Sir, – In the spring of 1957, while staying with friends in Killiney, I, being the only one awake at that early hour, answered a rap on the front door, where a lad with a milk churn on an ass-cart was waiting to deliver the daily pint. “They usually leave out a jug,” he said, inspecting the shelves in the small external lobby. “Hand me down that fella.” He plunged it into the churn and returned it to me, brimful and dripping. “Call it a pint,” he said. “They can pay me tomorrow.” I carried it to the kitchen and skimmed the dust off the top, for the jug had stood, untouched for quite a while out there. And when I tipped it into a proper measuring jug, it registered the full quart.
How did we survive such hygiene? Come to that, how did he survive such generosity? – Yours etc,
MALCOLM
ROSS-MACDONALD,
Birr,
Co Offaly.