Phoney

West Leicester, February 2016

It’s increasingly difficult to convince younger people that telephones were once necessarily tethered to specific geographical locations.  Even a relatively late-adopter like me, rarely ventures out without a phone in my pocket nowadays.  Indeed, it surprises me that a long-privatised telecommunications company like BT, still finds it cost effective to maintain public phone boxes against a ceaseless tide of petty vandalism and general indifference.

Who uses kiosks, like this one near my home? - I wonder.  It used to be a hub for routine drug deals, I believe.  But surely a tap would be placed on the line of any such hotspot, these days - would it not?  I guess we can’t ignore the fact that, even here, - in (supposedly) the fifth most affluent global economy; there’s a distressingly large hardcore of benighted souls too cash-strapped to envisage even the cheapest handset and a pay-as-you-go contract.

West Leicester, February 2016

In my younger years, phone boxes were just another part of ubiquitous street furniture.  Some of my earliest memories are of squeezing, with my Mother, into one of those iconic, Gilbert Scott-designed affairs; before we had a landline installed at home.  My face would be pressed close to the small panes of slightly cloudy glass, and the gnarly texture of multiple coats of red gloss on the cast iron glazing bars.  Sometimes, she’d sit me on the sturdy directory shelf, and I also remember the mechanical whir of the rotary dial and the satisfying ‘clunk-chink’ as she operated the coin-return knob.

Of course, it’s easy to over-romanticise such recollections.  The reality is, those old boxes often stank of piss, - even in supposedly more civilised times; and queuing in wind and rain to make routine calls was neither an enjoyable or efficient use of time [1.].  Even so, they never came close to the bland squalor of this contemporary example.  In reality, the only reason it even captured my attention, was for its formal juxtaposition of calligraphic graffiti and obscure, translucency.  It’s just another evocation of visually drained, uncommunicative vacancy, of the kind that fascinates me so much at present.

Central Leicester, February 2016

Coincidentally, it occurs to me that the little suite of semi-abstract images accompanying my last post, derive from Leicester's old Central Telephone Exchange.  Much of that building now houses residential apartments, but the frosted, wired, gridded windows I photographed punctuate one small section still housing telecommunications infrastructure.  By accident, and initially, for purely visual reasons, - it appears that another sub-theme may have emerged.




[1.]:  I also remember how, sometimes in the early 1980s, I left a bag containing all my personal documents, (including Passport, Birth Certificate, etc.), in a phone box near the student house where I lived.  In the ten minutes it took me to realise my mistake, - the bag was gone.  These days, I might lose my mobile phone, but, trust me, - whilst disruptive, that's far less inconvenient than replacing all that paperwork.