Thirty Years of Spew

Today marks an important milestone in New Zealand’s history.

On this day, in 1967, children across the nation rejoiced to the news that compulsory free milk in schools would cease!

Hallelujah.

The poor lactose-intolerant kids got a break. No more bloating, diarrhea, or gas.

The rest of us, ( I was 8 at the time ) thanked whatever gods were handy, and school caretakers fell to their corduroy knees in giddy genuflection.

No more would they have the daily chore of mopping up milk-spew.

I should perhaps back up the milk tanker, and explain the lacteous, back-story of free milk in New Zealand Primary Schools.

In 1937, the newly minted Labour Government, awash with frothy socialism, and an ever-increasing milk glut, decreed that all Primary-aged children would receive a free half-pint (284 ml) of milk each day. Whether they liked it or not.

“To improve the health of young New Zealanders!” wheezed the two-pack-a-day politicians.

Forthwith, crates of half-pint glass bottles would arrive at the school-gate each morning.

And then, sit in the sun, contentedly coagulating, until, hours later, the Milk Monitors would distribute the luke-warm horror to the students, formed in snotty lines like a prison cafeteria.

The glass bottle had a cardboard top through which a straw was pushed, and, whilst the prison staff watched with hawk-eyed intensity, each student was compelled to glug their curdled quota. Pleas for dispensation fell on deaf ears.

Then, to add to this indecency, the bell would ring, announcing Playtime, which involved compulsory running about and being ‘active’.

It felt as though you were carrying a half-full water balloon, sloshing mucously about your gut.

Inevitably, the spewing would start.

Spewing went by many, glourious, sobriquets; chundering; chucking up; liquid laugh; or my personal favourite, a technicolour yawn.

At this point, the school caretaker would grumpily emerge from his benzene and fertiliser-fumed shed, to dispense a bucket of sawdust on the offending puddle.

The poor kid, who had a shirtfront splattered with what looked like a can of creamed corn, would be hustled away to the sick bay to detox.

This scenario played out in schools across our dairy-centric paradise from 1937 to 1967.

Thirty Years of Spew.

It was then deemed too costly, and the experts were starting to question the health benefits of milk anyway.

I could not have cared less.

As far as I was concerned, it was all one, very big, technicolour yawn.