May 2021 has been rubbish so far weather-wise. It’s been endless hailstorms and rain all week, and there was a tornado not far from us yesterday. I am hoping that the future part of this month will be more like May 1989:
Sunshine! And flowers! And a boat on the sea, which I still really want to be on right now!
In the meantime, I’m going to go draw some pixel boats instead. And pixel sunshine.
Another box spotted by Mum and Dad on their road trip last month.
(Coordinates 55°85’48.7″N, 2°86’56.0″W.)
You often see phone boxes in the yards of village shops like this. It doesn’t look like it still has a phone in though.
Another Scottish find next week!
And so does the five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy that holds all the games we used to play on the BBC Micro in the late ’80s, surprisingly. Or at least they both did in December 2019, when Dad and I booted everything up for the first time in decades.
I can’t wait to be able to visit Mum and Dad in Edinburgh and play with this amazing old machine again! There’s an Acorn Electron I want to try booting up too…
We used my old TV (my gift for doing well in my Standard Grades in 2000) as the monitor, because it’s the only CRT screen left in the house. It was really trippy to boot up all the programs and suddenly remember games I hadn’t even thought about for thirty years.
Virus is still my favourite, as that was about the limit of my gaming ability when I was three or four. However, I’ve got a real soft spot for Cheese, Planets and Tarot (imaginative names!) too, just for the pure nostalgia rush when they appear on screen.
The real eventual test will be getting some of my own programs to run on the system!
Odd title I know. The street name is Temple, and so is the village name. Mum and Dad drove through it on their road trip the other week.
(Coordinates 55°81’54.0″N, 3°09’15.1″W.)
It was hard to find an angle on Street View where the image wasn’t doing the weird ‘turn all the red things green’ effect that it sometimes does!
This one still has a phone in. Nice to see!
I’ve shared this 1989 photo before, but here it is again, because I have desperately wanted to be on the deck of a boat for the last few days.
Ferry, cruise ship, houseboat, dinghy, you name it. I just want to be out on the sea right now. I don’t remember the last time I even saw the sea in person 🙁 Maybe a trip out to Shields is overdue.
I can finally do some phone box logging again! The relaxation of restrictions in Scotland has meant that Mum and Dad have been out and about for the first time in months and have found me some more phone boxes, which will feature over the next few weeks.
(Coordinates 55°83’33.8″N, 3°08’90.7″W.)
Always great to see an adapted defibrillator box. Lovely location too.
More from Scotland next week!
We’ve had beautiful sunshine all week here, but it’s been cold in the mornings. I’ve been thinking a lot about beaches and coves and other nice explorable coastal places (and hoping that I might actually get to go to some of them this summer!). This photo from May 1987 is where I want to be right now – watching a pretty sailboat while standing on a beach. Even a pebbly beach like you often get in this part of the world!
Mum’s funky necklace is a bonus in this picture. ’80s jewellery is the best.
Dad sent me a picture of one of the Grassmarket phone boxes he’d taken while out on a walk around Edinburgh recently. I miss Edinburgh so much and can’t wait to go back once we’re allowed to travel up again! I first logged this phone box here (now updated) and am happy to see it’s still thriving.
Thinking wistfully of a visit home.
