Lactic Enlightenment Searching for the essence of Milk and Milk Bars

Created a map of known National Milk Bars (TPN???) Here

http://nationalmilkbars.co.uk now points to http://www.theresposh.com. There’s no attempt to cybersquat here, just a quick(ish) way to get theresposh associated with NMB. If the true owners of NMB are interested, then feel free to ask me at nmb@theresposh.com

Having said that, it does seem criminal that a National, nay International (Ellesmere Port & Shrewsbury), institution such as NMB has no Corporate info on the Web. (I’d happily host it for you if you send me some).

So, what exactly is a National Milk Bar?

Well, to be honest, I don’t know yet (but this web site is going to be a record of my discoveries)

What I remember about them, however, is that they were:

- Quite large

- Always warm in the Winter

- Filled with tables and chairs (usually plastic chairs and Formica tables)

- Had a long counter with sticky buns, scones, pies, sandwiches, tea, coffee and, of course, MILK

- The Milk was in one of those chilled, clear plastic tubs with a rotating thing to keep it moving

- And there was always a wide selection of brightly coloured milk flavourings on optics behind the ‘bar’

- In a National Milk Bar were folks of all ages and from all walks of life

- And there was always a ‘lost cat’ board with local notices.

Always the centre of the local community, they’d be a perfect place to exchange gossip. Hence the perfect setting for a joke about gossip that relies on the (Northern) Welsh accent for 60% of the Humour.

nuff said.

So, as a child (2-9 yrs) I lived on the North Welsh coast (Rhos-on-sea and Colwyn Bay). This was the early-mid 70s and, in addition to me growing up, things were happening:

- The Welsh language folks were trying to get ‘Colwyn Bay’ known as ‘Bae Colwyn’. This seemed to be by the expedient measure of a can of red spray paint.

- The A55 was being proposed (and we went to the library(?) to see a model of what Colwyn Bay would be like with a big sunken road going through it.)

- I liked going up Bryn Euryn and climbing on the white OS post

- We visited the train station and saw the cool tunnel straight to the prom (sadly closed even then)

- We had ice cream from Fortes

- We had chocolates from Sandbach in Llandudno (also sadly now closed and part of a toy shop)

- We went to the National Milk Bars for coffee.

This site is dedicated to the memory of National Milk Bars, and, why, as a setting for a joke, there’s nothing quite like them.

So, knowing that the true path to Milk is going to be via the Internet, I’ve decided to start this site. Soon, the domain ‘nationalmilkbars.co.uk’ will point to ‘theresposh.com’ and the first step of search engine joy will commence.

So far, I’ve got Wordpress installed on the site hosted by 34sp.com (much thanks to Gary for help and advice)

Next steps are to put in some early thoughts and recollections about Milk Bars and then, after a trip to Wales at the Weekend, to start with some reality and pictures.