A happy pinta

We have our milk delivered. On four mornings a week two pints of milk and on Fridays some eggs too are left outside 88 under the hedge. They are left by Graham the milkman at some god-awful time in the morning and placed into a little wooden box, subdivided into six that my dad made me five years ago. One of the six compartments is slightly too tight for a milk bottle - it must annoy Graham when he has to gently nudge the empty bottle out of that section on a frosty dark morning.

I open the door and bring in the two pints. No tetra packs or plastic bottles for us. I duly pop my empties back out for Graham to collect. There's a cycle, a rhythm to the doorstep delivery.  And on Thursdays at 3.25pm practically on the dot Graham collects his money and we have a little chat and put the world to rights.

I have a history with milk. My dad was a dairy farmer and at one point a milkman. He would milk the cows and then go out and deliver the green top unpasteurised milk. I have two milk bottles as an heirloom to prove it. He stopped in the seventies actually delivering milk but I can still remember him bringing me an aero chocolate bar, a Jack and Jill comic and my mum a Turkish Delight after he'd finished deliveries on a Saturday morning. I drank milk morning, noon and night.

I can remember as a 5 year old helping my Dad heave two big silver churns full of the excess milk on the back of his green Morris pick-up van, drive up the lane and roll the two cans on a flat slab of stone on a wall by the main road, awaiting the big dairy to collect them. Then modern life hit and we had to install a bulk tank and the milk tanker would rumble up the drive for the extra milk and the magic was lost.

Support a British institution. Support your milkman....milkwoman...milkperson!