Bill sent in a photo of this gorgeously decorated phone box in the centre of Ormskirk.
(Coordinates 53°56’73.5″N, 2°88’59.0″W.)
What a piece of art! I love the little scenes behind the glass. I really hope to see more phone boxes as art installations around the country.
This was the second phone box we found during our trip to Dumfries and Galloway a couple of weeks back. Nice to see a box with custom signs!
(Coordinates 55°00’27.0″N, 3°57’35.0″W.)
This one has been turned into a defibrillator box, which is always nice to see. Modern uses keep phone boxes safe.
An updated box from Lancashire next week!
Mum and Dad had spotted this phone box a while ago, and I was able to photograph it while visiting the Mull of Galloway at the weekend!
(Coordinates 54°66’26.3″N, 4°90’09.6″W.)
I like the accompanying Wonder Woman scarecrow! (Scarecrows are a big thing in the surrounding village; there are lots of them sitting on walls.)
This phone box doesn’t have a phone inside, though it does still have all the posters advising how to use cash etc. As such, we wondered if it had maybe been moved for decorative purposes at some point. However, the Street View image linked above (as ever, taken during the Google cars’ only ever visit to rural Scotland in 2009!) shows it in the same place, so it would have been the community box originally.
More from Scotland next week!
I found this recent story – about a phone box being retained as a tribute to a late phone box fan who used it all the time – to be really touching. I hope the community manage to keep it.
Or… we could maybe start turning red phone boxes into electric car charging points? 😀
This Welsh community have jumped the gun a bit by turning their local phone box into a library before it officially went out of use!
Red phone boxes make it into Fortnite (though I’m pretty sure Clark Kent used an American-style ‘payphone kiosk’ to change into his Superman duds in the comics).
I logged this mysterious phone box back in 2019 when I first did the London Marathon! Glad to see it in the news.
And finally… I’ve seen some interesting phone box refurbishments, but I’m pretty sure this Kent example is the first ever phone box ice cream parlour!
No phone box to log this week, but there have been a few in the news this year.
BT is making more boxes available for the Adopt-A-Kiosk community scheme. I hadn’t realised that communities that want to turn their phone box into a mini library, art gallery or (my personal favourite) defibrillator box only need to pay £1. Hope to see more of these converted boxes, as this is really where phone boxes’ functional future lies.
In Lincoln, meanwhile, this one will cost you £6,000!
And these ones in London are an eye-watering £45,000… but you can’t move or alter them because as K2 boxes they are listed buildings (thankfully). An interesting comment at the bottom of the article from the secretary of the Community Heartbeat Trust charity (the defibrillator charity), which makes me optimistic for more defibrillator boxes.
Geth won’t let me be one of these people… yet. I’m working on it.
Mum and Dad photographed this phone box for me a couple of weeks ago.
(Coordinates 55°82’87.2″N, 3°27’31.0″W.)
This is a fairly well-kept one. The paint looks much fresher than most phone boxes, and there still seems to be a working phone inside. Hopefully it will be around for a while!
Update March 2022: I’ve recently heard that the Silverburn phone box has now been granted listed status! Here’s a Facebook post about it from one of the local MSPs. (I’ve also added the coordinates as apparently I forgot to do that when I first posted this one!)
Mum took a photo of these George Street phone boxes for me the other week. Edinburgh is looking summery in a particularly Edinburgh way! (Grey skies included, but mainly because of the marquees that are out so that people can dine al fresco in the drizzle.)
I haven’t visited these phone boxes in aaaages and am so glad to see they’re still standing proud!
I can’t wait to visit Edinburgh again.
Today we’re revisiting one of my very early phone box examples: Durham Green! (I have taken the opportunity to make some updates to that post.)
Fiona sent me a picture of the box as it is now, taken earlier this month. It’s now a defibrillator box!
I am so happy to see that this box now has a 21st century use! It’s one of my favourites in the north-east and I wouldn’t like to see Durham Cathedral without it.
Back up to Scotland next week…
Bill sent in this nice duo of phone boxes from outside a guest house in Yarm.
(Coordinates 54°50’99.1″N, 1°35’49.7″W.)
That paint looks a bit… painful to touch. Still, it seems that at least one of them still has a phone inside, so maybe it’s still used in those parts!
Thinking back to this phone box today, because it plays a role in the game I was originally meant to release yesterday. I am excited about my big work-in-progress and releasing it (complete with phone box puzzle) into the world, but I will have to be patient and wait for next year as it’s turned out to be such a mega-project.
In the meantime, I’m keeping my game creation process interesting by mixing up the big project with smaller games. The first of these, Waiting for the Day Train, came out as a submission to ParserComp yesterday. I’ll do a full debrief in a few days’ time!
Maybe by next week, even if I’ve not managed to find another phone box, I’ll have the energy to draw one again 🙂