DIARY OF A TEENAGE MILKMAN

One in particular was to my young eyes simply stunning, thinking back now, she was more than pleasing on the eye, not plain but not traditionally beautiful either, what fascinated me was the way she looked and dressed. She was like a throwback to the 1950’s, jet black beehive hairdo, tight pencil skirt with plain white blouse and she always seemed to wear a fake leopard skin coat, long black lashes and bright red lipstick, to my young eyes she looked like a cross between Elizabeth Taylor and Isabella Rossellini, as they looked in cat on a hot tin roof or blue velvet, to my 16yr old eyes she was hot and sexy looking.
One night she came to the door instead of her daughter or her daughter’s American  “friend ” .On this night she made Smalltalk, I put it down to the alcohol I could smell on her breath. She asked me my name, said she knew my f****y, it’s a small town, everyone knows everyone, I’d have been more surprised if she hadn’t known my f****y. She asked what age I was and I told her I would be 16 in a few weeks, this being the beginning of June 1978. “ I’ll need to give you an extra special tip next week for your birthday” she replied, I had to stop myself laughing as she’d never ever given me a tip, neither had her daughter, various servicemen had tipped me but never the woman or her daughter, I’d never seen her husband, I didn’t even know if there was one ? It turned out that there wasn’t, he had died when the boat he was on sank in 1965, leaving her to bring up two small girls on her own. I didn’t hold out much hope for a tip the following week.