February 22, 2016 Monday

Forty-three years a milkman - level 3

“The early mornings are actually fun when there’s nobody about.”

Milkman John Diggs' day certainly starts early. He gets up each morning at 1 a.m. and has been doing for 43 years; until now, he’s retiring.

“I feel cheated because the train robbers never got that long!”

In 1972, John started his first round and since then he has delivered 10 million pints (4,731,764 liters) of milk but John says the job involves much more than that.

“How you doing, all right?”

“You know, there are so many people out there who look forward to going to the door and having a chat. Some people, they don’t see people, they might not see anybody for two days, three days.”

“Morning!”

“You turn up, you spend ten minutes, have a chat with them. It makes their day, it makes them feel as though like they’re still alive.”

And on one delivery, he even found love.

Well, believe it or not, I actually married one of our customers. She wanted to cancel her milk, so I tempted her to take her out for a drink one night. And 27 years down the road, it’s a bit of history!

I’ll miss the customers, you know, that’s the biggest thing, like going there every day, you see different people each day, you talk about different things. You know, I will miss it.”

“Ta ta!”

Difficult words: round (a task for part of a job), turn up (to come), tempt (to sweet-talk, to persuade; to try to make the person do something), down the road (in the future), ta ta British idiom (goodbye).