…and it was nice doing a different route to my 1.2-mile lap! That’s the last chance I’ll have for over a week, though, as multiple run training starts again tomorrow.
I also went out for a long walk this afternoon, as I’ll be running and working for the rest of the week so will be a bit too busy for walks. It was perfect September weather – lovely and sunny but not too hot while walking, and it was a really nice route too. I managed to photograph some red phone boxes I’d spotted while out with the social run group a few weeks ago, so look out for those in future Phone Box Thursday posts 🙂
A little more time spent indoors tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll be able to share my finished decor project (as far as it can be finished right now!).
A photo from over the weekend. The trees are starting to turn now, which is always exciting.
Today’s earworm playlist:
Vangelis – ‘Chariots Of Fire’ Gunship – ‘Rise The Midnight Girl’ Sacre – ‘The London Marathon [Theme From The Trap]’
This box still has a phone inside, but also a notice about its imminent removal. It looks very weathered on the outside so has probably not been maintained for some time.
Unlike a lot of phone boxes we’ve seen recently, this one looks freshly painted and well-maintained (the phone inside is still intact and seemingly in working order).
Interestingly, the ‘Telephone’ plate at the front has obviously been replaced in recent years – the Street View image shows a ’00s-era blue ’email/text/phone’ plate (for a while, these were installed in certain phone boxes along with basic computers that allowed you to access email – my student flat in 2003/2004 didn’t have internet connection, so I used the email-enabled phone box on the street corner all the time!).
Nice to see a phone box that’s still loved. Hopefully this one won’t be going anywhere anytime soon!
The phone box and the playpark/grassy area behind it has been tidied and prettied up a bit since the Google image was taken. However, the phone is no longer in situ, and there’s an imminent removal notice inside the box, sadly.
There seems to be a real push for phone box removal at the moment, especially in rural areas 🙁
A phone box in a slightly happier state next week!
The phone is still intact, but there’s a notice inside suggesting imminent removal. Hopefully the village might adopt it and turn it into something useful.
Back to Mum and Dad’s phone box finds around Dumfries and Galloway this week (there have been a lot lately since they’ve been able to visit their holiday caravan again!). This poor shell of a phone box was found in St John’s Town.
Red phone box, Ayr Road, St John’s Town, 26th July 2020.
The shop in the background has changed hands since the Street View image was taken (presumably in 2009 during the Google cars’ only visit to rural Scotland). The phone box was also in much better quality back then!
There was no phone inside (obviously) but there was this strange motivational message on a painted rock:
I do like sparkle.
It’s a bit sad to see a phone box in this condition, and I doubt it’s long for this world 🙁
Here’s another phone box photo sent in by Bill, depicting three red phone boxes. I don’t think I ever had cause to bump into these ones during my once-annual trips to Sheffield for Resistanz Festival!
Red phone boxes, Surrey Street, Sheffield, 2nd January 2020.
You can just about see all three phone boxes in the Street View image linked above – the third box is under the tree on the right! The Street View image was taken in summer, on a busier day, so it’s harder to make them out.
These boxes look very well-kept, as tends to be the case with city centre phone boxes (councils seem to maintain them better in city centres as they’re popular with tourists).
Back to rural Scotland next week, and the long quest to capture as many small village boxes as possible before they get removed…
Bill recently sent me this phone box photo from 2006. The phone box is in the grounds of the ‘Les Jardins du Monde’ attraction in Royan, France (and probably doesn’t have a phone inside, as Bill is using a ’00s Nokia in the picture 🙂 ).
Red phone box, Les Jardins du Monde, Royan, 7th August 2006.
(Coordinates 45°62’91.1″N, 1°01’41.2″E – Google Street View won’t let me inside the attraction, but you can see the entrance.)
While the traditionalist in me would prefer all red phone boxes to have remained in their original locations in the UK and been maintained by councils for the rest of eternity, it is nice that some of the unwanted ones are going to good homes in other countries and brightening up the tourist attractions there.
Many thanks to all of you who have been sending phone box pictures in this last week! I’ve now got a good collection to share over the next few Thursdays.
Mum and Dad are still finding phone boxes in Dumfries and Galloway…
The box has become a lot more overgrown than it was when the Street View image was taken (probably 2009, which was the one year that the Google cars did a perfunctory survey of rural Scotland – they have yet to return). It looks very romantic with all the weeds, but sadly it does not seem to be being cared for and will probably not be in situ for much longer.
‘In fact, as we approached Gatehouse there was an Openreach van with flashing orange lights beside the site of the box at Laggan (I sent you a photo last year or the year before) and the box has now gone!’
There seems to be a big push at the moment to get rid of derelict rural phone boxes 🙁 Hopefully I will be able to collect as many as possible before they disappear.
Another family submission next week!
Update February 2025: good news about this phone box, which Mum and Dad revisited last September. It’s now found a use as a book and seed exchange!
I am officially out of phone box photos to share with you, so it’s a different kind of Phone Box Thursday this week!
Last year, when I was still doing Music Video Monday posts, I did a piece on Heaven 17’s ‘Let Me Go’, which is a very nice example of classic red phone box use in music videos (while you can’t actually tell that the phone box is red in this black and white video, it was made in 1982 and therefore prior to the days when councils and other organisations started repainting phone boxes in funky non-red colours, so I am pretty much 100% certain that it was red).
This week, I thought I’d track down the location of the video shoot to see if the phone box was still there! This will be a regular feature when my own phone box collection is running short, so expect a few more posts on phone boxes from music videos and TV shows in the near future.
Red (I assume!) phone box, Lothbury, London (from Heaven 17’s ‘Let Me Go’ video, filmed in 1982).
It took me a while to track down this London street, but due to the fact that later in the video Glenn Gregory runs past the National Westminster Bank at number 41, I managed to work out that the street in question was Lothbury, with the help of this beautifully ’80s architecture pamphlet about the bank building. It is, of course, no longer a NatWest, because bank branches never stay in the same place for very long!
No phone box, Lothbury, London (Google Street View image from April 2019).
…and woe – you can see that the phone box in question is no longer there! Looking back through the Street View historical slider, it was also not there in the earliest Street View image taken in 2008, so it’s been gone for some time, sadly.
Black and red phone boxes, Lothbury, London (Google Street View image from April 2019).
…there are a couple of classic phone boxes quite close to each other, one repainted black. So maybe one of them is the original ‘Let Me Go’ phone box and was moved by the council at some point between 1982 and 2008? You never know!
I may have some regularly-scheduled phone boxes for you next week, as Mum and Dad have identified a few more to collect in Dumfries and Galloway. Otherwise, I’ll be back in the world of ’80s music videos again!
