Monday 15 March 2010

Down Memory Lane with Nige

Talk of milk bottles and milkmen (did they really cry 'Milko'? They certainly whistled) over on Gaw's excellent blog put me in mind of my Lincolnshire grandmother. A highlight of her week (it was a quiet life) was the hebdomedal wrangle with her unfortunate milkman. Whatever sum this long-suffering soul billed her for the week's milk was invariably wrong by my grandmother's somewhat confused reckoning, and had to be wrangled over at great length, my grandmother sputtering the while with righteous indignation, the honest milko removing his pencil from behind his ear to run her through the figures repeatedly until eventually she had to concede that, yes, on this occasion he was perhaps right. As indeed he was on every other occasion he presented her with a bill...
Gaw appends a picture of old-fashioned milk bottles - which, as Sir Watkin points out, are not the real old-fashioned milk bottles but the newfangled stubby affairs that replaced them. The great thing about these newfangled stubbies was that, as well as being ugly, they made it all but impossible to pour a small quantity of milk, especially from a full bottle, without the stuff going everywhere. And this, in a clear proof of the conservative dictum that 'all change is for the worse', has been increasingly the case with each innovation in milk packaging, from ill-shapen, dribbling plastic bottles with their tiny ungrippable caps and fiddly stay-fresh foil to the all but unopenable cartons - don't get me started on cartons... The old, tall, elegant, wide-mouthed milk bottle was a design classic - pleasing to look at and handle, and a perfect pourer. Therefore it had to change. However, there's a related case where the reverse has happened and a design that is catastrophically unfit for purpose has remained unchanged down the decades - a case where change could only be for the better. The metal milk jugs and teapots that are standard in hotels and genteel tearooms seem designed specifically to do anything but pour. Squat and cumbersome, with no more than a tiny indentation in the forward edge by way of lip or spout, these come about as close to perfect uselessness as anything could while still claiming the identity of jug or teapot. What's worse, the handle and lid of the teapot are entirely uninsulated and can only be used with the hand protected by a napkin - a napkin that will soon, as like as not, be soaked in spilled tea/milk, as will everything in the vicinity. The fact that this design persists is truly a mystery, especially as, in such establishments, the coffee pots and chocolate pots are spouted and perfectly adequate. Oddly, I owe my extensive experience of these things largely to my Lincolnshire grandmother, with whom, in childhood, I sampled the delights of many a hushed tearoom in many a genteel hotel - but that's another story...

15 comments:

  1. In Yugoslavia in the eighties milk used to come in sealed plastic bags. Not always perfectly sealed either. Quite mad.

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  2. Good lord - I was there at the end of the 60s, travelling down the Croatian coast, living on bread rolls, tinned sardines, astoundingly cheap cigarettes and UHT milk - which, as I remember, came in some kind of hard-to-open carton. Probably just as well I avoided the fresh milk though - milk in a bag, that's even worse... Thanks ZMKC.

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  3. onde I read that Jeff Beck , before been the guitar hero, was a milkman...

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  4. Like zmkc, I remember milk being delivered in plastic bags during the 80s as well. Western Canada. The milk was fresh and was placed in a hard plastic pitcher designed for the bag. Cut a corner of the bag and away you go.

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  5. The new-fangled stubbies look rather like the small bottles used for school milk. Do you recall how on a summer morning they'd warm up making the cream congeal and allowing a touch of sourness to enter? Revolting. Good old Mrs T - I was an early fan.

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  6. Sean Connery was a milkman too.

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  7. "The new-fangled stubbies look rather like the small bottles used for school milk"

    As I recall them recall the 1/3 pint bottles, tho' (obviously) smaller, were similar in shape to the (old) pint bottles; the mouth was proportionately wider.

    "Good old Mrs T"

    Contrary to legend, she didn't end (all) free school milk. Indeed she resisted such demands:

    Responding to the demands [from the Treasury] to end free school milk, Mrs Thatcher said: "I think that the complete withdrawal of free milk for our school children would be too drastic a step and would arouse more widespread public antagonism than the saving justifies."

    She proposed the compromise, later accepted, that milk would only be available to pupils in nursery and primary schools.


    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2000/uk_confidential/1095121.stm

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  8. Well I've never met anyone else who can rant on about those metal jugs and teapots as energeticslly as I can! It's one of my themes! 'Can't understand why they still exist - if I designed anything as bad it would be on the rubbish heap' etc etc...
    We still have a milkman here in the wilds - he sometimes arrives before I've gone to sleep. I suppose it saves him getting up early the next morning - he can deliver after the pub closes. We don't quibble over the bill though!

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  9. Yes, I recall those third-pint milk bottles. We were obliged to drink one each morning at my first school with, if we were lucky, a slice of Mother's Pride with a smear of margarine. Our repast was taken on parade, a hundred of more of us lined up facing a set of parallel bars in a cold and gloomy gym. Miscreants were made to hang from the bars for the duration. If they struggled, they were beaten on the back of the knees with the sharp edge of a ruler by an ex Chief Petty Office with torn ears and a broken nose. Ah, the good old days ... I'll be thinking about helping my grandmother to dry clothes with a mangle next.

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  10. milk is weird anyway. It's kind of like posh wee if you think about it.

    ps. Hebdomadal is my new favourite word, many thanks for that!!!

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  11. I entered the world after milk deliveries ended in my neck of the woods, but our old house had a milk box embedded in the wall. The box had doors on both sides so you could open it while standing indoors or outdoors.

    Milk still is sold in plastic bags in Canada (at least in Ontario).

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  12. Ray Milland was too.

    Sir W: print the legend.

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  13. Ray Milland sold in plastic bags in Canada? I don't believe it! Did you know his real name was Reginald Truscott-Jones - why did he have to go and change that?

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  14. Before he was famous, Mr Truscott-Jones delivered milk (possibly from my grandmother's farm but I'd have to check that). This fact doesn't appear in the biographies I've found online so I shall be sitting down to write a revisionist assessment as soon as. I'm sure you'd agree it throws an entirely new light on his work.

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  15. Absoutely - that would explain why they were always having to stop rolling when he started whistling and calling 'Milko!'

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