THE GOOD LIFE Pamela VANDYKE PRICE
It might have been expected that milk would not be a 'me' drink. The family doctor, sum- moned for the umpteenth icky time, pro-
nounced, 'Give this child beer, whisky, gin—anything but milk.' Recently I
discovered that a South American tribe and 10 per cent of the rest of us lack an enzyme in the stomach that digests milk, so that the post-noon beaker will, the morning after, produce in me the headache, cannon ball in the guts, and mouth like bottom of cage of old, uncleaned-out parrot such as which a whole bottle of brandy couldn't equal. (But- ter, cream, and cheese are different and no one could eat more butter than I do.) Like the king who couldn't be called a fussy man but who liked a bit of butter to his bread, however, I like a dribble of cow pro- duct in my breakfast coffee. Easier would it be (adopting the parlance of the Beowulf era, such is the saga-like proportions of my pro- blem) if I required a honey-hued llama to be milked at the door.
For half-pints of 'Gold Top' (by which I think is meant Channel Islands cow milk, tasting to me vaguely du cote de chez vache, and with a rim of cream on the top) aren't delivered any more—pints only. So one either has too much or not enough, if one lives seule.
What else is there? Homogenised—which tastes funny and cooks comic, and which I think must have been evolved so as to give some old churner something to do, because how many people are incapable of mixing their cream with their milk if they want to? There's sterilised (ugh! as if from unwashed vacuum flask), and so-called 'longlife' which is as uncowmilk as commercial cream is un- cowcream, both resembling the bottom of the bottle of milk of magnesia in appearance
and taste—and for all I know in effect. Why should milk not be perishable—like flowers? Or are the longlife people also plastic flower addicts?
What I call milk milk can be got in half- Pints in cartons—in which it 'goes off' twice as fast as in glass and grows virulent fur in all the carton creases. These establishments of Messrs Express and United (the word `dairy', with its associations of cow, is, in my view, imprudent here) nearest to me don't stock 'Gold Top' at alit One is almost rebuked for asking for it. In the dirty little general shop that sometimes has it, I'm often too late'—and the satisfaction with which these words are uttered indicates that the sales persons are delighted I've escaped its contamination. Milk carts, which signifi- cantly usually do have milk milk, have to be caught, as 'twere, on the wheel and some- times I drive miles questing my pinta. All this indicates a trend from the cow. 'Indeed, a charming health food shop girl, asked for a certain cream (we'll deal with cream, 'real cream' and 'dairy cream' some other time), said week after the bank
holiday—It's a holiday, you know.' When I said that the source of the cream was a black or brown horned beast, with hoofed legs at
each corner and a coarsely-pronged bag underneath, which has to be milked twice a day, holiday, revolution, election, census or whatnot, she emitted an `Aah—a—ee--ow!' like Shaw's Eliza and said she'd never thought of that. And nor, I think, have the public or the purveyors of milk—and in fact they may want this product of an animal to be refined before it passes their lips, so that we get the powdered version 'fresh as the moment you mix it' inflicted on us in the air, and doubtless any minute a tubular lactate (Jersey, Guernsey, Friesian, Kerry or Aber- deen Angus—sample the different flavours) will jet into the plastic beakers of what must call the herd.
Why can't I, living in rural Kensington, buy the top product of the cow? It is not, I may say, what I should term the grand cru exceptionnel, of anything emerging from an udder, for it resembles liebcowmille about as closely as a red carafe wine in an obscure railway siding waiting room resembles a grand cru classe. I gather that the sole criterion of 'Gold Top' is its butterfat con- tent—it needn't taste like milk except vaguely. But why can't I get it at least as easily as I can get my grands crus, caviare and decent potatoes (that's another rather difficult one, but it can be done)?
Life being more fascinating than any fiction, I was at this very point in my polemic when I had to go out to dinner. A fellow- guest told me of someone in the eastern counties who had such milkman trouble that eventually he purchased a cow 1 This splen- did man affirms that her price and keep are less than his milk bill would have been—and he gets what he wants. I do not feel that the genus bos could easily accommodate itself to a second-floor flat, but anyone seeing a goat sharing a resident's parking space will know that I have taken The Only Way Out.
Meanwhile, I recommend Coffeemate, made by the Carnation Company, and baldly describing itself as 'dried glucose syrup and vegetable fat'. But it doesn't go off, it does do precisely what its name implies—makes coffee an acceptable drink if you don't want it black—and it does taste agreeable and not like pseudo-cow. I wonder if its inventor had trouble with his milkman?
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