Milk floats in to the sunset

The doorbell rings. "Good evening sir but I'm trying to drum up some support for Bob, the milkman, to preserve the old tradition before it's too late."

Sorry Bob and sorry Bob's drummer upper but I'm afraid it is too late. We persevered with the milkman long after most of our neighbours had switched to the supermarket.

But when the milkman said he could only deliver every other day we decided to call a halt. His milk was quite a lot more expensive but we liked doorstep deliveries. Our old milkman used to leave the milk down the side but the new one left it at the front where it catches the sun. No good.

Back in the days when we lived in Yorkshire we used to have unpasteurised creamy green top milk delivered and it was good. But they didn't do that sort of milk in Surrey. I thought, mistakenly, there could be a future for the milkman if some deliveries could be handled by a single source. Imagine newly-baked bread, milk, fresh orange juice and the post all arriving at the same time. No, no-one imagined that.

So now we buy milk semi-skimmed in 4-litre plastic canisters that fit neatly in to the fridge. It's nowhere near as good as it used to be but not much is, not meat, fish, fruit or vegetables.

Take white fish. When I was a kid one of my favourite fish suppers was Halibut cheek, a beautiful white stringy meat. You rarely see it now because the halibut needs to be a good size to have decent cheek meat. My Auntie Joyce used to fry a cracking halibut cheek in batter with chips and mushy peas.

I expect all this stuff is still around if you're prepared to look for it and pay for it. But halibut and creamy milk weren't thought of as posh food when we were kids. It was the good, nourishing food enjoyed by those working class families who looked after the pennies.

OK, we didn't live as long as people do nowadays. But we certainly lived.