Wait until next year

I see a milk float this morning. This is the first time in a long time I’ve seen a milk float. An actual milk float, pulling up by the side of the road, and an actual milkman delivering milk. 

I didn’t even realise we had a milkman in the area, or really that milkmen were still about. I thought they had been usurped by those supermarket delivery vans and 24 hour stores and the like.

The milk float looks like an anachronism. It feels like it belongs to the age of rag and bone men and bobbies on the beat and leaving your front door open and feeling safe. I wonder if that age ever really happened here. Maybe these homes and roads were the end of that, people moving out from those tightly packed communities to their little patch of peace here, further away from the centre. A new start, breaking out alone.

These streets are generally quiet, bar the passing cars. It it good to see someone engaging with the community, if only by dropping off some provisions at their door. Now and again you might see a policeman, or a door-to-door salesman, but otherwise the area feels very private. Everyone drives everywhere. There aren’t many chance encounters. When I saw two neighbours talking this morning it felt notable.

There doesn’t seem to be a wider feel of community. Pride ends at the boundaries of our homes. But perhaps I haven’t been looking closely enough. Maybe there is more.

Or maybe it was just a milk float.