Milk

 

Nowadays I drink milk called Heart Active. This is how much milk has changed over a lifetime of years. The alternative is not Heart Active. For decades my daily intake of milk has been frothed by an Italian machine until warm. Softly brownly brewed starts the day, the addict’s delight beneath a round cloud of milk. Sfumato is another word for the effect. A breakfast cup takes time. Habit it is, truly, to press the top crest of a milk carton to open. Open Other Side is one of those haiku moments in modern life we never stop to notice. I remember my grandparents laughing at this procedure. Like me, their lives until that moment had been all glass bottles. Glass bottles clinked. Glass bottles clonked at the front gate early in the morning. Milk in glass bottles lasted longer. You had to shake the bottle because there was an inch of cream in the neck. The transition from glass to carton came to school as well. If we didn’t tear the corner of the triangular carton cleanly, we’d learn about it as milk sputtered out on shirts. The whole thing was a novelty but nowadays we have grown old enough to learn the expression one-use. We despise disposables and want a return to glass. Recently, a friend bought a large container of malt. He lamented the days of malted milks, alas no more, or at least not much available, though then there’s the smoothie. To recreate his youth it is a plan to perfect the malted milk. This is not much of a nostalgia drink for those who are Heart Active. I asked if he liked Strawberry, or Blue Heaven. No, he replied, his favourite is Pineapple Malted. Malteds, like milk shakes in general, are still served in tall glasses that are parfait, or in aluminium shakers – preferably with authentic scratches and dints and preferably cool from the fridge. This reminds me of another drawback of milk cartons Open This Side: the Big-M Drop. A minor detail of delinquent behaviour is to drop their opened carton of flavoured milk into the Post Box. This is easy with the red hatch boxes and is universally the action of carton half-empty not carton half-full people. Librarians are trained from an early age to deal with Big-M Drops in the Returns Chute, staying calm and replacing the damp literature that has turned a sickly caramel. Civilization is a fine line. At an early age I was taught to respect those who have milk in the tea first equally with those who prefer the milk after the tea is poured. This set me up for life and I’m fairly much intact. Meanwhile, growing up in a dairy town, we would go out to the farms for lunch sometimes. Later in the day we would watch the milking and gauge the level of the great lake of milk rising and swirling slowly and quietly in the vast stainless steel vat. Drinking a glass of that creamy rich milk from the nearby jug was enough to make your heart feel full.