Milk Bars are referred to in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess. For a quote-let; see
this link - thanks e beth.
Warning: link contains a bad word and has nothing whatsoever to do with ‘National Milk Bars’ which wouldn’t sell those things and wouldn’t have nasty people like that in them.
There’s a somewhat irrelevant description of Milk Bars at the freedictionary.com.
The claim to the first Milk bar being in Oz in 1934 seems a little unlikely, as the NMB logo in Welshpool says “Estab. 1933″.
But who are we to argue with the truth that is The Internet..
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.
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.