But, in the same way that I am always trying to repurpose myself (!), a couple of old phone boxes near me are now planted out and open to the elements (the roof is off) – a little oasis of green in urban grey, nice to see. Libraries, free wifi spots and other ideas all good, but what about using them to house defibrilators? After a man collapsed and died right next to my husband as they were both waiting to cross the road, I looked into this and realised we need more publically accessible defibrilators. How to stop people peeing in the boxes though – and nicking stuff they think is of value – would be a perennial problem.

In the early 90’s when I lived in London, I didn’t have a phone in the house, and for some reason, in Northern London, it seemed that not a lot of people did. When I’d go to it to call back to Canada, I would risk being tutted at by the local who after 15 minutes or so were queued up to use the phone, and I’d finally hang up and sheepishly walk away.

Move quickly to the iconic phone boxes of central London’s Soho. Smelling like stale urine and advertising Blondes, Brunettes and Redheads, with all sorts of fun things to sell to the local punters.

I miss them really. Maybe I should take the rural phone box back to Ottawa with me and make a garden feature of it and preserve it as a reminder of days gone by.

Thanks for these lovely memories.

Such a delightful post, gentle author. My parents had no home phone either till approx 1972 when I’d left home. You really had me pondering and recalling certain moving calls from phone boxes up near our corner store.

But then, so we know that the whole world isn’t going to pieces, there’s the Comment to you from the Broxley Boxes folk at Lewisham being so so creative and positive. I have great-grandparents and a great-aunt buried not too far from those red wonders.

Hoping your arm is now fully healed.