Scrape the surface (just a tad) of Nu zulun and you will discover Britain.
We drive on the left (this is for a future post), our lifts start at the ground floor, and we used to have the glorious British red telephone box on the street corner.
When I were young lud, the red telephone box was the nearest thing to the mobile phone - only the phone wasn't mobile - you were.
You need to speak to Tom. So you go to the red telephone box around the corner and
queue up.
If the person already ensconced in the box is happily gossiping and oblivious to your need, you rat-a-tap-tap on the glass windows of the red telephone box
around the corner.
Your turn finally comes. You enter the red telephone box and close the door behind you. You take the requisite number of pennies from your pocket and enter them in the slot.
You dial your number. If a person answers, you
press button A.
"Hello, is Tom at home?"
"He's out at the moment, luv."
Bugger, a few more pennies down the tube!
If there is no answer, you
press button B and get your pennies back.
Sometimes your pennies don't come back and you
bash the red telephone in the red telephone box.
If you don't know the number, you rifle through the dogged-eared pages of a telephone directory provided in the red telephone box. Time spent doing this can annoy the next person in the queue.
But the good-old-British-style-red telephone box around the corner has gone (apart from a few preserved as historic monuments).
Why?
Initially,
rabid vandalism.
Then the penchant of drunks and others to
use them as urinals.
And, of course, technology.
Apparently, some red telephones box in Britain were sold of privately and reincarnated as shower cubicles, greenhouses, giant goldfish bowls, garden sheds and small bars (O'Meara, 2007).
I am sure there is the odd
red-telephone-box toilet as well.
Omeara, T. (2007). A miscellany of Britain. London: Arcturus.
Photo above courtesy of Philip Blackwood
