Let’s all raise a glass to the return of bottled milk

Oh nostalgia! For those of us who grew up in the 1980s or earlier, the clinking of bottles in crates and the slow-motion whirring of a vehicle with a 16mph limit sing only one tune – that of the milkman at 4am, delivering chilly red-tops to our doorsteps like an everyday Father Christmas. As I got older, that milky alarm clock started to mean something else: I’d stayed out too late and, walking home, I’d wave squiffily to the milkman, never quite plucking up the courage to ask for a lift up the hill on the back of the float. I liked to think Just William might have done similar.

But like the call of an endangered bird, the milkman’s tune began to disappear. In 1975, 94 per cent of milk was doled out in glass bottles. Last year it was a shocking 3 per cent. Cocky, hectoring modernity strode in with its plastic cartons and said there was a better way to do it.

Now milkmen are back, flooded with calls from customers who are worried about plastic. How ironic, and how brilliant. We fail to recycle 16million of the 35 million plastic bottles we use each day, and we know what a detrimental effect it has on the environment.

But how infuriating, too. Smashing the concept of glass-bottled milk and shoving it all into plastic was a fast-food replacement for a system that worked perfectly well. It was accepted because “newer” is always deemed to be “better”. So often it turns out to be worse.

Theresa May’s promise that all avoidable waste would be scrapped by 2042 has presumably prompted bright young things to imagine countless futuristic replacements. Could drones loaded with milk-canons spurt it straight on to our cereal? Will zip-wires swing cows about in the sky while we order deliveries via crowd-funded apps? Maybe we’ll all be taking milk pills, or 3D-printing calcium for our cups of tea?

Or, bear with me, how about someone delivers milk in glass bottles to our door in an oh-so-trendy electric float?

Older people are furiously lampooned for nostalgia about a Britain that is apparently lost. But sometimes progress really does involve stepping back in time.

In every corner of modernity there’s a nod to the past because we regularly dismiss old stuff, only to realise years later that, not only did it work, but it was better for the environment and it was also quite cool. The last few years have seen everything from taxidermy to pottery surge in popularity, as well as fondue, flares, “grandad” jumpers, baking, gardening and the WI. Knitting is so trendy that young people have “yarn-bombed” entire areas of some cities, covering everything from skate-parks to cedars in crochet. To our grandparents’ annoyance we’re rediscovering everything that went out of fashion 50 years ago (they knew it shouldn’t have done so in the first place).

Progress is vital and involves questioning what we know about the world. But we tend to overcomplicate; not everything needs a manically modern solution or a hi-tech one, and not only trick questions have easy answers. Certainly when it comes to milk, progress means looking backwards to go forwards.

There’s another, selfish, reason I’m saying long-live the milkmen (and the milkwomen, too). I might finally get that lift home on the back of the float. I’ll be looking back down the hill as the float drives off into another day.