The Milkman ( VILLAGE TALES EP. 54 )

Gone for nearly everyone these day are the milk floats, the clink of bottles on the door step and the cheerful, friendly milkman. The village ceased having its milk delivered many years ago, but milkmen had a reputation. Did ours leave something behind?

It was while Paul Goggin in our village shop was stacking milk into his chiller that prompted me to ask him if milk bottles were still delivered. In fact do they still exist?

‘Not round here they don’t,’ he told me.

Continuing my shopping I thought I could remember when I was in Bristol the chink of bottles being put on door steps, but that might be my ‘false memory’. Certainly in my childhood in South London milk was delivered every morning, except Sundays, and with a carton of cream, if you’d ordered it the day before. I was probably the last generation to have milk at school. Metal crates with serried ranks of small bottles, perhaps a third of a pint, in the shade of a school entrance waiting for morning playtime. To each child a healthy gift along with a straw, it was the highlight of the morning, until Margaret Thatcher decided we were all far too healthy to need it.

When I mentioned this to Paul he said it was she that abolished the Milk Marketing board during his father’s time, deregulating milk production so anybody could sell it, supermarkets and all. He told me that when the board controlled it, the farmers got a decent price, and so did the housewife. Now he reckons the price is driven down so much the farmers get less per pint than it costs to produce.

‘Free market?’ He moaned, ‘More like a free-for-all.’

‘But you get to sell it,’ I pointed out.

‘True. I gets a lot of trade by people coming in just for a pint of milk, and leaving with a basket full. Well, I says a pint, look at this . . . ‘

And he shows me a small carton of milk.

‘Is that a pint?’

‘Ah, but it don’t look like it, not like it did when it was in a glass bottle. I only sells them to those who wants a drink like. Few bother with such a small amount, it’s these they buy,’ and he points to the four-pint-ers he’s stacking.

I asked around a bit and when I saw Jean helping out in the pub one evening, it was she who remembered the old milk float. The first experience most people had of electric vehicles. 

‘But before that,’ she told me, ‘I can remember the milkman coming round with a horse and cart, that’s when we lived at Ridge Farm. Remember I was fourteen when we moved to Shipston and it was the Co-op then that supplied the milk and all the milk floats were plugged in round the back, just like pigs at a trough. 

The more Jean talked about the milkman the more memories came back to her. 

‘Our mum would give us the cream off the top, that’s if the blue tits hadn’t got there first mind, I suppose these days you’d have to throw it away, health and safety, but then we didn’t mind, twas only little birds, what harm could they do. Just shows dun nit. Sometimes in hot weather, the milk was already off and my mum would leave it to separate before she’d make curd-cheese, hanging it up in the kitchen in a muslin until all the whey had  drained out. She weren’t going to waste it.’

Jean recalled how over time, competition with shops, especially supermarkets, began to impact the milk round. When more and more families possessed a car they could do the whole week’s shopping, including milk, and then with refrigerators, the week’s supply of milk could be bought in one go, and not go off.

‘As a special treat we could have chocolate flavoured milk, or strawberry or banana, my favourite, but we’d have leave a note out. As more people got cars they’d drive to a supermarket, and wherever else they wanted to go. I think we’d moved by the time the Co-op stopped delivering to the village. They carried on in Shipston for a few years though, but poor old Connie’s milk round got smaller and smaller, til it weren’t worth it.

‘What did she do then?’

‘She? Oh, Connie, no he was a bloke. I think his real name was Constantine, he were Polish. He been a pilot during the war, spitfires I think. When I didn’t have to go to school, I’d hear the milk bottles clinking and I’d be up and out like a shot, asking Connie if I could help. He’d beckon me over and I’d hop into the cab, cos there wasn’t no doors. While he was delivering I’d be sorting out the bottles. I’d keep an eye on the milk in case the kids pinched some, little buggers. There was a few places in the village he’d be gone for a long time.’

When I asked Jean why was it he stopped for so long at some addresses, she just shrugged her shoulders. Milkmen have had a ‘reputation’, and I have no idea whether it is deserved or not, but when one is confronted with what is perceived to be their stereotypical behaviour, you wonder if there is some truth in it. I asked Jean if he ever said why some deliveries took so long?

‘Well, he might say was somebody needed a hand with something, or her bill was due and she couldn’t find her purse. Sometimes it might be she just offered him something he liked.’

Such as?

‘Well, cup of tea, slice of cake . . . .’

Jean’s broad smile hardly convinced me she really thought that was it.

I asked her what he was like,

‘I only ever saw him with his cap on but he had reddish hair and a round open face, always a smile. He had a bit of a twitch to his left eye which made you think he was winking at you.’

You’ve never seen him since?

‘No. The Co-op in Shipston moved and the old building was demolished to make way for a new estate. That was the last of the milk floats. I expect he’s in a home for retired milkmen, hope so, he was a lovely man.’

Jean pointed out several houses where ‘Connie’ the milkman, lingered most. I was curious and wanted to put to bed the idea that milkmen were opportunist lotharios, and maybe just had a social conscience and helped if the need occurred. With Jean at school age Rachael, with her access to the census database, could quickly identify the inhabitants when Connie was doing the rounds. One inhabitant was an elderly gent who moved to a care home not long after. Three others were women living on their own. A school teacher, and two widows who’s husbands had both died during the second world war. That was as much as we could find out. Connie hadn’t moved in, or the ladies run off with the milkman, so hardly a story.

Until Rachael turned up with a name, Constantine Vyordish Pradzulic, an employee of the Shipston Co-op before and after the time when Jean’s family left Ridge Farm, registered as a milk delivery operative. His employment ceased, as Jean had surmised, when the Co-op stopped delivering milk.

Jean recalling ‘Connie’ the milkman possibly being a pilot was true.

During the Battle of Britain, aircrew were recruited from all over the world. The popular myth of the British standing alone against the might of Hitler’s Germany is exactly that, a myth. British air supremacy was essential if an invasion was to be avoided. Without that, the forces ranged against Britain would have been unstoppable. In the vanguard of the British defence were the fighter pilots constantly repelling attacks from German bombers accompanied by fighters decorating the south coast with the vapour trails of aerial dog fights. Supreme amongst those defending us in the air were Squadrons 302 and particularly 303, the most successful fighter command unit in the battle of Britain. Both were Polish fighter units. Amongst the 303 pilots listed, is a Constantine Pradzulic. 

Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding who led fighter command, said that without the Polish contribution the result of the Battle of Britain may not have been the same.

Researching Polish associations, especially those connected with the war, Rachael found some more information on ‘Connie’ our milkman. He had regularly reported to hostels in and around West London being mostly homeless and living on the streets since leaving the west country. One frosty November morning, unconscious and suffering from hypothermia he was taken into hospital where he died the following day.

All he had on him, of any note, was a postcard. The postcard was a photograph of our village, one of those that Paul still sells. The card was creased and well worn, the ink had run making it illegible except for it being signed, ‘Your Son’.

One story ends, and another one begins.

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Written and read by Barkley Johnson.