Do people still use milk jugs and butter dishes?

My family laugh at me in a gentle way when I insist on having the milk in a milk jug, especially when it is on the table. Milk bottle on the table? That will never do! Similarly I like to have butter unwrapped from its paper and put in a butter dish, with a separate butter knife.

In the old days the milkman would come round with a churn and a ladle and the customers would go out to him with their jugs. He probably had a horse and cart, before the days of electric milk floats. Then later milkman would deliver pints of milk to your door step in glass bottles with silver foil tops, the different colours showing the type of milk, gold top with a lovely layer of cream, and silver top with just a light layer. We are lucky to have a milkman who comes three times a week; we could have milk in glass bottles but economy makes us choose the cheap[er ‘plastic’ milk. He drives a little lorry, no horses clip-clopping down the road, no purr of the electric float.

When I was very small we had a Sainsbury’s near us, and my mum, Monica would buy butter from the butter counter. There would be a big block on a marble slab and the lady behind the counter would slice off half a pound  way it – and she was nearly always accurate with her cutting, and then wrap it up in greaseproof paper. I was fascinated by seeing her wrap it,she did it so quickly  one two three and it was beautifully wrapped, and tight as any factory wrapped pack today.

I guess I have inherited the idea of milk jugs and butter dishes, and I am delighted to see not my cousin insisting on the same, but her daughter does too!