Static and Milk (1)

I'm not sure how I first started doing milk deliveries as my Saturday job, but I suspect that I got the gig through Stephen H, who was already 'on the milk'. The more I think about it, the more certain that that's right, because my first milk round memory is standing in the H family's dimly-lit kitchen in the pre-dawn dark while Stephen made us instant coffee in those mandatorially heavy-bottomed 70s mugs; I seem to remember that I found this rather sophisticated and adult, because at our house only the grown ups were allowed to use the kettle, and my little brother and I only got hot drinks when we were given them - we never asked for them ourselves. (This was all a part of the well-learned deference and quiet politeness that would stand me in good stead later when I denied myself any offered treats or pleasures lest I draw attention to myself or be thought a 'fat little pig'. This was part of a subtle process of learning that I did not deserve to have much, and that it was rude to ask, let alone take or accept.)

At one point, Stephen rummaged in a drawer for a spoon or a screwdriver or something and, not finding it, he opened the bottom drawer of the kitchen stack and poked around amongst the diverse objects in the gloom down there: these were precisely the same things that we had in our bottom kitchen drawer - balls of string, pot lids for pots that we didn't have any more, a couple of bicycle tyre levers, a rolling pin with one of its handles missing, and a sweet musty smell composed of dust, plasticine, decaying rubber bands, a greasy pack of cards and some stick-thin candles for birthday cakes. The radio was on, low, and Kerry Jubey was introducing early 70s pop records in his unplaceable accent. [Capital Radio, I guess it must have been...] The medium wave wavered and crackled a bit, but back then we had no conception of 'clean' digital sound, or even of FM as yet; radios had medium and long wave, and maybe a glamourous short wave band if you were lucky - my granddad had the first radio I saw with both SW and FM, and I used to fiddle around with the controls of this exotic beast without switching it on, imagining all the foreign voices that I would be able to listen to if only I had the courage to plug it in and switch it on. (In that upstairs room at nan and granddad's there was also a 'boxed' record player with a folding lid, and a musical box that hesitantly played its tinkling tune if you wound it up with the creaking, strained-feeling key/clockwork mechanism). That room smelt of the stuff that nan and granddad rubbed on their arms and legs for their aches and pains...like coal tar soap or Wintergreen's liniment (?).

It was during one of these early morning waits for the milk float to arrive that Stephen told me about the book he was reading: The Lord of the Rings. It's difficult now to untangle all of the later associations I have from reading the book myself (and from the Peter Jackson film trilogy), but what I think I remember is my response to the name 'Bilbo Baggins' - it sounded childish and ridiculous. This put me off reading the book, and it was only when my older brother's big fat single volume edition caught my attention a couple of years later that I actually got past that ridiculousness and read the book from cover to cover during a summer holiday stint in a commercial laundry.

When we step outside the house, on our way up to meet the milkman at the White Hart roundabout, it's cold, and I envy Stephen his woollen gloves with the fingers cut off just below the second knuckle. I'm quiet that first morning, nervous about meeting the milkman, and uncertain about what doing a milk round actually consists of: I was always a worrier, even at that age, thinking about what could go wrong and how I might end up making a fool of myself and looking stupid. Sometimes, later, this would become paralysing and isolating, and a barrier to experience and enjoyment.

We stand on the pavement on the Radcliffe Way side of the roundabout, waiting for the dim lights of the electric milk float to approach. I remember the quiet and the darkness, the amber streetlamps and their hazy discs of light, and the stillness of the deep, dark sky over the empty dual carriageway and the surrounding estates. The lights up on the balconies and walkways of the flats were cold and white. I was glad of my parka and, in later weeks, I would look forward to getting into the open-sided cab of the float and imagining that it was actually warmer in there than it was outside: in fact, the fibre glass moulding of the cab was cold and cheerless, but at least there was the light from the instrument dials and the purr off the three wheels on the damp raod surface.

There were other mornings, later in the year, when we would do the round in shorts and tee-shirts, when the birds would be singing as the sun rose, when there were no other cars on the road, and when I was aware for the first time of my starting its adolescent changes: I was a skinny thing then, and I was highly conscious of the knotty hair that was sprouting under my arms, and I had a favourite cap tee-shirt, dark blue and tight, that felt tight under the arms and made me feel somehow muscled and attractive. I started to think of myself as a little man, who might develop to be like a grown up. I imagined that girls and women would find something attractive about those hairy tufts squeezing out of my ultra-short shirt sleeves. I would brace my arms so that the upper arms were always held a little way away from my body. I'm sure that tee-shirt must have smelled divine after four hours of work in the Saturday summer morning sun (deoderant? not for me - that was the pungent stuff [Brut, probably] that people like my dad and his football crowd mates wore - too much offensively noxious attention-seeking).

I think that first milkman's name was Martin: in my memory, he's a narrower and far less obnoxious version of Rory McGrath, with his tight, dark curly hair, Peter Sutcliffe-type beard, and a Terry-Thomas-like gap in his front teeth that gave him a slight lisp, especially when he said 'pints' - which of course he did, often: "Two pintsth,", "Three pintsth". He would always draw out this word humorously, as if it had some elongated comedy meaning redolent of something more than these mere pint bottles of milk. He was humorous, but in a way that made you feel like you were his equal - not like some of the other milkmen, who were sour, sarcastic and snide. Martin made the round a pleasure, and we laughed a lot.