15 Comments

Oh, I love this piece so much - both the words and the illustrations. So evocative and such a wonderful article to read on a Sunday morning. However, I think your Mum in Stockport was right and I'm shocked that you might have bottles on your table - and you living in Cambridge!

Please can we have another piece, about school milk, especially those bottles with cardboard tops, left in crates outside the school to get warm in the sun - ugh - and then the advent of new, modern shiny caps which the blue tits used to peck?

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Milk bottles remind me of the village primary school I went to. Crates of a third-of-a-pint bottles arrived early each morning. These were either completely sour from having been in the warm air, frozen with their foil tops missing or pecked through by birds. I hated it, still don't drink milk as such sixty years later! But attractive bottles nevertheless!

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What lovely thoughts, we have had milk delivered since we moved here 30 years ago and still appreciate it being there on the doorstep 3 times a week. Didn't realise it was such a common subject for painting, inspires me to give it a go. Thanks Jane for your lovely random thoughts supported by so many references.

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Jan 29, 2023·edited Jan 29, 2023

We have had our milk delivered for the last 7 or 8 years, and the pleasure of opening the front door twice a week to those sturdy little glass bottles in their wire holder never grown old. We have even had birds pecking through the foil lids to get to the milk, as per the Ladybird illustration, which pleased me no end, even though I had to pour the milk down the sink! The interactions with a glass bottle are so much more satisfying than those with a plastic carton. Wiping them down before putting them in the fridge, the lovely click and clank as they bump together, rinsing them out to put back on the doorstep to be collected, filling them with water to pour in to the reservoir of the iron (much less spillage than a jug), and occasionally using one for a couple of flowers on the kitchen table. So much more soul than a plastic carton lolling around the kitchen. Our milkman also delivers our eggs. Beautiful, big, golden yolked and absolutely delicious. We put a box on the doorstep which the milkman pops them in to, to protect them from the birds ( the big crows, especially, seem to love eggs for breakfast). In to this box we also put some home made biscuits and a card at Christmas, and receive a card in return, signed, enigmatically 'from the milkman' x

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Dear Jane. I love seeing these images. So glorious and understated.

Working for a Council - we have always regretted the disappearance of the milkman. The left bottles on the doorstep were a brilliant community marker that ‘something was up’ and a subtle sign of checking of ‘old Mrs Antrobus was ok’. Who knows if the DPD deliverer plays the same function?

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I love this. While I don't think we, in the US, have such stringent rules about the milk bottle on the table, the nostalgia is wonderful. I am personally breaking a few rules because I love to have a jar of Bonne Maman preserves on the breakfast table. Don't you love the red and white checked tops and the handwritten look of the labels?

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Thank you Jane for celebrating the domestic as ever. I have a picture to send but can’t see how to do it here- will send to you via Igram. Best wishes

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This drew out memories of a time when my family often survived on what the milkman would allow on credit until payday… and the mad scramble to be first to collect the chilled bottles from the milk box on the front steps because sometimes he’d leave a wee bottle extra for “the children”… who would greedily down its creamy softness….I no longer drink milk unless it comes from my cow. Store milk tastes lifeless and flat. My Betsy’s milk is rich and frothy… and stored in antique milk bottles lined up in my milk fridge….

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Wish I could still get milk delivered in glass bottles. We had a delivery for years, until the company (national franchise) firstly refused to accept payment in cash and made it almost impossible to contact them by phone, then eventually pulled out of our area altogether. The local shop does deliver, but it's in plastic bottles, just not the same.

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I’ve had milk delivered everyday bar Sunday, then it’s just a paper, all my 27 years of marriage, like my mum did before me! I can ring at midnight and leave a message for extra milk or not , for the next day. I like to do this to save him coming up 6 steps unnecessarily . But 95p a pint !!!

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I really enjoyed this Jane. I can’t remember a time when we didn’t have our milk delivered to the doorstep in glass bottles. Yes, it is expensive but so reassuring to hear those clinks as the bottles are placed on the door step. I do regret the passing of the electric milk float. We get ours delivered by diesel van these days. It’s time to go back to an eco friendly delivery method.

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Lovely article. We have had our milk delivered for many years, since the children were small and money was tight. I worked out that if we ran out of milk or bread and popped to the supermarket I always came out with a basket of items! Having milk delivered and making bread (cheating with a bread machine) keeps us to weekly shops and genuinely saves money, despite the milk costing a little more. We also support a small business and use less plastic, win/win!

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When we lived in West Yorkshire in the 1970's, our milk came from local farmers who bottled it themselves. Each farm had its own bottles, often with a picture. Sometimes another farm's bottle was returned, so they got mixed up. We once made a list of them - some came from over 20 miles away!

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Thank you. Wonderful pictures whilst I eat my Weetabix with, unfortunately, supermarket milk.

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Love ‘….teetotal version of Burgundy and Bordeaux …’! 🤣

We’ve had our milk delivered (in the iconic bottles) since we moved to our area of London in 1996. These days our milkman likes us to inform him of any changes to our order via text message rather than the traditional note left in the bottle, though!

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