THE article on Thompsons Dairies (The Press, January 9) aiming to preserve the memories of milkmen reminded me of the days before any vehicle delivering milk came to Thixendale, an isolated village in the Wolds.

Taking over from my brothers in 1948, approximately aged eight, I would wake up to hear Jack Midgley taking his four cows back to the pasture after milking. Passing under my bedroom window with his usual, “Gerr up” and “Come on, Daisy” and giving everybody his weather forecast, I knew I had to get up.

After breakfast and before school, my sister, Mary, and I would walk up the village to his pantry, inside the house where the cans we had returned the night before were filled by his old mother with a ladle from a bucket, wearing a sack apron and frilly cap (nobody minded germs then).

We would deliver down the village in all weather for 6d each house per week, and from the vicar Rev Waring we received the fantastic amount of two bob. Only thing was, it had to be shared.

Ivy Eden, Pinewood Grove, York.