Milkmen do what?

Well, what’s with the blog title I hear you all cry. Well, I came up with it for one of two reasons:

1. 1. All the good ones had been used already.
2. 2. In three words it speaks volumes about how English culture has changed in the 30 years I have been on God’s green planet.

Okay it’s actually a bit of both. The first reason takes no explanation, but I’m sure there is a fair degree of purplexation (yep, I just invented a new word, and now it’s on the Interweb it’s official) regarding the second. Well firstly we need a bit of history…

A couple of years ago I worked with possibly the best team of guys I have ever worked with. We had that work hard play hard mentality which is a lot harder to achieve that you would think. As part of office law, any stupid comments that were uttered in the course of a normal working days banter were recorded for prosperity. A small selection of quotes from the team being…

“Voluntary Service.. So did you have to do it?”
“I’m on target, but how many days have I got left?”
“..people assume I want to be with someone on New Years Eve, but I can sort myself out”

Now in one coffee break I was lamenting the demise of the milkman. This was predictably challenged by my college and friend George, who argued that the milkman was a dinosaur, had been evolved out of existence, and provided no benefit to society in the modern world. My immediate response was (I’m sure you’re one step ahead at this point) "Well, Milkmen save peoples lives”. Unfairly this comment was met with hoots of derision and added to the list of funny quotes. Obviously I did not leave the matter there, as I knew my assertion to be true I sent the following proof to colleagues within the hour via the medium of email (like I said, work hard play hard);

Milkman delivers milk, saves family from fire

Milkmen Lifesavers

Despite proving my point, the discussion made me think about the humble milkman. I bet there are kids in this country who aren’t even familiar with the concept of the milkman, having grown up never seeing one. They are probably thought of as a quaint concept from ‘the olden days’, like how I think of Black and White Television for my parents generation. The old English joke that ‘your wife is shagging the milkman’ is kind of redundant now. The milkman no longer visits, it’s more likely to be the Amazon delivery guy, and as we all know when he does call your wife is out – at work! We buy our milk at a fraction of the price we did, from supermarkets that apparently pay the farmers a pittance. We used to know our milkman (my mum made us call him uncle Dave when he came round for his ‘special visits'). Milkmen did provide a service, and a sense of community. Both of which are now disappearing.

On the bright side – Cheap Milk!