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Phone for fish
From the Evening Standard, 1 December 2015.
A Mayfair phone box will be transformed into a glowing aquarium and trees will be hung with lights when the Lumiere festival come to Lndon next month. Neon balloon dogs will set up home in the Strand, while angel-like figures, by Cedric Le Borgne, will appear around St James. The French artist is one of more than 20 who will use light shows and special effects to brighten up streets from Kings Cross to the West End from January 14 to 17. Curator Helen Marriage said:
“Lumiere London is a free event, accessible to all.”
Norfolk, UK
Recently spent a weekend in Norfolk and came across these:
Great Yarmouth
Holkham
History
This isn’t new to this blog, as such, but good to see the phone box still warrants news articles. Here reproduced from yesterday’s Guardian, Maev Kennedy 23 November 2015.
Sir John Soane: how tomb for architect’s wife inspired the red telephone box
Composite image: Sir John Soane’s Museum/Corbis
When Eliza Soane died 200 years ago, it changed the life of her architect husband Sir John Soane – and it changed the British streetscape through the strange afterlife of the tomb he designed for her, which inspired the design of the iconic red telephone box.
Soane never got over his wife’s death on 22 November 1815 although he lived until 1837. He was one of the most renowned architects of his day – creator of monumental public buildings including the Bank of England, churches, and country houses, as well as an avid collector of fragments of older buildings including Old St Paul’s cathedral. He blamed her death on the shock of discovering that their son George was the author of some malevolent anonymous reviews of his work.
Her tomb, which became the family vault, was raised over her grave in Old St Pancras churchyard in 1816, and inspired the Giles Gilbert Scott telephone kiosk. Scott knew the tomb well as a trustee of the Sir John Soane’s Museum for 35 years, and his 1920s creation is now an endlessly imitated landmark in British design.
Staff of the museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London, the family’s home and his workshop, have commissioned a specially designed wreath to lay on her grave in Old St Pancras churchyard. Helen Dorey, acting museum director, said: “I regard this primarily as a private pilgrimage which we are doing because it is the right thing to do to honour our founder and his family.”
The ceremony was organised for 23 November, which dawned sunny and frosty in the first cold snap of winter. “The last time we laid a wreath on the Soane tomb was in January 1987 to mark the 150th anniversary of Soane’s death – there was snow on the ground,” Dorey recalled.
For the full article go to the Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/nov/23/sir-john-soane-how-tomb-for-architects-wife-inspired-the-red-telephone-box
More library phone boxes please
From the ‘i’ newspaper, 11 November 2015.
Halloween favourite
A classic, ‘Rosemary’s Baby’:
Children of Men
In the refugee camp at Bexhill, in a scene from Children of Men:
Series end
Have been watching ‘Relic Hunter’ and in the last episode we have this:
I am also finishing off ‘Farscape’. This is from an episode in the third series:
Last night’s ‘Dr Who’
Before the Flood
On a remote army outpost, a fearsome alien warlord called the Fisher King sets in motion a twisted plan to ensure his own survival. The ripples will be felt around the universe. Is this chain of events inevitable? And can the Doctor do the unthinkable?
South Kensington, London
I’ve wondered for a while why disused phone boxes weren’t being used as ATMs. I wonder no longer. I just came back from South Kensington in London and saw my first in what I think will be a continuing trend. Note that although one side has become an ATM, another side remains a phone.
Update 2026: this lovely specimen has been removed. I now work nearly and have been keeping an eye on this box for a while. Then it just wasn’t there one day.
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Tagged UK, urban