LOOKING back with memory's fond eye, the horse-and-cart age, which all but petered out around the 1950s, may have seemed like a romantic time.

But it certainly wasn't without unexpected perils - particularly if there was a stubborn beast between the shafts.

Reader D. Edwards of Falkland Drive, Garswood, recounts a nightmare episode from his boyhood which led to deep embarrassment, apologies and the forking out of compensation by the milk dealer he had been helping out. It's a story of fence-smashing mayhem.

Picking up on an earlier piece about Queenie, the gentle, blind milk-horse with the built-in 'radar' sense that guided her on her Laffak-based round, D.E. transports us back to his 'fifties childhood in Litherland Crescent, Haresfinch.

During school holidays and at weekends he helped out on Bob Harrison's milk round, alongside regular float driver Marjorie Robinson, who featured in our earlier Queenie piece. On one dramatic day Queenie stumbled on the deeply-rutted road leading from the farm and toppled, breaking the shafts. It took some time to coax the distressed horse back on to her feet, after freeing her from the float.

"After we'd finally settled Queenie back in the stables and comforted her, Bob Harrison, in his usual brisk manner, told us to get another horse out of the field and use his back-up milk float."

The stand-in pony proved to be a decidedly unsocial beast and took more than an hour to catch. He was finally hitched to the milk float . . . but not before producing an alarming display of bad tempered head-butting and baring of teeth.

And there was worse to come. "It proved a disaster from the start," recalls our Garswood correspondent. "The horse was totally uncontrollable and wandered about at will."

After an agonising length of time, the float finally reached Chadwick Road, Haresfinch, where housewives routinely gave Queenie titbits.

One particular woman fed the substitute horse with a treat Then, as she walked back into the house, the creature attempted to follow her up the garden path, with the float in tow.

That's when all hell let loose. The front garden fence was demolished; then, as Marjorie and her schoolboy helper tried to back out the pesky animal, it managed to jack-knife the four-wheel float into the next-door fence, smashing this down, as well!

"Enough to say that we never used that horse again..."

CERTAINLY makes a case for the quiet , electrically-powered milk floats of today. But, with all the supermarket price-cutting, how long before these, too, are consigned to history?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.