Cuddies

I was about seven years old on a frosty cold winter’s morning, lying cosy warm in my flannelette pyjamas under a heap of heavy blankets. Outside my window was the sound of huge hooves moving slowly down the street and the clink of glass as the milkman pulled the bottles from their crates. Everyone had milk delivered to the doorstep then. In the winter, sparrows, taught the trick by blue tits, I later discovered, would peck at the silver foil tops of the milkbottles, drinking the rich tap o the milk. Sometimes I’d watch the milkman bring out a long sack which he attached with straps to the horse’s head. Contented munching would follow before they resumed their round. The horse and milkman were both employees of the Co-operative Society (which ran a dividend scheme for savers) and the cuddies were stabled not far from our house. I learned a valuable lesson about not standing directly behind a horse in those stables – one big beast, anxious that he couldn’t see what was making a noise behind him, kicked out with a back hoof, caught me a glancing blow. As children, we all collected milkbottle tops, washed them carefully and mashed them flat to dry on the kitchen windowsill. You could make necklaces from them or you could collect them for Blue Peter, who miraculously translated those mountains of bottletops into food for starving children. We didn’t know it, but there was an Edinburgh milkman just across the River Forth from us who would become one of the suavest men on the planet – Bond – James Bond.

jes a glimmert o licht
hoar
oan milk bottles
an the cuddy
chompin thae big teeth
huge heid
sunk in his brakefast sack
the cairt clinkin and shakin
doon the street
ma mither’s rolled up
note in the empties
two please
bi the time
the milk cam in frae the door
the canny wee spyugs
shelpit breists a puffed oot
wid hae
takken the tap aff it
ah wis sent
tae pey the milk
at the co-op
mither’s divvy nummer
twa six wan
and me wi a mooth
fu o braces

Photo of Billy the milkhorse by kind permission of Lochgelly Memories