The milkman didn’t come again this morning. There are six empty bottles in the front porch awaiting collection. Reality is the milkman ain’t coming no more, no more, the milkman ain’t coming no more.
It feels as if we have lost a member of the family. A pretty terminal state of affairs. No longer will I need to check the CCTV to see what time he arrived, or be woken by the clinking of bottles as the porch door was opened and then closed behind him.
Dropped by Coops’ garage on the way back from the tip. He mentioned that they still got their milk delivery this morning. V strange. So I called the Peterborough head office to find out that Coops’ postcode (LN4 as opposed to our LN2) was supplied from the Grantham depot which didn’t deliver as far as us. Ah well.
At this point I need to do a bit of wrapping up on the milk delivery front. Firstly some stats. I started logging the milk delivery times on the eighth of January this year. Don’t ask me why. It’s the engineer in me. I didn’t really know what I was going to do with the data. It is an historical tidbit that may be of interest to people in centuries to come but probably not. At least it is a snapshot of life in the year twenty twenty four.
Our milk was delivered three times a week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The average delivery time on Mondays was 04:29, Wednesdays 03:49 and Fridays 03:53. Overall the average delivery time was 04:03. His earliest delivery date was 02:54 on the fifteenth of March and the latest was 05:37 on the fifth of August.
There was only one occasion, the twenty sixth of June, where the person delivering was not our normal guy. This may have been because of illness or he might have been on holiday. Who knows? You might consider that only one day’s holiday is not very much but we have had quite a few gaps where our delivery was cancelled due to our own holidays so milkie might have taken that opportunity to go away himself. Only once did I record him using a torch but he may also have used one on other occasions.
We never found the name of our milkman and probably now never will. It certainly isn’t worth putting in any detective work here. It is best that he remains the “Unknown Milkman”. One day, when he is called to the great dairy in the sky his gravestone could well simply read “Milkman”. Or “Here lies the milkman, the safeguard of the nation’s breakfast”.
He joins other milkmen in our collected psyche. Ernie springs to mind. He of the fastest milk cart in the west fame. There’s also the old Norman Wisdom classic The Early Bird. Actually those are the only ones I can think of. If under a certain age you may need to google them. Feel free to chip in with more suggestions.
Part of me thinks we have a duty of care to our milkman. How is he now going to earn a living, put bread, milk, cream, eggs and orange juice on the table. Had we ordered more items off him would that have kept the milk float afloat? I don’t feel guilty here. The milk was around a pound a pint.
It doesn’t feel as if we have an alternative supplier, other than supermarkets. Adie suggested McQueens but they are in Mansfield. Too far man, too far. Newark was far enough.
I do like the idea of the occasional trip to Home Farm Dairy, twelve miles north on the A15. They sell raw milk direct from the farm. Unpasteurised I presume. I like the idea but it would very much only be the occasional jaunt. They don’t deliver. We live too far from @Chris otherwise she might have sold us some milk direct from her own farm.
Not much else to say. This isn’t a subject upon which we should dwell. Need to move on. At this stage if anyone would like to share their thoughts, memories perhaps, on our milkman or any other who may play a part in their own lives wherever they are please feel free to do so.
I will finish by wishing our former milkman well. Let us hope that he finds gainful employment that will fully utilise his undoubted and well proven skillset. Goodbye and good luck 🙂