Comments on: The Inescapable Melancholy Of Phone Boxes

By: Esther

Esther — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 18:24:16 +0000

I hope the left phoneboxes will stay and get a new use. As a child I was always mesmerized by the beautiful red phoneboxes and postboxes I saw on SKYchannel and later the BBC.(ours were boring grey or later green) A lucky family in my neighbourhood had somehow aquired a real English red postbox in their frontgarden and I always dreamed of having one myself when I grew up(bought a miniversion-savingbox when I later went to Londen on holiday) The few left phoneboxes in The Netherlands where I used to live and some in Germany have become bookexchanges.I would love to have a phonebox in my backyard for the gardentools.

By: Maggie

Maggie — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 15:42:50 +0000

I’m in the U.S. and my boss, a rabid Anglophile, bought a red phone box a while back to use as a decorative item in her country house. I can only imagine what the transport cost must have been.

I do love hearing that some in the U.K. are being used to house defibrillators. I wish the States would do something as brilliant.

Is it the Royal Mail that profits from the sale of them? And does anyone know what the going cost is for one?

By: Ian Silverton

Ian Silverton — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 08:22:51 +0000

Irrelevant in Bethnal Green, is in main road outside what we called as children the Red Church!! Made from red bricks of that colour very unusual then in all our squalor of living there at that time,now it’s flats or Appartments, local lads!!! Reg and Ronnie used them from across the road to the Boxes from there OFFICE table in Pellicci Cafe opposite arcross main Road along with other members of the Gang, bit of history there,if you LIKE.

By: Beth b

Beth b — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 13:20:19 +0000

I love seeing the phone boxes when I visit England, and have many pictures of them. My friend and I both used one to make actual calls on a few years ago when we were in London with no working phones – her company had given her a plan to make calls to England, not while IN England (exactly what she didn’t need), and I had accidentally swapped chargers with my husband who was staying in Wiltshire for a week while we were in London. So the real live phone in the phone booth let my friend argue with her phone company and let me call the pub below my husband’s room and arrange to overnight his charger to him, so at least he wouldn’t be phoneless! I really hope they don’t get rid of all the real live phones. And they are SO much prettier than ours in the US – not that we have many left either, but I don’t miss ours so much. It is encouraging that so many are being repurposed.

By: Nancy C.

Nancy C. — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 20:34:50 +0000

Most of the public pay phones in New York City have been removed, also. But as they were on almost every corner and not nearly as handsome as the red London phone booths, their demise is welcome. But I did recently watch a teacher explaining to her I think kindergarten (5-year-old) class what one was. They were mesmerized by putting coins in the slots to receive a dial tone.

By: Jim M.

Jim M. — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 16:31:08 +0000

Ignored in Whitechapel, Rejected in Bow, Shunned in Bethnal Green, Desolate in Hackney Rd,

Pointless in St John’s Sq and Invisible in Smithfield.

You’ve just described, far too accurately I might add, a large chunk of my teenage years! 😉

By: David

David — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 15:04:57 +0000

I remember visiting London in the 1980s and all the phone booths were chock-a-block with postcards for prostitutes catering to every peccadillo under the sun. “Tart Cards”, I have subsequently learned was the name for them. The graphic design of many of them was actually quite good, and I began to collect them. Fast forward about 20 years, and some bloke who had also collected published a book of them, including many which I recognised. A link here to some of them, if that is OK, GA?! Perhaps a topic for a future column? Lamenting the long-gone Spitalfields Tart Cards?!!

https://dangerousminds.net/comments/london_calling_a_look_at_vintage_tart_cards_used_by_english_prostitutes

By: Jennifer Newbold

Jennifer Newbold — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 14:22:42 +0000

When I was in Norfolk this spring I found that the red phone box on the green in Burnham Market has become a voluntary library exchange. Where once the telephone stood there are shelves of books where people deposit a book that they have finished with and take another that they haven’t read. On my adventures rattling through the Norfolk landscape in my rental Fiat I noticed this adaptation in other phone boxes on other village greens.

No doubt electronic media will one day overtake the humble and homely book as well. But for this moment in time, I heartily approve.

By: Bonny young

Bonny young — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 14:02:56 +0000

In Brockley an old phone box has been turned into a Book Exchange. Probably the smallest library in London!

Love your photographs and comments about them.

By: Su C.

Su C. — Tue, 09 Jul 2019 13:59:59 +0000

I must admit as a tourist to London many times over the last nearly 30 years, I have stood inside a red box to have my snap taken. Always the same box now for at least the last 20 years or so. Yet on our last trip, the box was gone and I felt I’d lost my may in an area so familiar to my inner map.