Milkmen

We were worried about the mouse that might have drowned in the milk bottle. Tiny white field mice dextrous and sharp-toothed, climbing the sweating bottle in the cold to pierce the foil at the top and then, plunk! To avoid this one had to get up with the milkman. There are lots of jokes about milkman. Whose dad might be a milkman, what is the milkman doing while you are at work, me old son, guffaw! Who does he take after then, your baby? Oh probably the milkman, titter! There’s something about a man wearing a smart white suit who comes to the house when your wife is alone. Isn’t there?

Milkmen have a jaunty air. Cheery and red cheeked in the cold. Shiny black shoes, a cap and possibly an apron. And there is as well, something about milk trucks. Open on the sides: “Nothing to see here!” Given the trash talk about milkmen, only gentlemen of particularly open visage need apply. How do they signal this, I wonder, the people who are hiring? “You know who you are! Inquire at the address above.” A bit like the masons?

On chubby legs I race to the end of the lane. There’s a black ironwork gate in a wall centuries old, stones fit tight, held perpetually by pressure, one upon the other. My chin clears the top. I crouch down in blue wellies and examine the bottle. Mummy there’s a mouse! All creatures great and small drawn to our lactose delights.

My mum is a sympathetic person with a french mother; she’s soothing and exclaiming. We pull the mouse out by its tail, and balk at drinking from its milky grave. Of the two bottles we’ll use only one. Will we stir in the cream, or decadently extract it to cap Weetabix islands?

Can you think of milk without thinking of breasts? Did you ever watch the series “Lilyhammer”? A former mafia turned informer (Steven Van Zandt) is sent to the wilds of Norway for witness protection. He has a relationship with a Norwegian woman. She gets pregnant but he does a bad job of hiding his monster-habits, and she breaks it off. A younger man comes on the scene and is eager to marry her. To the mafia informer, yon granola eating yoga guy is highly suss. Suspicion satisfied upon discovery of said yoga guy pleasuring himself to a video of enormous breasts jettisoning milk with the force of a fire hydrant.

The suitor only wants her for her milk

Huge breasts jettisoning milk: velocity made female.

Small creatures, if they dare scale mountains, they might fall in.

I want to drink the milk that the mouse died in, but what if I get sick and expire in turn?

A mouse drowns in its own desire but what about a cat? A cat knocks over the bottle and drinks the milk. If the cat is threatened with a kick, it can leap over the wall.

And the milkman?

The milkman will come again the next day, and the day after that, if you keep up to date with your tab.

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This week I was going to write a story about a Thanksgiving had in London with American friends, their haunted house. Instead, I read

M Sarki

’s post “Skimmed Milk” and this is what transpired.