Moving On To Pastures New!

Being a milkman wasn't fun, so how come you could have a good laugh about being a milkman?

During the very early 1970s Edinburgh Corporation initiated a massive building project at Clovenstone and Wester Hailes. They created hundreds of new flats for families from throughout the city to move into and make a life for themselves the way we all did at The Stairs.

Douglas Blades saw an opportunity there and deployed a perfect marketing stance-he identified customers' needs-milk-which was a daily requirement for all families and determined how he could meet their needs

As families began to move in he dropped further leaflets advertising his milk business. A significant number of kids from The Stair helped Douglas to distribute the fliers to each flat and then revisit the house a few days later to see if they were keen to sign up. These included Boo-Boo Hanlon; Alison and Ruth Blades; Iain and Peter Hoffmann; and also Paul Forbes.

It wasn't straightforward and Douglas had some significant competition from other milkmen including Murchies Dairy, who rather ironically he got his milk from at Leven Street, Tollcross. 

Whenever we got a new customer signed up it was a red letter day. We made dozens of visits with him in his red Austin, which he must have chosen for this very purpose to accommodate  the crates of milk in the back. Looking at old diaries I assume he was going about with a girl called Ali at that time, because I reference that name regularly-or was that Ali Douglas or Ali Blades?

When the business was up and running I used to help Douglas with the milk deliveries early in the morning for six months or so in 1972. If I couldn't make it Iain took my place; on occasion Paul came out too. It wasn't without its teething problems however-there were occasions when the pick-up broke down and we weren't able to deliver the milk-I mention that on 1 August, 1972 Milk a disaster...van broke down!.

Each Friday evening I used to go out with Douglas collecting-I assume that was customers paying their bills-on a few occasions others came along too-17 March, 1972 Paul, Iain, Ali, Gail and I went out with Douglas collecting money. We were clearly along for the fun and craic-I assume the boys were in the back of the pick-up. Boo-Boo sometimes helped on a Friday too. Sometimes I record that it was wet or freezing, but there were compensations-on Friday 5 May, 1972 ...after collecting money in the pouring rain Douglas, Boo-Boo, Iain and I went to the chippy...

Full credit to Douglas for being so entrepreneurial and also atypically hard working-he could be a tough boss to work for too, but I generally enjoyed being out with him. Despite the jokes being a milkman isn't an easy life-the author Raymond Briggs speaks of this in his book Ethel and Ernie his lovely pictorial biography of his parents-he also brings out similar themes of loneliness, the cold, the unsociable hours in his classic The Snowman about poor old Santa having to do the same, but even worse going down chimneys-rather appropriate analogy at this time of the year.

Douglas eventually went on to sell the business to Murchies, before, if you'll forgive the pun, moving on to pastures new!

So how could you laugh at being a milkman? Well we've all heard jokes about the milkman-here's my contribution:

A milkman comes across an order for 45 pints of milk. Puzzled, he decides to ask the customer if this is a mistake. When he knocks on the door, a woman comes out with just a bath towel around her.

She confirms that she wants 45 pints. "Milk baths are good for your skin," explains the woman.

"Oh, OK," says the milkman. "Do you need it pasteurized then?"

"No," says the woman. "Up to my tits will be fine."

Milk; Fags And The NHS

Over the years to make money I had many paper rounds and also delivered milk. However, I always considered myself to be more of a paper boy, than a milk boy. You tended however to make more money as a milk boy and also received better tips. And if one was on a milk float it was better fun-less solitary because one was in company.

That said, I had a number of milk rounds over the years, including working for Douglas Blades, more of which in a future blog. At times I worked for a small dairy shop at Boroughmuirhead, Bruntsfield and also Berry's Dairy at Falcon Road West. These shops were there for decades and were family businesses. For delivering the milk I had a two wheel metal barrow. It was a solid, heavy old thing; Sean Connery had probably used the same one back in 1940!

Delivering The Milk
(Peter Hoffmann)

On weekdays there were four to five crates of milk to deliver; on the Saturday there was an extra crate which also accommodated some cream and butter. My round encompassed the old tenement flats around Bruntsfield Place; whereas the Berry’s Dairy job covered Morningside Road and the streets off. 

On some occasions in the New Year whilst we were still on holiday Iain Hoffmann, Les Ramage, Ali Douglas and Paul Forbes sometimes accompanied me-for a laugh and to liven things up we would drop one of the tetra packs from the top floor of one of the tenements. It had to be dropped in a certain way, so that it fell like a stone with a corner taking the impact-the noise broke the deep silence in the building and of course there was milk everywhere-we raced down the stairs quickly before disturbed residents opened their doors.

What was better fun was working for Edinburgh&Dumfrieshire Dairies on their battery powered three wheeled vehicles. These were open sided, to allow the milk boys-usually three of us, to hop on and off the vehicle, with our little four or eight pint carriers. We’d dart in and out of the Morningside houses collecting the empties and replacing them with gleaming full bottles of milk. Up until then I presumed all that one could buy was silver top milk; however, some of these fancy houses received red top and also gold top-the latter, being Jersey milk.

This work was more fun because one was in the company of others, rather than being on your lonesome. That said, on icy cold mornings my hands would get painfully cold, almost reducing me to tears. What was deadlier however was going down the incredibly steep Craighouse Avenue with its right angle turn into Balcarres Street. I always thought the vehicle was going to over-turn; especially when the roads were covered in ice. To counteract the threat of this happening, all the boys had to stand on the driver’s side or else vacate the vehicle.

A good friend who worked regularly for the Dummy was Geoff Hunter.He lived at Oxgangs Farm Avenue. I worked on and off at different times with him-often after he had inveigled me away from the loneliness of the long distance paper-boy!

Geoff Hunter

I haven't seen Geoff for almost forty years. He was a nice lad-a very able student in our class at Hunters Tryst School where he was never out of the top three and who went on to Boroughmuir Secondary School too. I hung about with him on and off over the years. We scived off school together-being in different classes at the Junior School we had to fabricate headaches and temperatures at the same time! On another occasion we scived off school to go the Radio 1 Roadshow in Princes Street Gardens; we'd visit the Pit Stop Cafe at Chesser where my grandfather footed the bill for our bacon rolls and orange juice; we played table tennis together at the after school club; and also attended Boys Brigade together at Barclay Church, Bruntsfield each Friday evening retiring with others afterwards to Demarcos Cafe at Tollcross to enjoy their fabulous coke floats and hamburger rolls. Geoff was a smoker and got me into the fags too for a few months. Today he's Head of Personnel at NHS Edinburgh and is still a talented table tennis player and goalkeeper.

'A horse!, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!'

In earlier blogs I've commented on the relationship that many families within The Stair had with the various Pedlars, Hawkers and Salesmen who visited regularly.The opposite of a relationship in the exchange of goods and services is a transaction.

It's an interesting concept particularly when looking at social change over the decades. In the past we had a relationship with the grocer; the doctor; the bank manager-today it's been replaced by a transaction at Tesco's; the health centre; or by telephone banking.

The upside, in our busy lives, is that we are able to speed through the checkout, without having to bring the person at the checkout up to speed on news about the family. The downside comes when one visits the health centre- it's a different doctor, who doesn't know you and who always has to check your notes on the computer screen.

Surprisingly, one vendor who we had no relationship with, was the milkman-no joke intended! The Hoffmanns got their milk delivery from St Cuthbert's Co-operative. A few other families in The Stair were the same-The Swansons were one such family, but the majority of families had other arrangements.

The reason why we didn't have a relationship was partly because of the incredibly early time in the morning at which the milk was delivered-was it around 2.00 am? Indeed the milkman was almost a ghostly presence, with the milk appearing like magic-one would open the door in the morning to bring it in for our cornflakes and there was our three bottles of milk standing erect like soldiers or bowling pins.

However the main reason why we had no relationship with the milkman was because of the interesting system which St Cuthbert's Co-operative operated. There was no billing or weekly money collections by the milkman so he didn't arrive at your doorstep on a Friday evening, which was how Edinburgh & Dumfrieshire operated. Instead a token system was used. whereby milk tokens were left inside the empty bottles which were left out for return. It must have been messy for the milkman and milk-boy-our empties were always very clean, but along with the tokens there must have been a mix of water and even milk on their hands. Saturdays with a double delivery would have been very tiring.

The tokens were purchased each week at The Store at Oxgangs Drive North. There was a separate section in The Store where ladies sat behind glass panels-a bit similar to the old banks-and distributed the tokens-for us it would be twenty one tokens. I can still recall the face of a woman with dark hair and glasses who worked there for decades-I wonder if she was a spinster who had to look after herself?

There were black tokens for when the milk price had risen and red tokens for normal use; there was also half pint tokens too, which was a nice touch if one were an old aged pensioner living alone-something which the supermarket giants wouldn't dream of running today!

The price of milk evidently often went down in the summer and back up in the winter. If customers were not informed it meant they could be spending an extra penny a pint, which over a period of time could mount up, for hard pressed families. Although one could see the Co-op's logic, surely like today's 1st class postage stamps, would it not have been easier just to have operated a single token?

Probably because Oxgangs was such an outlying area, we never enjoyed the pleasure of having our milk delivered by horse-drawn cart the way it was in the centre of town at Marchmont, Tollcross or Stockbridge. Instead it was always a lorry which delivered the milk. As many people are aware Sean Connery was the Co-op's most famous milk-boy and he loved the horses. He worked for St Cuthbert's for many years. Indeed his employee records turned up recently from the archives and were displayed at the National Library at George IV Bridge.

Sean Connery payslip from St Cuthbert's Dairy
(Being A Scot, Sean Connery)

Sean Connery with Archivist at National Library
(Being A Scot, Sean Connery)

A horse!, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! Aye if only we'd had our milk delivered by horse and cart, we'd have had a relationship with oor milkman, rather than a transaction!

Photograph Douglas Corrance