It’s the kind of thing that people in LA dream of and that graces our screens in cheesy films like Love Actually, Bridget Jones and The Holiday (each of which I love, obviously). Picture a pretty, garden square in the early morning. The sun is just coming up enough to know that it’s yet another beautiful, English, hazy summer’s day.
A milk float draws silently up to one of the houses. It’s about 8am. The milkman is a friendly chap, dressed in crisp white. He whistles softly and pleasantly to himself, smiling as he carefully hops up the steps and leaves four bottles of fresh, competitively-priced milk. He’s attractive in a sort of unattainable, Eastenders, salt-of-the-earth way. At the same time, given the consumption of a sufficient number of lager tops, he'd be worth a go. Probably a five-pinter. Difficult to say. Five. Maybe four.
Anyway, there’s a handwritten note left for him which contains the usual pleasantries and to explain that next week we’ll be on holiday in a beautiful little cottage in Cornwall, enjoying some coastal walks with our dog, Giggy. A little envelope of money is left for him on the doorstep overnight without concern. All frightfully jolly. All terribly English.
This is probably the scene imagined by Hubby as he tried to adorn the proverbial cake with the proverbial cherry. He was not content with a year-long renovation, Farrow and Ball’s latest colour on the door (later brazenly copied by a neighbour), window boxes resplendent and polished brasses you can see your reflection in. He wanted to go that bit further in "playing housies". He wanted to recreate the ultimate English village green atmosphere right here in sleepy, unspoiled Kennington (think Midsomer Murders but with about 50% less murders). Yes - he wanted a daily milk delivery.
He banged on incessantly about the influence of traditional milk bottles during his childhood and how they reminded him of his Grandmother. He simply must have them back in his life. He wouldn't rest. His work was suffering. On it went. Silver top, red top, gold top, etc. The bit of cream at the top. Peeling off the metal lids, pushing a finger or a knuckle in it to prize it off. All part of a childhood ritual, fondly recalled.
Whilst seeing the value of having milk delivered, I also see the advantage of having a great many things delivered. This is, in my opinion, why Waitrose and John Lewis exist. Attempts to convince Hubby that milk should simply continue to be included in the Ocado delivery seemed to fall on deaf ears. Ears that were blocked with a wax. A wax called nostalgia. Nostalgia is, indeed, a powerful thing and so rather than playing drop-kick with his emotions, I kept my housewife lips sealed, as every housewife should.
Striking while the iron was hot, Hubby swiftly signed us up to a company that promised to recreate the “convenience” of a daily milk delivery. "Four pints every day. Oh and look they do orange juice and bread too. Great", he said. “So do Waitrose”, I said to myself. Actually, perhaps I was whispering. In fact, I was definitely whispering. Quite loudly. I couldn't help myself.
 |
The time is 3.30am and it’s pitch dark. It is, after all, the middle of the night. We are stirred from our slumber by what sounds like a tractor-lorry-farm combo vehicle circumnavigating the square. Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” is blaring out from the open window of the tractor cab. “Priiiiiiiivate dancer, dancer for money, I’ll do what you want me to do …”.
Still asleep, this creates an unfortunate and horribly twisted dream in which I am dancing naked on stage at the O2 with two Tina Turner-style hooves as feet. I’m attempting a complex horse manoeuvre to wow the audience. Sadly, this dream is based loosely on an actual occurrence of me dancing naked on a table wearing only clogs during a particularly drunken after-club party at a villa in Ibiza. Which is almost as bad, if not worse.
But anyway, back to the milk delivery. The tractor-lorry engine is switched off but continues clanking for a good few seconds, the sound reverberating off windows with surprising longevity. Something clumsy on at least two legs comes crashing through the gate and as it swings shut, Giggy springs to attention like a small, fluffy prison guard and starts howling and screaming as if his tail is stuck in a door. Unsurprisingly, we are both completely awake by this point (to some extent a relief for me).
Although we can't see this creature that darkens our door, I immediately imagine one of the larger, hairier characters from Harry Potter. “… any old music will do … priiiiiivate dancer ...”. Hagrid is now apparently dropping four bottles of milk from a height of at least three feet onto the doorstep. They are simply slipping out of his huge, sausage-fingered hands. Unless the glass is made by NASA, they’re all broken. Back down the steps he goes, crashing through the gate again and heaving his huge girth back into the farm vehicle. An extended period of a starter motor spinning before a great roar as he restarts the engine. Tina is interrupted “all the men come in these places … all the same … you don’t look at their faaaaaaaces”. As he careers off, mounting the pavement momentarily, silence once again falls.
I look at hubby through the dark with what can only be described as the eyes of the devil, trying to calm Giggy down. Hubby is looking back at me and I can see the whites in his eyes - the illusion has been shattered, or at least it has taken a severe battering. I sense defeat.
Sadly, not full defeat. It took a good week of being rudely awoken by Hagrid and his monster truck between 3.30am and 4am every morning, not to mention several angry emails to the milk delivery company before sleep deprivation meant we had to throw in the tea towel. Hagrid might as well have just thrown the bottles of milk towards the door as he drove past - it would have been less intrusive. He should do for milk delivery what the delivery boys have done for newspaper delivery in LA. Just chuck it on the drive. Savages, I tell you.
You just have to accept that there is no longer a place for some things in modern society and Hagrid and his night-time, private-dancing boom-box on wheels is but one of them.
