We’ll start with the one at the end of the street near where the gallows used to stand (see Wikipedia for info if you’re morbidly curious), which is accompanied by one of Edinburgh’s many police-boxes-that-have-been-turned-into-coffee-stands.
From a different angle. Fairly sunny for January!
It’s nice to see another part of the Old Town where the red phone boxes are still standing proud. I suppose, compared to their surroundings, they’re practically brand new.
Update May 2022: added coordinates. Accompanying police box still appears to be owned by the same café company!
These ones are very nicely placed, opposite the Central Lending Library. They’re also very near a bus stop, so you can admire them (or even make a quick old-fashioned phone call if you’re so inclined) while you’re waiting for the bus!
Bonus full-length shot:
As above!
Central Edinburgh is a beautiful setting for classic phone boxes (and for everything, really). Stay tuned for more next week!
Yes, we’re still on the Royal Mile, but I promise this is the last week! Like most tourist hotspots in the UK, it has a lot of classic red phone boxes.
Red phone boxes, Royal Mile, Edinburgh, 25th January 2016.
The box next to the phone box is an Edinburgh police box. Police boxes are still fairly common in Edinburgh, but as they’re obviously not used for their original purpose anymore, they’ve all been turned into coffee stands.
The other phone boxes you can see in the background will be featured next week!
Update May 2022: some interesting developments to be found on Google Street View!
It was so nice to get back to vintage fair trawling today!
I took a break from the drudgery of my all-encompassing project this afternoon to go to the Boiler Shop in central Newcastle, where I’ve been for different vintage fairs before. Today it was hosting Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fair, which I’ve previously been to at different venues. They all kind of chop and change about in that way.
Anyway, on with the haul:
Left to right: grey leather jacket, silver silk blouse, purple/black/white chiffon blouse.
I’m really pleased with today’s purchases! The jacket will do me perfectly for spring and autumn (and probably for the cooler bits of summer as well, let’s face it!). The blouses, meanwhile, are to mitigate the fact that post-cull I’ve been lacking in pretty tops. Probably my favourite vintage fair trip so far – I really feel like I’m learning to spot stuff that I really like, and not just buying things for the sake of it.
The Street View image linked above is actually the 2016 image rather than the most recent 2018 update, because the 2018 photo is RAMMED with people due to having been taken in August during the Festival. You can click through on the upper left box on the Street View page to see the 2018 picture.
I really like this row of three. It’s quite hard to catch a picture of them without tourists hanging off the doors in order to do the same thing during busy times (and you can see someone actually using the one on the left here! Wonderful to see it being used!), but it was worth hanging around on this particular day, ’cause I think they’re very pretty all lined up like that.
I’ve been meaning to do this post for a while, but in the post-move chaos the house has been a bit too messy for pictures!
I mentioned previously that our new house was built in 1987/1988, which I was obviously thrilled about when I found out. While things like the kitchen and bathroom have been remodelled more recently, there are still a lot of lovely original ’80s features in the house, which are a huge bonus in my view.
Let’s take a look at a few of them.
The deco-style hearth in the living room.
I love this art deco style hearth – it’s a real feature in the room. It needs a bit of cleaning, and the fire doesn’t actually work at the moment (we need to have a look into that, but now that the winter’s over it’s not an urgent thing), but I think the design of it is gorgeous.
The brass light switches…
…and the matching plug sockets.
Geth doesn’t like these brass fittings at all, but I love them – I’ve lived with standard white ones my whole life, and these are a lot more interesting!
More art deco stylings – stained glass windows in the doorway from the hall into the living room.
These stained glass windows are probably my favourite feature in the house – they provide such a brightness to the living room.
One of the brass light fittings in the hallway.
Finally, there’s these brass light fittings – another thing that I love and Geth dislikes! There are two of them, one in the downstairs hallway and one in the upstairs landing. Most of the light fittings in the house do seem to be original, but these are my favourites.
It’s really nice that so many features have survived since the house was first built. As a shameless ’80s throwback, it makes me feel much more at home.
In 2016, I continued my Burns Night Edinburgh phone box hunt by heading to the Royal Mile, which is a popular tourist spot and hence still has all its phone boxes intact. This will keep us nice and busy for the next few Phone Box Thursdays. I hope you’re as excited as I am!
Red phone box, Royal Mile, Edinburgh, 25th January 2016.
Turning a phone box into a cash machine is something I’m seeing more and more. It’s a great way of keeping phone boxes useful and functional so that councils don’t get rid of them. Look out for more phone-boxes-turned-cash-machines in this series!
While visiting home for Burns Night in January 2016, I took a photo of the phone box outside Waverley train station, which was looking sad, neglected and stuck in the middle of a building site:
Red phone box, Waverley Bridge, Edinburgh, 25th January 2016.
I was a bit worried that the phone box wouldn’t be long for this world, as there seemed to be something new being built on the site. But! Lo and behold, the ‘something new’ turned out to be a Wetherspoon (isn’t it always?), and when I went in with Geth and my friend Sharpy for a pre-train pint in July of that year, guess what had taken pride of place in the beer garden?
Blue phone box, Waverley Bridge, Edinburgh, 10th July 2016.
I really like the way that the Wetherspoon designers have made a lovely feature out of this phone box, showcasing the beers that you can buy in the pub. Another way to maintain old unused phone boxes!
(Update April 2022: I’ve added coordinates for this box, and the Google Street View clock slider is one of the best I’ve seen in terms of showing the timeline of a place – lots of pictures from between 2009 and 2021! Apparently the Wetherspoon isn’t the first pub garden it’s been part of…)
