Danny

Enjoy this short story by Mace Styx.

What I always refer to as ‘The thing with Danny’ happened when I was about 16 years old and working as a milkman. Now for you just hatched younglings who have never heard of such a job, I’ll explain.

Back in the day, when I was growing up and dinosaurs still roamed the earth, most people didn’t get their milk from the supermarket during their weekly shopping. When I was young, the milk came directly to them. Now I’m not suggesting that there was some kind of magical milk tap or that every person in town had their own cow in the back garden (I’m old but I’m not that old). What I mean is that when I was young we had ‘milkmen’. The milk was delivered daily, to the doorstep, in the same way that letters are to your letterbox. By one guy that we referred to as the ‘milkman’ and his team of helpers.

This ‘milkman’ would visit the local dairy each day at stupid o clock in the morning and would deliver the milk to each house in the early hours of the morning. For the customer, the process just involved leaving out a note with the empty bottles at night to say how many pints they wanted that week, or, if your order was going to be the same as usual. Just putting out the empties and going to bed, safe in the knowledge that when you got up in the morning, your usual two pints of semi skimmed and one of full fat would be waiting for you on the doorstep.