Lockdown - Day 61 Endsleigh Remembers I

It was the summer of 1971, my brother Stephen was five years old and I was eight.  Everybody on the estate used to have their milk delivered by a milkman driving a milk float.    The milk came in glass pint bottles with green or blue foil caps.    One afternoon, the milk float was parked outside O'Mahony's house.  Stephen's ball had rolled under the float.  I told him to go get it.  He crawled under the float but as he did so, the milkman came out of O'Mahony's and hopped into the driver's seat.  He turned the key in the ignition and attempted to drive off. Three times he pressed the accelerator and three times I saw the float heave upwards as it attempted to surge forward.   After the 3rd attempt, I looked under the float.  Stephen was still underneath. I straightened up and called in through the passenger window, "My brother is under your van."  The milkman cursed and immediately hopped out.    He went down on his hands and knees and saw Stephen jammed under the axle.  I don't know how they got Stephen out but the next thing I remember is sitting in the back of a car peering around at my mother who was in the passenger seat.  She made soothing noises to Stephen as he lay face down on her lap.  Stephen's back was red and bleeding: the skin had been scraped raw from the middle of his back down to the waist of his shorts.     

Some years later, I was walking down Woodview, a residential road that backs onto Endsleigh when a milk float suddenly came to a halt on the road beside me.   The driver hopped out and screamed at me to, "Get home."  I recognised him.  He had the same slicked back black/grey hair, but he looked like he had aged 30 years.