Why I *heart* the milkman (and milk&more)

We recently got ourselves a milkman – and haven’t looked back.

So when milk&more (the Dairy Crest website) approached me approached me and asked if they could sponsor a post about the joys of having dairy products and countless other groceries delivered by a friendly, ruddy-cheeked milkman in a peaked cap, I said yes. I usually turn down these post sponsorship offers, not because I have anything against them in principle, but because I usually get asked to write about the most terrifically dull financial services stuff. But dairy? Now that is a subject close to my heart…

As I haven’t had a milkman since I was little, it’s been quite a novelty having shiny glass bottles appear on the doorstep in the morning, as if by magic. When we lived in London, where so many corner shops are open all hours, we never saw a milkman and had an argument about whether or not milkmen existed there. When we lived in Arizona, the milkman was a definite no-show: milk came in BIG bottles from the supermarket and was hyper-pasteurised so that even after you opened it, didn’t go off for about a month. Now we’re in Yorkshire, my husband took it upon himself to flag down a passing milkman at the crack of dawn one morning and add us to the delivery list.

My milkman charges a little more than my supermarket – an extra 4p per pint – so what do I get for those extra pennies?

– I no longer pour a bowl of cereal or cup of tea, only to open the fridge to discover that someone else has finished the milk (shakes fist).

– No more emergency dashes to the supermarket to collect another two-pinter. As regular readers will know, I try to keep supermarket trips to a minimum: I keep our grocery bills down by doing one big supermarket shop just once a month.

– Actually, I’m sure that the petrol I use up getting to and from the supermarket comes to more than 4p a pop.

– Improved environmental credentials! I’d run out of ideas for what to do with our empty plastic milk bottles, and they don’t recycle them around here. Now we put our empty glass milk bottles out, and off they go to be sterilised and reused.

– A regular order and monthly bill means that it’s much easier to keep track of how much we are spending.

– Orange juice!

Our milkman isn’t a milk&more milkman. He is a lone ranger milkman, Yorkshire style. He drives a pick-up truck, not a float, his peaked cap is nowhere in evidence and I think orange juice is about as exotic as it gets. I like having him around.

Image credit:exfordy.