Read Online 21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) by Steve Stack - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Steve Stack
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courageous, and foolhardy attempts to jump on.
Their legs would be going nine to the dozen, they would sometimes throw their bags ahead of them (a very risky strategy), and then they would make the leap of faith, ready for us to drag them on board. There were some casualties, of course, with people getting left behind and the occasional grazed knee, but it did make the journey home that little bit more exciting.
And the fun didn’t stop there. The doors had slide-down windows and despite the warning not to stick your head out of them, we all pretty much did for most of the journey home. Of course, this meant dodgy half-eaten sandwiches (and often worse) lobbed out of the front windows in the hope of splatting some unsuspecting kid further down.
I have no idea why they no longer run such trains. No idea at all.
Dodo Rating:
Milk Bottle Deliveries
As recently as 20 years ago, most mornings would start with the electric hum of a milk float making slow and steady progress down the street, the clink and clank of bottles as they were carried by the milkman, and the sight of a pure white pint of milk on pretty much every doorstep on every street.
Today you will be hard pressed to find glass milk bottles in front of a house. You will rarely be caught behind a slow-moving float. You probably can’t remember the last time you were woken by the cheerful (but slightly annoying) whiste of your milkman. Or the last note you wrote for him.
The daily milk delivery at the crack of dawn was a national institution. Red top, blue top, silver top, gold top, even the weird long-necked bottle of non-homogenised milk could be found on the doorstep. The classic image of a blue tit pecking away at the foil bottle top was a regular sight back then. As was the array of empties left at the end of the day ready for the milkman to collect, often with a rolled up note sticking out of the top with ‘NO MILK TODAY’ or ‘ONE EXTRA PINT PLEASE’.
The big national dairies such as Unigate and Co-op would advertise on television (see the entry for Humphrey in a few pages’ time) and their milkmen would sell lots more besides milk, but more on that shortly as well. They were all over the country, six days a week (no delivery on Sunday), and were part of the dawn chorus.
But sadly no more. There are still milkmen, and there are still door-to-door deliveries, but nowhere near the numbers there once were. A couple of years ago, during a fit of nostalgia, I signed up for a milk delivery after many years without one. It turned out that the milkman would only deliver every other day, and even then wasn’t 100% reliable. I ended up cancelling after less than a month.
That sort of decline, and the simple fact that milk in cardboard and plastic cartons can be purchased from every corner shop, newsagent, and supermarket, means that the end of the milkman may be only a few years away.
This, when you think about it, is a bit odd. We are constantly being berated as an increasingly lazy nation, we have everything delivered nowadays – books, shopping, vegetable boxes, electronics – and yet the one thing that was traditionally always delivered to our door is something most of us don’t want any more. Quite peculiar.
Dodo Rating:
Fizzy Pop Deliveries
Your milkman didn’t just deliver milk, of course; he could deliver eggs, butter, cheese, bread; and, most exciting of all, fizzy pop.
But we are not talking cans of Coca-Cola or 7up here; oh no, these were own-brand glass bottles of cherryade, orangeade, limeade, and, most special of all, cream soda.
Waking up on a Saturday morning to find a lukewarm bottle of brightly coloured pop on your doorstep was more exciting than you’d imagine. Sometimes the rich kids would have a veritable rainbow of fizziness outside the door, soon to send them into spasms of hyperactivity only cured in those days by a jolly good clout round the ear.
Life was so much simpler then.
Dodo Rating:
Christmas
Their legs would be going nine to the dozen, they would sometimes throw their bags ahead of them (a very risky strategy), and then they would make the leap of faith, ready for us to drag them on board. There were some casualties, of course, with people getting left behind and the occasional grazed knee, but it did make the journey home that little bit more exciting.
And the fun didn’t stop there. The doors had slide-down windows and despite the warning not to stick your head out of them, we all pretty much did for most of the journey home. Of course, this meant dodgy half-eaten sandwiches (and often worse) lobbed out of the front windows in the hope of splatting some unsuspecting kid further down.
I have no idea why they no longer run such trains. No idea at all.
Dodo Rating:
Milk Bottle Deliveries
As recently as 20 years ago, most mornings would start with the electric hum of a milk float making slow and steady progress down the street, the clink and clank of bottles as they were carried by the milkman, and the sight of a pure white pint of milk on pretty much every doorstep on every street.
Today you will be hard pressed to find glass milk bottles in front of a house. You will rarely be caught behind a slow-moving float. You probably can’t remember the last time you were woken by the cheerful (but slightly annoying) whiste of your milkman. Or the last note you wrote for him.
The daily milk delivery at the crack of dawn was a national institution. Red top, blue top, silver top, gold top, even the weird long-necked bottle of non-homogenised milk could be found on the doorstep. The classic image of a blue tit pecking away at the foil bottle top was a regular sight back then. As was the array of empties left at the end of the day ready for the milkman to collect, often with a rolled up note sticking out of the top with ‘NO MILK TODAY’ or ‘ONE EXTRA PINT PLEASE’.
The big national dairies such as Unigate and Co-op would advertise on television (see the entry for Humphrey in a few pages’ time) and their milkmen would sell lots more besides milk, but more on that shortly as well. They were all over the country, six days a week (no delivery on Sunday), and were part of the dawn chorus.
But sadly no more. There are still milkmen, and there are still door-to-door deliveries, but nowhere near the numbers there once were. A couple of years ago, during a fit of nostalgia, I signed up for a milk delivery after many years without one. It turned out that the milkman would only deliver every other day, and even then wasn’t 100% reliable. I ended up cancelling after less than a month.
That sort of decline, and the simple fact that milk in cardboard and plastic cartons can be purchased from every corner shop, newsagent, and supermarket, means that the end of the milkman may be only a few years away.
This, when you think about it, is a bit odd. We are constantly being berated as an increasingly lazy nation, we have everything delivered nowadays – books, shopping, vegetable boxes, electronics – and yet the one thing that was traditionally always delivered to our door is something most of us don’t want any more. Quite peculiar.
Dodo Rating:
Fizzy Pop Deliveries
Your milkman didn’t just deliver milk, of course; he could deliver eggs, butter, cheese, bread; and, most exciting of all, fizzy pop.
But we are not talking cans of Coca-Cola or 7up here; oh no, these were own-brand glass bottles of cherryade, orangeade, limeade, and, most special of all, cream soda.
Waking up on a Saturday morning to find a lukewarm bottle of brightly coloured pop on your doorstep was more exciting than you’d imagine. Sometimes the rich kids would have a veritable rainbow of fizziness outside the door, soon to send them into spasms of hyperactivity only cured in those days by a jolly good clout round the ear.
Life was so much simpler then.
Dodo Rating:
Christmas
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