collapse come tea-time each day, the shrill mixture of excitable 'foreign' languages growing louder by the hour).
One of our gang, a giant of a Looe man called John, resuming work after his lunch-break decided he's carry two buckets of concrete up the ladder instead of the usual one - the roof having to be raised meant a lot of ladder work, mostly by John himself.
Stepping one foot on the bottom rung, the other in a muddy patch of ground at the base of the ladder, John slipped and fell backward, sprawling full length.
The Spanish lady, just catching sight of John falling (out of the corner of her eye), let out an incredibly loud shriek - striking terror in the hearts of most people within earshot, especially the young French girl who instantly became almost hysterical; all in all, quite a scene to behold.
Rushing to where John was lying stretched out; his eyes closed, cigarette still clenched between his lips, being cooed at by a tearful Spanish lady who was quite certain his great fall from the top of the ladder had done serious damage; none of us sure what our next move should be, there being no telephone at hand, stood around in a semi-drunken stupor.
Gradually a smile appeared on John's face and he let out a huge belly-laugh then between bouts of raucous laughter he put us in the picture - almost apologetic for not being injured.
He feeling the full brunt of a tipsy 'foreign' lady's temper for worrying her so.
The cider press was declared out-of-bounds to all builders from then onwards, but the small padlock fitted to it's door proved no real obstacle to a determined carpenters apprentice.
ROY WILLIAMS
Callington