Viva Brighton Issue #68 October 2018
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INTERVIEW<br />
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MYbrighton: Jerry Hallam<br />
Milkman at <strong>Brighton</strong> Milk<br />
Are you local? I’m from Nottingham, but<br />
I’ve lived all over the country. I came to<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> to study Environmental Impact<br />
Assessment but I graduated in the middle<br />
of the 90s recession and nobody cared<br />
about the environment. There were no<br />
jobs so I went to Bevendean Farm and<br />
asked for some work. They said I was too<br />
qualified and wouldn’t stay but they took<br />
me on as a milkman. That was in 1990.<br />
How big is your round? My first<br />
round was just three or four roads in<br />
Moulsecoomb and at my busiest I had<br />
over 800 daily customers. It was manic.<br />
Now I have 460 customers a week and<br />
deliver to Coldean, Moulsecoomb,<br />
Woodingdean, Ovingdean, Bevendean,<br />
Queens Park, North Laine, Preston<br />
Park and Surrenden Road… I’ll deliver<br />
anywhere in <strong>Brighton</strong>. On my busiest day<br />
it’s an 80-mile round trip. With running<br />
up and down to the houses, I’ll walk<br />
around 26 miles. That’s a marathon!<br />
Is business good? Definitely. My<br />
rounds have gone up by a third in the<br />
past four months. It began when David<br />
Attenborough was on the TV with Blue<br />
Planet, talking about plastic waste. It<br />
went mad. That and the cold weather.<br />
Every day I was getting new calls. I went<br />
to the Ovingdean Green Festival with a<br />
couple of crates and picked up another<br />
20 calls. With customers wanting to be<br />
greener, business is really picking up.<br />
I’m delivering over 4,000 pints in glass<br />
bottles each week.<br />
Is the milk from local cows? I go up<br />
to Burgess Hill because there aren’t any<br />
<strong>Brighton</strong> dairies that do glass anymore.<br />
I leave home at 11.30 at night and join<br />
a huge queue at the dairy. 60 rounds go<br />
out from there. I’ll get away from there<br />
at 2am.<br />
What do you like most about <strong>Brighton</strong>?<br />
Looking over <strong>Brighton</strong> at half past three<br />
or four o’clock in the morning at very first<br />
light, it’s just lovely. Especially in summer.<br />
Winter’s not so nice but when you make<br />
the round, you’re a hero. I’ve got snow<br />
chains and it’s lovely being the first one to<br />
drive through the pristine snow.<br />
When I start my round there’s no one up<br />
until about 5am when you get the first<br />
few cars. Until then all you can hear is<br />
the wildlife. At 6.30 it goes mad with rush<br />
hour traffic. I rarely come to <strong>Brighton</strong> in<br />
the day time. I try to get everything done<br />
by 7am and then I go home to bed.<br />
Where would you live if you didn’t<br />
live here? Probably in Spain. Port de<br />
Pollença, in the north of Mallorca. I go<br />
there when I want to rest but I haven’t<br />
taken any time off for the past couple of<br />
years. It’s hard to find a relief milkman to<br />
take the round. But I do get a couple of<br />
days off at Christmas.<br />
Interview by Lizzie Lower<br />
brightonmilk.com / 07977 477573<br />
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