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 🙂
Here’s a phone box that we spotted while out on a family trip a couple of weeks ago, when Mum and Dad were visiting!
(Coordinates 54°95’65.7″N, 1°78’20.3″W.)
The phone box is a recent addition, as it doesn’t show up in the Street View image. It’s in the garden of a location that looks like a B&B or similar. It would certainly make a good B&B location as the phone box would be a real talking point!
It doesn’t look like a working box – it’s being used as an aesthetic feature. Which is certainly a better use than being scrapped, like so many phone boxes sadly are these days!
Mum and Dad found me this phone box in southwest Scotland!
(Coordinates 55°49’23.8″N, 3°69’21.7″W.)
It still has a phone in it, but also a notice from BT saying they’re thinking about removing it 🙁
Still no phone boxes in my life so I’ve been planning phone box tourism instead (to be fair this is not just about phone boxes; it’s going to be nice to stick my nose out of Newcastle every now and again when the pandemic eventually goes away).
Next time I’m in London (which, everything crossed, will be for the marathon in October) I would love to go and see the ‘Out Of Order’ sculpture. I’ve seen a lot of London phone boxes but not these ones!
It is probably not at all surprising that this is just one of many phone box destinations on my list…
Still no new phone box finds here in 2021 but Dad found me a cracker from the family archives. This is a slide taken in 1965 by Grandad, who used to like taking photos of trams (if you’ve ever wondered where I get all my strange forms of nerdery from, look no further than my immediate Cooke family ancestors). On this happy occasion he happened to capture a phone box as well!
(Coordinates 53°32’86.7″N, 3°83’88.2″W.)
Yes, it’s still there! As are the buildings and even the tram lines, though I’m not sure if they’re still in use. The buildings are no longer shops, but still very recognisable.
1960s shop signs always look very cartoony to me (this is probably caused by my general ‘1960s=cartoon’ vibe that I was talking about last week) and make me think they’re on a film or TV set, as 1960s productions always have signs that look like that. I don’t know why I find it hard to believe they looked like that in real life too!
I’m out of real-life phone boxes, so here’s the interior of the one I drew for my game Barry Basic and the Quick Escape.
I based it on an image of a mid-century phone box interior I found online, as the game is set in 1969. The A and B mechanisms were to do with coin return (explained here under ‘Coin Boxes’).
Most of my planned games for the next year have phone boxes in. I think I’ve just been missing seeing real-life examples!
