I don’t suppose it’s an easy life being a milkman.
Up at the crack of sparrows, trudging through the biting dawn chill, lugging clinking bottles of milk, cartons of juice, and trays of eggs, all while the rest of the world snores in blissful ignorance. A thankless, monotonous grind for most – especially for those who’d rather be out kicking a ball than lugging dairy up and down dimly lit streets.
During the school summer holidays, back when the sun seemed to shine brighter and my heart was a little lighter, football was my world. What boy didn’t live for footy? Perhaps the odd rogue who preferred a cricket bat or a fishing rod, but nearly every lad, at some point, had dumped two jumpers on the grass to serve as goalposts. I was lucky, living just a stone’s throw from a couple of Sunday league pitches, though their towering nets and cavernous goals dwarfed us scrawny runts. It was the nets we yearned for – the sheer, intoxicating joy of a ball hitting taut mesh was the stuff of dreams.
For my birthday, my Grandad – Mum’s dad – gifted me a proper football. Not some feeble plastic imposter that danced away in a gust of wind, but a full-sized, leather-effect casey, its inner bladder firm and true. This was no penny floater – this was the real deal!
One humid summer morning, as the sun peered through the net curtains, its rays tickling my eyelids like a mischievous sprite, I stirred unwillingly. Who was I kidding? There was no poetry in waking up – no serene, picturesque dawn to greet me. The sun wasn’t gently rousing me; it was barging in, poking at my face with all the subtlety of a school bully. Outside, the birds weren’t sweetly singing; they were bickering like fishwives, squabbling over scraps of territory. Begrudgingly, I rolled out of bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes with all the enthusiasm of a man preparing to face the gallows.
Still blinking against the morning glare, I shuffled to the window, not for some grand appreciation of nature’s beauty, but out of sheer habit. But what met my bleary gaze was not a golden sunrise or swaying fields – it was a crime in progress! A skinny, red-headed whippet of a milkman’s apprentice, darting up the yard with my casey at his feet! Grandad’s ball! He dribbled and punted it ahead of him, making for the gate with the confidence of a lad who had just scored the winning goal at Wembley.
Sleep-addled no more, I erupted into motion. Barefoot and clad in my tattiest pyjamas, I was a whirlwind of panic and fury, tearing down the landing, hand scorching against the bannister, feet barely skimming the stairs as I thudded towards the living room.
Dad was kneeling by the fire, lost in his daily ritual of sculpting a pyramid of newspaper, twigs, and coal, his face half-swallowed by the hearth. Mum was in the kitchen, orchestrating breakfast with military precision, a spatula in one hand, a teapot in the other. None of that mattered – I had a crisis on my hands!
I shrieked, breathless with indignation.
“Dad! That skinny, ginger milkman’s buggered off with me ball!”
No reaction. Dad remained hunched, his top teeth clamped onto his bottom lip in fierce concentration, as though it might make a break for freedom if he let go. The room was dim, the sun barely making a dent in the gloom, save for a few feeble rays catching the motes of dust swirling in the air. From the radio, Billy Don’t Be a Hero warbled out – a song of no real importance, though if you know it, you can probably hear it now…
I harangued and hassled until Mum finally relented, sighing as she stepped into the yard. But the milkies were long gone, vanished into the morning mist. She wasn’t about to charge through the village on a one-woman manhunt, though she promised to confront the milkman when he came for his money on Friday. I was livid. Heartbroken.
The injustice of it all! My proper ball, gone! And worse still, there wasn’t a shred of sympathy. Instead, I got a lecture on not leaving things in the yard. Fair enough, perhaps, but where was I meant to keep it? Footballs were banned from the house, alongside muddy bikes and – on occasion – my brothers. Our only outdoor storage options were the coal shed and the outside loo, neither of which were suitable sanctuaries for a prized casey.
Then came Friday.
Despite my certainty that Mum didn’t care, I watched in awe as she laid into the milkman with the righteous fury of a lioness whose cub had been wronged. I thought she was about to throttle him. The poor sod barely got a word in before she had him backed into a corner, his ears roasting under her tirade.
Compensation was swiftly offered. I might not have had my balls, but my mother, sure as heck, did.
There’s no grand moral to this tale, except perhaps this: never underestimate the wrath of a mother who seems indifferent—because when it truly matters, she’ll move mountains.
Never underestimate a quiet mother—her wrath strikes like lightning when it truly matters.
Wording 