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".

Unexpected Alphabets No 18

Just a quick one here, spotted by a gate leading up to Slawston Hill in Leicestershire on a Sunday afternoon walk. I like the simplicity and sheer effectiveness of the carefully stencilled letters, the colours, and the enigma as to why it was nailed to its post at an angle. Probably because we all walk about here with curious leanings.

Unexpected Alphabets No 17

In Dorset at the weekend, with friends who took me around some of their favourite haunts before we found ourselves inexplicably in The Stour Inn in Blandford St.Mary drinking Badger Poacher's Choice. Our last port of call as the sun dipped down behind the church was Cranborne, and we took a detailed look at buildings, brickwork and tombstones and wished we could get nearer to Cranborne Manor, Squire Allworthy's Jacobean mansion in Tony Richardson's Tom Jones (1963). And so to Castle Street, and this beautifully signwritten vets. Just perfect: the alphabets, the mixture of styles, the imaginative design of the projecting sign. I only wish it had been open and that I'd had a dog to de-distemper or something so that I could've gone in to congratulate them.