Web Page 1168

 27^th July 2013

Top Picture: A Coop milk float

Middle Picture: A old Gauntlett and Walker milk bottle

Bottom Picture: Walk along float

Milko!

The photograph above of the milk float really brought back some memories that I thought that I had completely forgotten. Some weekends and at holiday times when I was at school I went out on the morning round with our local milkman, Roy. Our house was near to the beginning of his round so when he got to us I picked up a paper bag with my sandwiches in it and off we went. Roy paid me just a few shillings every time I went out on the round with him, a sum which, I am sure came out of his own pocket, plus there was as much milk or Sunkist Orange Juice as I could drink.

The Dairy was that well-known one from ‘over the hill’, Gauntlett and Walkers. The round stretched from Drayton right along the north side of the Havant Road until Old Rectory Road and it was here that marked the halfway mark along the round. Also it was here where we parked up and took a break and ate our sandwiches. I remember Roy saying ‘always hold your sandwich by the crust but don’t eat the crust because your hands will be filthy from the dirty milk bottles’; this was something that I had never thought about.

These were the days before skimmed or semi skimmed milk or soya milk we only carried three grades of milk, sterilized with a metal crown caps, normal full cream dairy milk and the gold top Channel Island milk which seemed to have its cream layer at least a third of way down the bottle.

Apart from milk and Sunkist Orange Drink we also carried eggs, butter, cheese and cream. It was unheard of for us to carry a variety of fruit juices, potatoes, cereals and the other such items that a milkman of today has to carry. 

After our break in Old Rectory Road it was up Rectory Avenue and off along Waterworks Road and the surrounding roads back to Drayton, It was along these roads that I had my first driving experience because after a while Roy let me drive the float and I felt really proud driving along these roads listening to the tick, tick tick, tick tick tick of the electric motor as it sped up. Move over Stirling Moss, I thought, I am on my way.

Coming from ‘over the hill’ all the milk floats were of the three wheeled kind with a cab which provided seating for two but no doors so the milkman could exit the cab from either side to make deliveries easier, but it was damned cold in the winter as the float not only had no doors it had no heating either! However the poor old milkmen from the Unigate (or was it Express) dairy situated at the end of The Droke off of Cosham High Street had the four-wheeled electrically powered trolleys that they had to walk in front of, very hard on the feet!

This employment filled in the spare time whilst I was at school. I never had a paper round and soon I found that friends of mine were working at various jobs, florists delivery boy, Woolworths girls and the like. This dairy job, in my early teens, gave me that little bit of independence that a young teenager desperately needed, later, as discussed before I went on to work at Smiths Garage and then RA Fraser’s electrical and record shop anything to make some money to be independent. 

Such was life in the early 1960’s when a shilling in your picket went a very long was.

How things have changed I think our house is the only one in our road which still has milk delivered, mind you it is now only three times a week and not daily, and the silent electric float has been replaced by a throbbing flat bed diesel.

Just two other things about milk deliveries?. Do you remember going out on a fine morning to bring the milk in and finding the tops all pecked out by the Blue Tits or going out on a freezing morning to find the milk frozen and the foil tops standing proud of the top of the bottle on columns of frozen, expanded milk?

Believe it or not as I am writing this in the morning the milkman has just delivered so I must go out and get it in! Stay in touch,

Peter

DUSTYKEAT@aol.com 

Pj.keat@ntlworld.co.uk

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News and Views

On the is day 27^th July 1960-1965

On 20/07/1960 the number one single was Please Don't Tease - Cliff Richard & the Shadows and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Rawhide (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Plastic carrier bags introduced.

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