Tag Archives: curiosity
Cat in a box
Found in the archives
I came across an exciting find in the archives recently – a tv script from June 1992 entitled ‘BT Payphones’. Written by Crystal Images, likely for the tv show Tomorrow’s World, it includes scenes extolling the virtues of the payphone and selling it’s latest development, such as multiple payment methods. It seems that by the early 1990s our favourite red box was already seeen as ‘quaint and traditional – a unique symbol of Britain’s heritage’.
Here are a couple of screen shots:
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Tagged curiosity, heritage and history, television, UK
My Portuguese textbook
Snail attraction
Here is a cutting from issue 400 (2020) of the Fortean Times:
Tiny places
The Guardian has published an uplifting piece about tiny places and I’m glad to see a phone box has made the list. Click here for the full article.
Warley Museum, West Yorkshire
When the local community association opened up the floor to buying and converting a Warley telephone box in 2016, artists Paul Czainski, 69, and his wife Chris (pictured) suggested turning it into a museum. “Once we’d put our hands up, it was our responsibility,” says Paul, who has turned the back wall into a local history display, made a mosaic floor of broken bits dug up from allotments and etched famous Yorkshire images into its glass panels. Displays change every three months and have included “the world’s smallest art exhibition” – teeny works by 40 artists – and collections of beer bottle tops and fossils.
It’s free to enter and accommodates two at a time, though displays are visible from outside. Upkeep is a cinch as Paul and Chris live across the road. “The charm is people can walk past without realising, then be drawn back for a closer look. We love to see their reactions. It’s only little, but it’s very important.”
Real crime
We’ve started watching ‘Mindhunter’, set in the USA in the 1970s. There was mention of a serial killer who, when expecting to be hunted by police and finding he was not, rang in from a phone booth to confess. Here’s a screen shot from Wikipedia:
Google honours the icon
Gile Gilbert Scott, the English architect who designed the red telephone box, was born on the 9th November 1880. Google celebrated this with a fancy remake of its own icon.
Ahead of myself
I recently came across the following post on FB:
Just now, as I was bringing an old suitcase downstairs, I realised I had placed this same image front and centre on a hatbox that I had covered with postcards (c.1992):
I think I might have done this c. 1992, meaning I was getting ahead of myself. I didn’t start photographing phoneboxes until c. 1997.
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Tagged curiosity, UK, urban