The Clatter Of Bottles

Anyone over a certain age will remember the milkman. That early morning delivery of fresh milk, just in time for breakfast and the first cuppa of the day.

And of course milko was environmentally friendly, with their electric floats and recycling the glass bottles; the empties. Seeing this old toy milk float in a local junk shop brought back the memories of hearing the whirl of the motor, and the clanking of the milk bottles.

But sadly those days are done, as everyone seems to get their milk from the supermarket nowadays, in either plastic bottles or cardboard packs. Not so green. And also the farmers that supply the milk are not getting such a good deal as they used to. In fact I read somewhere that they actually lose money on each tanker full they supply.

So I wasn't surprised to see on the news a load of Somerset farmers protesting about this in an unusual way. Firstly they led a cow into a supermarket and then they bought every carton of milk in the store and went on to hand it out to people in the street once they had paid for it all. It was quite amusing to see them all load up their trollies. It's a serious matter of course, and there is a public campaign underway to get farmers a better deal, by just raising the price of a pint of milk by a couple of pennies.