Phone box...

I still find myself looking for phone boxes, a habit I picked up long ago when it was still best to know where the nearest one was just in case of fire, illness, accident (including childbirth), or a win on the football pools.

How much simpler things were back then: our world much smaller, communication a face-to-face or posted and delivered thing. Yes, back then a trip to the phone box was a rare and exciting event, a wonder even. I have happy memories of making late night calls from rain splattered phone boxes; calls to friends, conversations with lovers, arguments with home - apologies, happy birthdays, goodbyes, Childline. Only joking, it didn’t exist back then and even if it had I don’t think I’d have been brave enough to go to a phone box on my own.

It’s hard to find a phone box these days. With mobile phones in every pocket and bag it seems the need to ring people from a draughty, smelly booth has almost vanished and with it the boxes themselves. Such a shame, a loss to communities all over the country.

I remember a filthy night in Wolverhampton, my face as wet with salty water as the small glass panes that reflected my not quite twenty smooth-faced self. Years later, another phone box in the furthest reaches of North Wales, a place to watch the sun set and make Nan calls with a small, just-talking daughter. Years before, and ‘Push button B’ on a cold winters night outside a pub I was too young to drink in, calling a taxi I couldn’t afford to pay for. It never came, and I staggered a long and fuzzy walk home. Other nights, warm, at the crossroads late, yellow light coming on when I opened the door, attracted moths fluttering around me. “Can you come and get me?” I stuck out my thumb and walked.

There was a time when homes with land lines were few and far between, the home telephone as big a luxury as ice cubes. The phone box was the only way for most to make a call on those few very few occasions that a call was needed. It’s hard to believe these days that there was a time when you could go months without needing to use the phone, but when you did there was always a queue. There was a real sense of community in the queue as people exchanged the reason for their particular call, and having to use the telephone seemed to make them feel special.

That was it probably. You only made telephone calls when you had to and usually for the ‘nasty’ and not the ‘nice’. After all, the ‘nice’ lived just around the corner and they didn’t have telephones either. My Gran in Lincolnshire did, but she was evil (it must have been genetic) and she was rung only when it was expected or there was a favour to beg.

When did it all change I wonder? Why do we all need to be on the phone continually when in the past we never seemed to? I find myself using my phone because I have minutes to use and it would be ‘wrong’ to not use them. I end up making calls I don’t really need to make from a phone I don’t really need at all. Does anyone really care that I’ll be home in ten minutes? After all I’ll be home in ten minutes and I can talk then, not that I have much to say.

Phone boxes, they were great places to shelter from the rain and how I miss their comforting presence. In my mind they are still painted red and the glass isn’t smashed. The telephone book is never torn or missing, the receiver is attached to its cable, the floor is vomit free and the tiny silver metal ashtray is never completely full. No wonder I can’t find one when I need to make a call; I’m not looking inside my head.