Roj
and me, when we were about fifteen or sixteen, we each did a Saturday milkround.
On Saturdays the milkman was quite busy, because not only had he to
deliver the milk, he also had to collect the weekly bill payments
from customers, and this personal contact meant that with certain
customers he was expected to go indoors for a cup of tea, so
lengthening his day even further.
Most
milkmen employed a lad on Saturday, to help get the round finished on
time, paid for, I guess it must have been, from their own pocket.
The
milkmen that Roj and I worked for were called, respectively, Jim and
Harry, and both had been milkmen for the Express Dairy for decades.
Both were professional milkmen.
The
milk was delivered to the depot very early in the
morning, something like four or five a.m., in metal crates to the Express Dairy depot
on the dog-leg of Newington Green Road, where there is now a block of
flats. Someone – and it may have been the milkmen themselves – then
loaded the milk they required for their round onto their milk float.
The
milk float was like a box on wheels, a box with right- and left-sides
open. The box sat on a bank of batteries, and the whole arrangement
on pneumatic-tyred wheels at each corner. At the front centre of the
float was a handle that came up from the base of batteries
to about shoulder-height, and when you pulled this handle down and
forwards the batteries drove the wheels at walking pace. To stop the
machine again you let go of the handle which then sprung back
upright. To steer the float you moved the handle to the left or the right. (See links at the foot of this page for a pic of a ‘pedestrian controlled milk float’.)
Crates of milk
were loaded into the cavity on either side of the float, crates of milk but also
bottles of yogurt – plain and strawberry – single and double cream in small, medium and pint bottles, boxes of eggs and
bottles of orange juice, for the milkman sold all of those things.
Anyone could buy a bottle of milk from the milkman on the spot, but
most of the contents of his float were pre-ordered and delivered to
people’s doorsteps.
Overnight
in the depot all the floats were plugged into the mains, to recharge
the batteries. Little blue floats in a silent, chilly, refrigerated row.
The
older milkmen such as Jim and Harry saw these floats as quite a
marvel, for in the 1930s when they first started work they had to
push their cart, with no mechanical help at all, and this meant
taking a smaller load with more frequent walks back to base to
reload.
Milkmen
were still expected to shout their wares, and the traditional call
was Milko-oo-wow-oo-wow, with a kind of high-pitched yodel at the
end. Harry was very good at the yodel but Jim’s lungs were not what
they had been so his call came out more like, Milk-ooh-aah-oh as he
struggled with his breath to get to the end of the catchphrase. An
early form of marketing, though focused on the product rather than
the brand.
The
Express Dairy had competition on the streets for milk delivery, from
the Co-op, but the Co-op milkman’s round was longer as his
customers were more sparsely distributed, so people at the end of the
round tended to get their milk rather warm in summer. The Express
Dairy milkman returned to the depot mid-day to top up the float to
finish off the afternoon deliveries. But some women used the Co-op by
preference, for the ‘divi’.
And
surely on his return to the depot on Saturday midday for a top-up of
milk, the milkman would have offloaded some of the cash he was
carrying, which must have amounted to rather a lot, all in a leather
shoulder-bag that hung at his hip. I never heard of a milkman being robbed, though it must
have happened. Nearly everyone paid in cash, one or two with a cheque
though that was considered a bit unwarrantedly posy.
Few
people had fridges in those days, and milk was not available from the
supermarket, since there weren’t any supermarkets. Possibly the
dairies had in any case a kind of monopoly on the stuff.
An
experienced lad, such as Roj and I became, was trusted to collect
money from customers too, and we were even allowed to lead the milk
float, especially when the milkman went into a house for a cup of tea
and we were left with instructions on what to deliver where while he
was gone, all done by memory.
At the same time as putting the bottles of milk on a doorstep, we collected up the empties that had been left outside the house. We threw the empties back into the crates on the float. Kerchunk, Kerchunk!
The
only disaster I can remember was dropping a jar of strawberry yogurt
on someone’s step, unfortunately for my personal cred the house of
the mother of Bernard, who was one of the paperboys on the paper
round. The pink sludge and broken glass did make an unsightly
mess in the sunshine. But aside from that all went swimmingly, I
don’t know why I ever stopped doing the round really. There must
have been some reason. Possibly the pressure of social life as I got
older.
And
you got to see things, I remember delivering milk to some filthy
corners. The rear yard along a dark alleyway of a small greengrocer’s
shop on Newington Green itself, just a few doors along from where
William Hill is now (in 2015) especially sticks in the memory for the
stinking squalor, though it looked pretty grubby inside that shop
too. Not sure if they ever sold anything as there were at least two
more greengrocers within about fifty paces. This shop was the
greengrocer of the Goon Show sketch where Neddy Seagoon asks, ‘Are you the greengrocer?’
and Spike Milligan replies, ‘Well, not so much green, mate, more a sort of
dirty yellow colour’. No, it probably wasn’t, but could have
been.
And
then of course there was the China Inland Mission and the Jews.
My
memory is that when I started the milkround all the customers were
British, almost entirely London-accented, and that during the short
time I did the round the ethnic mix of the area began to change,
initially with Nigerians and Turkish Cypriots, known by the milkman as
Greeks. The Nigerians of course spoke English, but Harry and me, we
got to learn to speak a few works of Turkish – that we thought was Greek.
Soochoo – for a many years I thought that was the Greek work for milk, it’s actually Turkish (sütçü) for
milkman – and yarın (tomorrow). ‘No, not yarin’, Harry would
shout, ‘Shoomdee! (şimdi) Now!’ Though he did it all with laughter and great good
humour.
And
every morning the milkmen would march off in a line from the depot, a
fair lick at the head of their battery-driven floats, and disperse to
the respective directions to deliver the milk to the people. Jim and
Harry in tandem as far as Newington Green, for their rounds were on
opposite sides if the Green. They walked all day, did the milkmen,
even Jim with his lungs.
Never
did get to find out what happened to Harry and Jim. They probably
retired and life carried on for them according to plan. The dairy
depot closed. People bought their milk from a shop like they bought
everything else from a shop. Why single out milk?
Dave
articles on a similar topic:Pedestrian Controlled Floats including a picture of both an Express Dairy float and a Co-op float.From Hansard, 1962, seems that a milkman, in order to pull the float, was required to have a driving licence. On a request from Barbara Castle on behalf of a constituent, the Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, said that regulation would be changed. Come to think of it, I am almost certain the milk floats had a tax disc in a holder hanging from the side of the float – a vehicle road licence – too.
No comments:
Post a Comment