I love milk bottles. Nowadays I have to make do with the small squat ones on café tables, retro objects between sugar bowls and wildflowers in jam pots. I have to rely on memory and imagination to bring me back well over fifty years when Jerry Ryan first came to our house to explain that he was starting a milk round in Cahir and hoped we’d place a daily order. My parents, who often lamented their decision to leave London when the war broke out, grew to love this connection with that lost urban world. The friendly trundle of Jerry’s truck, glass bottles rattling their glossy tinkle in the crates, carried them back to their days when the Express Dairy milk-man brought the early morning milk to their flat in Stockwell. Jerry, like that London miklie of old, was resplendent too in his pristine white coat and peaked cap.
The Doorstep Delivery
This doorstep delivery was a welcome feature of my growing up years. The robins and chaffinches twittered their pert insistence as they pierced the metal caps and took their share of the cream that lodged heavy and opulent on the top of the milk, a luxury for the Sunday bowl of tinned peaches. The metal caps were a God send for the garden too. My mother drew her darning needle through each one as she threaded them together to form a tinkling metallic necklace, looped over the drills to deter birds from eating the tender cabbage plants.
These foil streamers wind-chimed over Elm’s Early and Flower of Spring cabbages, proclaiming us to be instinctively eco aware, back then. The foil bottle tops were also saved in a shoe box, along with silver paper from cigarette packets to raise funds for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Jerry often reminded us keep up that important charitable gesture. This would lead to a discussion with my father about the merits of a good dog. We looked at our sleepy old terrier, Gilbert, with new respect and wondered at his untapped potential.
We kept a little brush for washing the bottles on a nail on the kitchen wall. The cylindrical brush- head was eased into the bottle, then swished around with vigour until the glass glittered and the washing up water turned cloudy. The notes left in the bottles provided the milk-man not only with the instruction to leave a pint more or a pint less, but gave him the reason too. Extra milk was needed when my aunts were coming from England for a holiday, reduced rations when the holiday time had ended and they’d gone back to their life of hard graft in London hotels.
Our Milkman, Jerry
Our milkman, Jerry, was so much more than a delivery man. The few short years left to my mother after my father’s death were often anxious and fretful ones. Glasses were mislaid, the pension book was lost and worst of all, the little brown purse with the furry flap-over was often missing. Jerry frequently knocked on our door, holding said purse aloft in triumph.
He’d never accept a penny reward for his honesty, dismissing the offer with the explanation that he spotted it on the road and only had to bend down to retrieve it. While the purse was sometimes visible on the road, other times he had to search the ditches. He often located the missing glasses under a cushion or the pension book in an abandoned shopping bag. Years later when I thanked him for his care, he dismissed the compliment, stating simply that we’d all need a hand one day.
I wonder what Jerry would make of the bewildering array of milk varieties on the supermarket shelf today. Lactose free, Soya, Oat, Super milk and Low fat all make competing claims. I don’t care what health-giving properties they allege to possess, nothing will ever compare with the milk delivered in those shining glass bottles, by a kind man, who called each day to our house and looked out for my mother in her lonely years.
(c) Margaret Galvin
About Our House, Delirious by Margaret Galvin:
In this collection of poetry and prose, Margaret Galvin’s writing sparkles with humour, honesty and compassion as she lifts the curtain on the past and gives centre stage to the relatives, neighbours and friends she observed as a child growing up in rural Tipperary. The good people of Galvin’s native place will stay with you long after you put down the book – ordinary people made extraordinary as they stoically endured the shortcomings of life, shouldered their sorrows with resilience and grace, and, in many instances, had their lives transformed by joy.
Order your copy online here.
And read more Mining Memories pieces on Writing.ie here.
