BT have proposed removing thirty six public phone boxes from various locations in Pembrokeshire. Twenty of those have been used five or fewer times in the past 12 months, and five - including one in St Davids - have not had a single call made from them. In the 15 years I've lived here I've used two public phones, both times when I forgot to take my mobile. A far cry from the days when you were hard pushed to find a box without at least two or three people waiting patiently for the guy with a stack of 10p coins to finish his call.
Anyone remember when they last used a phone box?
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I'm almost certain I haven't use a phone box since I was a student in halls of residence during my first year at Uni. Which ended in 1990. Our shared house in the second/third year had a phone. I graduated and started work in 1992, and had a mobile phone from 1994. It's entirely possible that someone only a few years younger than me has never used a phone box...and they could still be in their forties...just!! Not surprised that BT are try go to get rid of them. I have seen some converted to house cash machines, which seems quite sensible but at the rate contactless payment is developing perhaps short lived?
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There used to be a public phone outside my house in San Fran, I reckon that'd be the last one I used in about 1998 or so.
The last one in the UK, goodness knows, the late 80s I should think.
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I probably last used a payphone in the UK in 1994.
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.*******
OFFS... urinals then. Tsk
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Thu 22 Sep 16 at 19:22
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When I started commuting to/from Euston in 1990 there were 40+ payphones both BT and rivals around the station. On a night when the trains were disrupted you'd queue for 20mins to let domestic control know dinner had to go on hold.
When I finished in 2013 there were a handful of BT phones.
Txt or voice by mobile was communication of choice.
Last time I used one was bout 10yrs ago when mobile's battery was flat.
Another payphone slated for removal is at Rosthwaite in Borrowdale. While little used it could be only means for contacting mountain rescue in place with zero mobile on any network.
OTOH if it's a genuine 'scramble' for Keswick MR I'm sure the Scafell Hotel or other commercial premises would facilitate a call.
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Um, talking of phone boxes ... I used to live in a block of (council) flats just behind where in 1963, £50,000 was found by police in a phone box in Great Dover Street sowf lunden.
T'was part of the proceeds from the Great Train Robbery and had been left by a geezer acting for Buster Edwards.
If I had found it, 'they' wouldn't have, knowlmean. 50 big ones was a lotta money 53 years ago!
Didn't have a phone at home (or a mobile!) so used to use said box onna regular basis.
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1991 would have been the last time for me.
However whenever I am in London, from time to time and walk past a phone box I still smile at the "brightly coloured non BT advertisment cards" that seem to proliferate.
I dont think my son who is now 23 has ever been in a phone box.
As always
Mark
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One up in Banbury became an unofficial library, until Elf n Safety stepped in about the dodgy shelving.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-31553774
A lot of phone boxes are now becoming Defibrillator stations instead.
tinyurl.com/zewdmzm - bt.com
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Will the next Doctor Who be whizzing about in a large Nokia?
And where does Superman now change his trousers?
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I'm struggling to remember when I last used one, I think sometime in the early 90s.
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Well I'm with you Sooty, I'm struggling too but I reckon for me it was more like the 80s. I expect I'm wrong though.
I do remember being in a job in the late 80s/early 90s where I had to carry a pager, and if a panic message came through while we were travelling were had to just find the nearest call box and "call home". Makes me sound important, I suppose in it's way it was, but really in the scheme of things it wasn't. I don't remember it ever happening anyway.
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People used to wait by/in the phonebox for an incoming call.
Been doing my telephone assessing for CA for around a year. In something like 1500 calls, all by appointment, not one has been facilitated that way.
Around 85% are to mobiles. Increasingly common where there is an alternative landline number on client's file for it to be not working - presumably given up on cost grounds.
A handful have asked to be called at a neighbour's.
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Question: do any RAC/AA roadside boxes still exist
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Possibly for historic purposes, maybe some are listed?
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Around 85% are to mobiles. Increasingly common where there is an alternative landline number on
>> client's file for it to be not working - presumably given up on cost grounds.
A couple of my relatives have done that, can be a bit of a pain as we live in the middle of nowhere the mobile signal isn't great.
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>> A handful have asked to be called at a neighbour's.
>>
Brings back memories of my Nan - she lived in a prefab semi and the wall between her and next door was really nothing more than thick cardboard.
My Nan had a phone, but her neighbour didn't so she would give my Nans number out for "important" calls. When a call came in for next door they had this very specific knock on the wall and round she would come across the front garden :-)
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>> Well I'm with you Sooty, I'm struggling too but I reckon for me it was
>> more like the 80s. I expect I'm wrong though.
Having thought about it i think it was in france somewhere before mobiles were really common i think it took those phonecards you could buy at french corner shops.
>> I do remember being in a job in the late 80s/early 90s where I had
>> to carry a pager,
Just being nosey, what job was that?
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I used one yesterday! - couldn't get a mobile signal for some reason. The robbin beggar cost me £1 (min charge 60p) but I had no loose change either apart from a £1 coin, and it didn't give change! - only on it for ten seconds!
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Only tech support on proprietary computer software. I was a country specialist on a few products (coding, later databases, operating system), and Euro expert on one or two later (mainly email) but with that background I ended up assisting with all sorts of software issues, as well as analysis of core dumps when a machine had died, and recovery of data from knackered disks (which was a manual job then). Real bits and bytes level stuff
Nobodys life or death depended on the computers but we had some very serious money coming in for support contracts from a handful of banks and insurance companies, some of whom had our machines in the front office (or key to supporting the front office), and they expected (and got) immediate response to any issues.
The product range died shortly after a crass statement around year 2K by our then chairman and after a spell supporting and implementing some new imaging and workflow products I moved into IT project management.
The tech job was the one I really enjoyed even though (or maybe because) it was often challenging, working out what had led up to an issue as well as fixing it.
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44 yrs ago moved into a new house on new estate. The house next dooe had a phone as it had been a showhome. We put in for a phone from "The Post Office".
On Saturday morning we were out. The PO came up the road & knocked on doors - if you were in they gave you a connection. 4 yrs later we got a phoneline - not enough capacity @ the exchange.
The local Payphone got regular visits & a queue was quite common.
Roll on 44 yrs we are waiting on decent BB- we are not even on the 2 /3 yr outlook - we are waiting on "new technology" from BT before there will be any change - now street cabinets, aluminium wire in the street, lots of noise on the line, lots of damp ducts...........
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You lost me at proprietary, i'm a complete IT biff, haven't the foggiest how they work. But thanks (genuinely) for taking the time to explain.
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>> And where does Superman now change his trousers?
I thought he changed into a pair of underpants that he wore over the top of his trousers?
That aside, When Frank Williams was short of cash, he conducted his F1 business from a telephone box at one point after being disconnected for unpaid bills.
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 23 Sep 16 at 10:20
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When I was little we used to host large family Christmases with what seemed like vast numbers of aging relatives descending on us for days and days from all around the country. I often wondered how these were coordinated, must've been by post I guess, over many months. We didn't get a phone at home until maybe the early/mid 60s. it was a cream coloured rotary dial, if that helps with aging it.
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>> it was a cream coloured rotary dial, if that helps with aging it.
Something like this?
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/New_Zealand_Rotary_Telephone.jpg
That's what our first phone looked like. Next came a similar model, but with push buttons instead of the rotary dial.
I used to like the design of the trim phone.
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First I remember was like this.
rubytuesdaysvintagehome.com/item_60/STUNNING-VINTAGE-BAKELITE-300-SERIES-CALL-EXCHANGE-TELEPHONE.htm
The type Vx mentions were what we had at work until into the nineties. making umpteen calls a day one used the end of a pen to dial to avoid callouses on the index finger.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Fri 23 Sep 16 at 13:09
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>> First I remember was like this.
>>
I grew up with its predecessor - there was no dial, one just lifted the receiver and asked the operator for the number. For long distance one asked for "Trunks", and there then followed a long wait as successive operators established a linked chain across the country.
My aunt's number was Thistleton 57, but it always had to be spelled out several times before the operator understood it, and then repeated all the way down the line.
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Country districts here were the same. Phone with a windy-windy handle on the side, then operator would pick up, and you'd have to ask for the exchange and number. Dialling in to these places was also fun - the local op would send a few personal 'trings' down a party line, and the person whose ringtone it was would pick up. As would everyone else.
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Not since pre-decimalisation and the old Button A and Button B.
We had to learn how to use them in basic scout training. Apart from that I've always had access to ordinary phones. I last used a public phone in about 1985, when I rang for car recovery from the phone behind the bar in a pub.
I'm not really up on phones. Like buses, I don't understand how they work.
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That's the one VxFan :-)
Seems they were in production through the 60s and 70s so can't be more accurate than that about when we first got it.
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>> That aside, When Frank Williams was short of cash, he conducted his F1 business from
>> a telephone box at one point after being disconnected for unpaid bills.
>>
Yes he was good at that.
He shared a flat with me and another chap, in Nottingham before he ran any sort of team, but was competing himself in saloon car classes on the club circuit.
He decamped to Harrow to carry on his pre-F1 wheeling and dealing, leaving us with, for those days, a whacking great phone bill, most of which was down to him.
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Who remembers 'tapping out' the code and number on the switch hooks, to avoid paying for the call?
Also dialling a series of local codes to avoid higher charges.
A comedian once commented: You cannot get an STD from a telephone, although you can from a telephone operator.
Telephone operators, allegedly, used to reply "rubber knees" instead of "number please".
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>>Who remembers 'tapping out' the code and number on the switch hooks, to avoid paying for the call?
That only dodged a locked dial. As far as call charges were concerned it made no difference.
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The phone box up the road from our school was nearly always broken, the lock on the door to the cash box seemed to break easily. So you put your money in the top and took it out of the bottom.
Not that I ever took advantage, oh no...
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The thing i remember about them is the smells, it was either fags, fish&chips or farts and wee, sometimes all four.
Happy Days
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>> The thing i remember about them is the smells, it was either fags, fish&chips or farts and wee, sometimes all four.
There was a bloke who you could set the time of your watch to. Every weekday evening, without fail at 8pm, he'd come out the pub to use the phone box opposite. Well that is until some unmentionable youths who used to loiter on the seats nearby chucked a stink bomb inside said phone box just before 8pm ;)
The same unmentionable youths tied some rope right around the phone box one night, trapping him inside ;)
If only we had camera phones back then. Mind you, there wouldn't have been a phone box if we had.
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>> Not that I ever took advantage, oh no...
>>
the long tikkie...
carefully drilled 10c coin, bit of very thing cotton, and if you knew the technique of feeding it into the slot at an exact length, could be used for very long calls at very little cost.
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The last time I used one I put 50p in for a quick call home to check with Mrs O'Reliant that I'd left my mobile behind and not lost it. When I hung up a pound coin came out of the little slot at the bottom. I was tempted to try another 50p to see if it would be double or quits but decided to quit while I was ahead.
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I thumped a coin box in frustration when it didn't return my coin for a failed call. Loads of coins cascaded out of the chute - I'd probably dislodged a jam.
Bit embarrassing as I worked for BT at the time and knew they fitted micro switches to detect vandalism.
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Many years back a few hefty lads picked up the in-house snack machine, turned it upside down, and scored squids worth of sweeties. Sheer devilment.
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It's a few days too late, unfortunately, but here's an apposite photograph (No.2) for this topic:
rxbirdwalks.wordpress.com/2016/09/28/miscellaneous/
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A Sign of The Times - PeterS
