Down Memory Lane with Nige

Talk of milk bottles and milkmen (did they really cry 'Milko'? They certainly whistled) over on Gaw's excellent blog put me in mind of my Lincolnshire grandmother. A highlight of her week (it was a quiet life) was the hebdomedal wrangle with her unfortunate milkman. Whatever sum this long-suffering soul billed her for the week's milk was invariably wrong by my grandmother's somewhat confused reckoning, and had to be wrangled over at great length, my grandmother sputtering the while with righteous indignation, the honest milko removing his pencil from behind his ear to run her through the figures repeatedly until eventually she had to concede that, yes, on this occasion he was perhaps right. As indeed he was on every other occasion he presented her with a bill...
Gaw appends a picture of old-fashioned milk bottles - which, as Sir Watkin points out, are not the real old-fashioned milk bottles but the newfangled stubby affairs that replaced them. The great thing about these newfangled stubbies was that, as well as being ugly, they made it all but impossible to pour a small quantity of milk, especially from a full bottle, without the stuff going everywhere. And this, in a clear proof of the conservative dictum that 'all change is for the worse', has been increasingly the case with each innovation in milk packaging, from ill-shapen, dribbling plastic bottles with their tiny ungrippable caps and fiddly stay-fresh foil to the all but unopenable cartons - don't get me started on cartons... The old, tall, elegant, wide-mouthed milk bottle was a design classic - pleasing to look at and handle, and a perfect pourer. Therefore it had to change. However, there's a related case where the reverse has happened and a design that is catastrophically unfit for purpose has remained unchanged down the decades - a case where change could only be for the better. The metal milk jugs and teapots that are standard in hotels and genteel tearooms seem designed specifically to do anything but pour. Squat and cumbersome, with no more than a tiny indentation in the forward edge by way of lip or spout, these come about as close to perfect uselessness as anything could while still claiming the identity of jug or teapot. What's worse, the handle and lid of the teapot are entirely uninsulated and can only be used with the hand protected by a napkin - a napkin that will soon, as like as not, be soaked in spilled tea/milk, as will everything in the vicinity. The fact that this design persists is truly a mystery, especially as, in such establishments, the coffee pots and chocolate pots are spouted and perfectly adequate. Oddly, I owe my extensive experience of these things largely to my Lincolnshire grandmother, with whom, in childhood, I sampled the delights of many a hushed tearoom in many a genteel hotel - but that's another story...