Blast from the past: Free school milk

I am a child of the 1970s who grew up on the free school milk programme – the generation which has been put off the white stuff for life.

Who can forget the sight of crates of little milk bottles languishing in the summer sun, or in winter left beside a radiator until break time?

Warm milk was vomit inducing – I can still smell the scent of milk-spew when I cast my mind back to the toilets of my primary school circa 1976.

I’m not the only one scarred by the lactose force-feeding of that era. Many friends say they cannot willingly drink a glass of milk as adults, so harrowing was the experience of having to swallow it down as a milk monitor (usually the teacher’s pet) stood over them.

Sometimes the birds would get to the milk bottles before we did, magpies or crows piercing the silver milk bottle tops with their beaks, ruining them so there weren’t enough to go around. Those were happy days.

I remember childhood discussions with fellow lacto-phobes in my class, some of whom believed the milk was so foul it couldn’t be the same stuff they put on their Cornflakes every morning. It must be sheep’s milk, goat’s milk, the milk of some alien creature.

The free milk scheme was eventually abolished by Thatcher (Thatcher, the Milk Snatcher) and many little kids raised a glass!