Phone Call

Discovered on a private driveway down to a house near Bath, the last remains of a K6 telephone box. This of course may be the awful fate of all these once ubiquitous red sentinels, their death knell tolled by BT back in the 1980s when they started to replace them with those unspeakable off-the-shelf glass cabinets. Mobile phone use has rendered them pretty well obsolete now, but I do wonder if a new use couldn't be found for them that means they remain in their original locations, instead of being turned into conversation piece greenhouses or shower cabinets. Some are quite rightly listed, some still have their interior lightbulbs shining brightly in the gloom, all of them appear to have discouraging notices about actualling attempting to make a telephone call. Unmitigated England Phone Boxes will of course have a corded handset on top of a black Bakelite phone, A & B chrome buttons, a shelf full of pink or yellow boarded directories, a list of local exchanges and a small mirror on the back wall. On the floor will be one empty Player's packet and a pencilled number awkwardly written on a Fry's Five Boys wrapper. And a man in a trilby tapping on the glass, mouthing 'Hurry up".