So there we were, driving home on a Sunday evening when we came across one of those “Only In Ireland” photo opportunities.
Travelling slowly ahead of us was an old P&T phonebox sitting safe and proud on a trailer being driven south. My kids couldn’t believe their eyes. Their shock gave way to embarrassment when I ordered them to take photos. (Well, that’s what mothers are for isn’t it?) There had been an auction in Galway that day, so I assume someone struck it lucky and won themselves a vintage phonebox to take home. Old yellow & green phoneboxes are hugely popular now just like the old postboxes.
But oh the memories that flashed in front of my eyes as I watched the phonebox in front of us.
I remembered how exciting and important phones were in our childhood. Us kids regularly gathered around the one phonebox in town, checking to see if we had struck it lucky because maybe the last caller had left money behind that we could “borrow” to buy sweets. Sometimes we just used the phonebox to shelter from the rain.
Occasionally we did actually make phone calls. But they were big occasions because phone calls were so expensive. The most exciting times were either calling to, or waiting for calls from, long distance relations to pass on some family news. It was a very rare occasion that one of us would ever use the phonebox on our own. We were usually dispatched as a group to make the call. That was definitely the mammy’s way of getting rid of a few kids for an hour or so. For the record I think that 6 kids is the most that we ever managed to squeeze in, and we were still able to close the door and make the call.
Communication is much easier now with mobile phones. But you don’t get that same community feeling that you get from six squashed kids making a call in a phonebox in the rain.
neat memory
Thanks!
Great photo. I am glad you got it.
So few public phones today – the have been rendered unneccessary. Where will Superman change?
The Irish actor Michael Fassbender was on TV recently and said the village he grew up in had no phonebox (because the village was so small) so he and his cousin had to use shrubs and trees for their superman changes! He said phone boxes were only for the sophisticated big towns. Just as well baby Superman didn’t land in rural Ireland. His story would have been very different.
I guess Metropolis is a big town. Good thing.
Great post, Ellie! I think my kids would love to see a ‘real-life’ phone box. As far as I know, these ancient forms of communication are non-existent here in the states as well. Phone boxes are definitely not as intimate as mobile phones. Mobile phones are just so impersonal, right?
For sure. I think it would make a great little youtube hit to let a few modern kids into a old phone box and ask them to make a call on an old rotary phone. What do you think?
Makes me wonder if my kids have ever been inside one.I will have to ask. I watched a kids movie the other day and there was a scene where the kid didn’t know how to dial a rotary phone.
I think we watched that movie recently too. DD2 asked me “Did you really have to turn it around to ring someone?”
Ah, yes we did, and we had to wait for it to come all the way back to zero to dial the next number again!!
That is a great story. I can just picture a bunch of kids climbing into that box.
Btw I’m dying to get my hands on an old mailbox. I think it would make a good laundry hamper.
I think all those “old” pieces of public service history are in demand now. You may have to win a small lottery to buy one!!
Oh true. Makes sense I guess.
This is great
Fewer and fewer phone boxes everywhere…
To quote my kids “And you stood in a box to make a phonecall?!!!!”
No wonder there are fewer of them around.
The old phone boxes were far better than their modern, metal equivalents, Ellie! We had red phone boxes rather than yellow and green, but some that remain now have listed building statuses… that’s something a mobile will never have!
So true!
Oh Ellie, the memories your photo has just brought back! I grew up a couple of houses away from a phonebox exactly like this in the middle of the country! We didn’t have a phone then and a phone call was a whole 20p! Although in those days of hanging around the phone box with friends you got a couple of secs of a call after you dialled the number before you needed to insert your money!! Those were the days…
Thats exactly what I mean about the whole social side of making a call! It was great fun and so exciting. We were easily entertained I think!! ;D
I remember checking for coins too! Making a phone call was getting more and more expensive. Now I have to wonder what people do if the don’t have a mobile????
Great photo and post!
I think if people don’t have a mobile now they just borrow someone else’s! I can’t remember when I last used a public phone, can you?
I don’t ever see them either!
A great find and well done to the photographers. I used to have to get on my bike and cycle to the nearest phone when I was a teenager!
I know, my kids can’t believe the efforts we had to go to when we needed to communicate with someone at a distance. Cycle to the phone?! Almost as crazy as writing an actual letter!
Ellie you’ve brought me back! We didn’t have outside calls from our house for years (due to a disputed bill caused by my brother…) and had to go to the phonebox down the ways to make calls. Used to store up all my tips from my first job to make phonecalls – the memories!
I bet if you stood in a phonebox now (if you could find one!) you’d be transported right back to those days!!
Wonderful post, Ellie. Did Irish phone boxes have that same distinctive smell, I wonder? A lit like old railway carriages but with a bit more cigarette ash thrown in?
Oh yes, and don’t forget the smell of the huge phone directories stored on the shelf underneath the phone – kind of brought a whiff of old library books to the entire mix!!