Iced tea, yes. Hot tea gone cold: URHGURHUGHHUHYYEEAEAUURK.

I generally don't drink tea, but regularly drink hot coffee gone cold, and occasionally iced coffee. I hasten to add that if I had milk in my coffee, I would, in all probability, drink it neither iced nor gone-cold.

(Softers, Graham III) No, I meant tea gone cold. Great! Coffee gone cold is just as good. I make a virtue of necessity because having brewed it I get on with doing something and forget about the drink.

Well, I drink tea and coffee without milk anyway.

Once I have made myself a cup of tea, I'll drink it all, even if it has gone cold. Coffee less so. I love iced tea, and iced coffee, and make both at home in the summer. If I'm at home, I put milk in tea and coffee. If I'm in Holland, I'll drink them without milk.

Yeah, what Raak said!

Panna cotta, custard, Yorkshire puddings, macaroni cheese, icecream, buttered toast, cappucino, parsley sauce... [Phil, Raak] I don't believe you.

[pen] I was with you all the way until you mentioned parsley sauce, whereupon Raak suddenly started to make more sense.

[CdM] OK. Switch that to 'peppercorn sauce' for your rib-eye steak.

[pen] Well, I don't like milk, custard, panna cotta or cappucino; but the others are nice.

(Phil) What do you put on your cornflakes/shredded wheat/weetabix? Not syrup, I hope.

[Rosie] As a result, I very rarely eat breakfast cereals. If I do, the milk needs to be as fresh and cold as possible.

[Rosie] I put canned fruit on my muesli. If I ate porridge, which I don't, I'd make it with water.

I stopped taking milk in tea and coffee as a result of trying to reduce my cholesterol count. I like milk and cheese and all the things pen listed, so tea and coffee without milk keeps the intake down without too much pain.

Anyone who was a child in the late '40's will have had it drummed into them the milk was a Good Thing (free at school, off the ration) and as far as I'm concerned it still is, within limits. Nothing could beat slurping the cream off the top of the bottle, and still can't. Fortunately, at the moment I don't have a cat, which would obviously have first shout.

Free school milk nearly put me off milk for life. In summer it was stacked in the playground in the sun for a couple of hours before we got it, so it was always warm and slightly off.
I now only drink skimmed when I have a choice - full cream just tastes greasy to me. However I still eat too much cheese and use plenty of whole milk & cream in cooking.

I went off milk somewhere between 14 and 18, I reckon. I used to drink loads of it before then. The thought of the cream off the top of the bottle makes me feel queasy these days. Oh, and please don't even mention the "straight from the cow" option - yuk!

We have a cat but he doesn't like milk, or cheese, strangely. First cat I've known not to like either or both. We had school milk in the 50s, in 1/3 pint bottles, and a choice of orange juice (which I preferred) and then Jersey milk was very creamy (it's not now due to over processing). I can remember the milkman delivering the milk in churns and filling up a jug my mother used to leave on the doorstep. I think they introduced bottles in about 1956. Then bottles were replaced by humbug shaped Tetra Paks in about 1967.

(Software) Cats shouldn't have milk too often but binge-licking every now and again won't do any harm. Cats are also useful for hoovering up bits of chicken off the floor.

[Rosie] There is nothing useful a cat can do that a labrador and a mousetrap can't.

[Phil] Possibly true, but with a cat you don't have to keep careful track of which one you are petting.

[Rosie] Our cat won't eat cooked chicken either. [CdM} Another advantage of cats is that they don't need to be exercised or groomed regularly.

Ours occasionally comes along and licks the milk at the bottom of our muesli bowls. And she's much better at dealing with the mice than the traps. She also spends a lot of time sitting on the internet, acting as some kind of firewall I think.

[Rosie] True. But Phil might point out that the same is true of mousetraps.

We've recently discovered that there are at least two other cats in the building, which could be why we saw a flurry of mouse activity before we got ours.

I have just discovered that our cat likes icecream. As regards chasing mice he is a pacifist. The other day he was seen lying in our garden with a dormouse nibbling a fallen apple about 30cm from his nose.

My cat presented me with a very much alive and wriggling mouse yesterday. It was a great big ferocious critter, probably weighing well over a quarter of an ounce.

[Simons] And then? What happened next?

Well, I managed to catch it, then popped it in a cardboard box for an hour or so to give it a chance to calm down, then let it go, ready for the cat to catch at some other time.

(SM) The cat is turning into an angler, then?

(flerdle) Me too. It's a lousy August here. The temperature is staying mostly below 20 and my home-made sundial is getting very little exercise.

[Rosie] Your sundial doesn't enable you to dial up any sun?

As August fades into the past the promise of a new season is enticing my olfactory senses from their hibernation. A pleasant hour and a half of practice at my local bowling club (after which I was accepted as a member of the Hat-Wearing-Volvo-Driving Geriatric Club) combined with a beautiful and warm day (maximum 18.9ºC) has contrived an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity within the castle known as 'Dujon's Folly'. Oh, happy days.