Last updated 11:42, Sunday, 09 March 2008

THIS week I have heard the first ice-cream van of spring. It was trundling merrily along near the car park, cheerfully chiming out Nellie the Elephant, and it cheered me up no end.

If it is warm enough to go out and buy an ice cream, things must be looking up. It is a long time since I bought an ice cream from a van, but if it is still possible to buy a cornet with monkey’s blood, I will join the queue.

There was a time when just about everything I ate came from a van. Our village was fairly isolated; we didn’t often get into town and it was only when I moved on to secondary school that I realised we lived near the sea.

In those pre-supermarket days we got our milk daily from the farmer. He brought it round in churns on the back of his pick-up (lined with straw and other farming products best left un-described. Goodness known what elf ’n’ safety would have made of it) and ladled it, warm from the cow, unpasteurised, unfiltered and un-interfered with, into our enamel milk cans.

I am pleased to report that nobody died from this unhygienic practice. Nor did my friends and I suffer from our favourite leisure activity - sitting in the cow beck, often with the cows, while eating jam sandwiches and making daisy chains, all with unwashed hands. There is far too much emphasis on germ-killing these days - no wonder children are full of allergies.

But back to the mobile shops. Vegetables came twice a week on a lorry; the fish man came on Thursdays, ringing his bell like a plague warning, and our butcher, the splendidly-named Mr Bullock, came on Tuesdays and Fridays.

For everything else, there was the Co-op where everything, I thought, was free. All we had to do was give our divi number - 86147 - to Alma, and she would hand over the goods.

Enough. I’m off to the farm shop.