Say cheese

“I have just enjoyed a piece of Double Gloucester flavoured with chives and onions,” writes a Craigie regular. “It was magnificent.

“I really like cheese and would eat a lot more of it, but it is so expensive. Why?

“British dairy farmers complain that the price they get for their milk is below the cost of producing it and many have gone out of business altogether. Thousands of gallons of milk have even been poured down the drain in the past. The same may still be happening. If milk is so very cheap, why is cheese so dear?

“And why do dairy farmers not use their milk to make cheese? You would think it would make sense to diversify into cheese. Cheese prices seem to be more than holding up. Farmers arranging for their milk to be made into cheese would get more for their milk and, with a bit of luck, consumers would also benefit with lower cheese prices without unduly affecting farmers’ profits, since the present profit margin seems so high.

“When I was evacuated to Kincardineshire in 1939, I found local farmers’ wives making their own cheese. Other housewives also used surplus milk to make their own. The lady who looked after me was a ploughman’s wife and she used to make hangie (I think that’s what she called it), a white, crumbly cheese made by hanging sour milk, no doubt with other ingredients, in a muslin bag from the ceiling.

“I have always loved cheese, as did my father before me, but cheese was cheaper then. He was a Dundee grocer and, when my mother left him sometimes to make his own tea in the 1940s, he was quite content with bread, butter and a chunk of cheese from the shop.

“One day he overdid it, however. Home he came with his cheese, made himself a pot of tea and set out his stall with bread, butter and cheese. He ate while reading his Courier or Evening Telgraph. He became so engrossed, unfeortunately, that he did not notice he had eaten through all the cheese – a considerable amount – at one sitting! Afterwards, he paid another kind of price – he was very sick indeed! Cheesed off might describe his state of mind!”