milk delivery

... not ours, but up the street.  This is the most supremely British picture.  The milk van delivers milk daily, if you request it: different grades of milk, and if you order on a special bit of paper, things like butter and eggs, too.  Here, though, is a solitary milk bottle - looks like a gold foil top, which means that it's likely on the creamy side.  I remember very well when we had a bottle a day, in a little plastic milk bottle carrier (it held four separate pints), with a slatted lid that came down to frustrate the little birds - usually blue tits - that would otherwise perch on the side of the bottle and tap through the foil to drink the cream on top.  I hope the absence of such a device doesn't speak to the very obvious decline in the number of small wild birds around here, and everywhere.